Nature Of Social Media Platforms Research Articles

Educator's blueprint: Key considerations for using social media in survey-based medical education research.

In this paper, we present a set of recommendations for using social media as a tool for participant recruitment in survey-based medical education research. Drawing from a limited but growing body of literature, we discuss the opportunities and challenges inherent to social media recruitment. This article builds on the authors' previous educator's blueprints about survey design and administration. We highlight the advantages of social media, including its wide reach, cost-effectiveness, and capability to access diverse and geographically dispersed populations, which can significantly enhance the representativeness of research samples. However, we also caution against potential pitfalls, such as ethical concerns, sampling bias, and the fluid nature of social media platforms. Our recommendations are informed by both empirical evidence and best practices, aiming to provide researchers with practical advice for effectively leveraging social media in survey-based medical education research. We emphasize the importance of selecting suitable platforms and engaging with targeted demographics thoughtfully. By sharing our insights, we hope to assist fellow medical education researchers in navigating the complexities of social media recruitment, thereby enriching the quality and impact of survey-based research in this field.

Reliability of YouTube content targeting Arabic-speaking patients with breast cancer regarding post-mastectomy reconstruction.

e13626 Background: The dynamic and easily accessible nature of social media platforms, particularly YouTube (YT), has revolutionized the way breast cancer (BC) patients seek and process information. This study aims to evaluate the quality of YT videos addressing post-mastectomy reconstruction (PMR) that target Arabic-speaking women (ASW), a heavily digitally connected segment of society that may experience challenges in accessing mainstream medical information in Arabic Language (AL). Methods: YT was searched incognito, using the terms: "post mastectomy reconstruction" in (AL) in July 2023. Upload date, video length, number of views, poster identity and other relevant information were compiled. Video understandability and actionability were assessed by physician-reviewers (PR) with the Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool for audiovisual materials (PEMAT A/V), while the DISCERN tool appraised quality. Sponsorship presence, patient vs health care professional narratives, and intended audience were documented. Thematic analysis of most discussed topics was performed. Additionally, cluster analysis was employed to categorize the videos based on their quality. Results: Of 109 videos (mean length: 7 mins.), 67% had sponsorship (of which 45% corporate); 92% were information-based (vs experience-based); 82% targeted general population over BC patients; 93.6% were in AL, and 5.5% had translation. Mean PEMAT scores were 61.3% (understandability) and 20% (actionability). Mean DISCERN score was 2.6/5. Only 21% of videos featured women. Predominant themes were awareness (82.6%), appearance, and body image (68.8%). Less prevalent: sexuality and fertility (4.6%). The likelihood that the PR would recommend the video to a patient was low at 43.1%. Cluster analysis showed that high-quality videos had a higher understandability (74%), actionability (40.5%) and greater likelihood of being recommended by a PR (90.5%). Conclusions: YT content on PMR for ASW is easily understandable but lacks actionability and has moderate overall quality. Videos are highly sponsored and questionably representative of patients’ and women’s perspective. Therefore, Improving YT content, especially in AL, is crucial for supporting BC patients exploring PMR. The identified themes and insights into gender representation provide valuable guidance for content creators aiming to improve digital resources for this digitally connected demographic.

Influence of Influencer Marketing on Consumer Purchase Intentions

Purpose: The aim of the study was to assess the influence of influencer marketing on consumer purchase intentions. Materials and Methods: This study adopted a desk methodology. A desk study research design is commonly known as secondary data collection. This is basically collecting data from existing resources preferably because of its low cost advantage as compared to a field research. Our current study looked into already published studies and reports as the data was easily accessed through online journals and libraries. Findings: The study indicate that consumers are more likely to trust and be influenced by recommendations from individuals they perceive as authentic and knowledgeable. Influencers, especially those with niche audiences, can create a sense of personal connection and trust with their followers, making their endorsements more persuasive than traditional advertising. This trust translates into higher engagement rates and a greater likelihood of consumers trying and purchasing products endorsed by these influencers. Additionally, the interactive nature of social media platforms allows influencers to engage directly with their audience, answering questions and providing real-time feedback, further enhancing their impact on purchase decisions. Overall, influencer marketing effectively taps into the power of social proof and word-of-mouth, driving consumer interest and purchase intentions more effectively than many conventional marketing strategies. Implications to Theory, Practice and Policy: Social influence theory, informational social influence theory and theory of planned behavior may be used to anchor future studies on assessing the influence of influencer marketing on consumer purchase intentions. Encourage brands to establish strategic collaborations with influencers based on authenticity, trustworthiness, and alignment with brand values. Advocate for transparency and ethical guidelines in influencer marketing practices to build consumer trust and credibility.

Personal Branding in the Digital Era: Social Media Strategies for Graduates

Purpose: This study represented an important effort to delve into the dynamics of personal branding on social media and its impact on the career trajectories of graduates. Methodology: By adopting a quantitative approach through a questionnaire-based survey from 280 respondents, the research sought to gather empirical data that could shed light on the patterns and trends associated with personal branding practices among this demographic. By designing survey questions aligned with the research objectives, the study aimed to capture a comprehensive picture of how graduates utilized social media for personal branding and how this activity correlated with their career advancement. Findings: The results showed a noticeable and meaningful connection, with a correlation coefficient (r-value) of 0.707, indicating statistical significance (p = 0.05). This indicated a robust relationship between the variables under examination. The strong correlation underscored the importance of personal branding on social media in assisting graduates with their job search endeavors on these platforms. This capability allowed them to establish direct connections with recruiters and improve their career opportunities significantly. Additionally, the rapidly evolving nature of social media platforms may have introduced complexities in capturing the most current trends and practices related to personal branding. Unique contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: Symbolic Interactionism theory can be used to examine the idea of personal branding and how people utilize social media to present themselves and shape perceptions. Moreover, this theory could prove beneficial for future researchers or scholars keen on delving into related themes, providing a fundamental reference for their investigations. The research proposed a variety of suggestions that could enhance understanding regarding the personal branding strategies that help graduates achieve their professional goals. These recommendations encompass recognizing the importance for recruiters, gaining insights into graduates' online activities, and grasping candidates' skills and interests, all of which are essential for recruiters to make well-informed choices and extend invitations to potential team members.

Nurses on Social Media: Global Challenges and Pakistani Context.

Social media has become a global phenomenon, impacting the nursing profession worldwide. While nurses on social media face universal challenges, each country also has unique factors that influence the nature of these challenges. This editorial highlights the global challenges nurses face on social media and discusses the specific context of Pakistan, shedding light on the challenges experienced by nurses in this country. Nurses worldwide face the challenge of protecting patient confidentiality and privacy when using social media. The global nature of social media platforms means that nurses must be mindful of privacy laws and regulations specific to their country. Ensuring adherence to ethical guidelines and implementing stringent privacy measures is crucial to safeguard patient information across borders1.
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Deception Detection and a Survey on Social Media

Social media is an online technology and platform that enables people to produce, distribute, and interact with other’s material and ideas. It includes a broad range of websites and programmers that encourage social engagement and communication via various digital channels [1]. False information spreading on social media is a problem with significant consequences. Due to the abstract nature of social media platforms, which has an impact on many areas of society, false information may spread swiftly on them [3]. Common instances of misinformation include misinformation news stories, doctored images and videos, click-bait headlines, conspiracy theories, health misinformation, political propaganda, and pranks [5]. By addressing the issues caused by misleading information on social media and taking action against them, we can work to create a more informed and trustworthy digital environment. We hope to create new research opportunities and enable the extensive research in this field to be promptly used in practical settings. In this research paper we will study about detection of deception on social media and problems related to deception. Keywords- Characterization, Detection, Data Collection, Methodology and performance metrics.

Effect of Feedback on Drug Consumption Disclosures on Social Media

Deaths due to drug overdose in the US have doubled in the last decade. Drug-related content on social media has also exploded in the same time frame. The pseudo-anonymous nature of social media platforms enables users to discourse about taboo and sometimes illegal topics like drug consumption. User-generated content (UGC) about drugs on social media can be used as an online proxy to detect offline drug consumption. UGC also gets exposed to the praise and criticism of the community. Law of effect proposes that positive reinforcement on an experience can incentivize the users to engage in the experience repeatedly. Therefore, we hypothesize that positive community feedback on a user's online drug consumption disclosure will increase the probability of the user doing an online drug consumption disclosure post again. To this end, we collect data from 10 drug-related subreddits. First, we build a deep learning model to classify UGC as indicative of drug consumption offline or not, and analyze the extent of such activities. Further, we use matching-based causal inference techniques to unravel community feedback's effect on users' future drug consumption behavior. We discover that 84% of posts and 55% comments on drug-related subreddits indicate real-life drug consumption. Users who get positive feedback generate up to two times more drugs consumption content in the future. Finally, we conducted an anonymous user study on drug-related subreddits to compare members' opinions with our experimental findings and show that user tends to underestimate the effect community peers can have on their decision to interact with drugs.

The Effect of Social Media Interactive Messaging on Customer Loyalty of Commercial Banks in Nairobi City County, Kenya

Social media interactive messaging is rapidly becoming a major marketing practice in the corporate world. Modern organizations are recognizing the interactive nature of social media platforms as breaker of barriers that initially limited customer-company interactions. Commercial banks have not been left behind in the intensified journey of using social media platforms to interact with customers in real-time and use it a s tool to inspire customer loyalty. However, existing literature has not empirically established if adopting the social media interactive messaging can significantly customer loyalty of commercial banks in Kenya. Moreover, some banking organizations have not fully optimized interactive messaging feature of the social networking sites to inspire customer loyalty. The current study investigated the effect of social media interactive messaging on customer loyalty of commercial banks in Nairobi City County, Kenya. The study was underpinned by the honeycomb model and the technology acceptance model. A primary research methodology was applied. A closed-ended questionnaire was administered to random sample of 384 commercial bank customers. Data collected was coded and entered into the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The study results revealed that social media interactive messaging has a significant positive effect on customer loyalty of commercial banks in Nairobi City County, Kenya. The study recommends that commercial banks in Kenya improve the ease of use of their social media pages to inspire customer usage for communications. Keywords: Social media, interactive messaging, commercial banks, Nairobi City County.

Influence of social media in travel decision making

This paper explores the significant impact of social media on travel decision-making processes. With the rapid proliferation of social media platforms, individuals now have access to an extensive array of user-generated content and peer recommendations that greatly influence their travel choices. This study seeks to analyze the ways in which social media platforms shape perceptions, preferences, and decisions related to travel. The research delves into the mechanisms through which social media exerts its influence on travel decisions. It investigates how travelers use platforms like Instagram, Face book, Twitter, and travel-focused review sites to gather information, exchange experiences, and connect with other travelers. Furthermore, the study examines the role of influencers and content creators in shaping travel aspirations and choices. The interactive nature of social media platforms, including the ability to seek real-time advice and engage with travel-related content, adds a layer of immediacy and personalization to the decision-making process. The research on the influence of social media in travel decision making holds significant importance for several key stakeholders, including travelers, the travel industry, and researchers. Understanding the impact of social media on travel decisions empowers travelers to make more informed choices. By recognizing the role of social media, individuals can better navigate the vast array of travel information available and make decisions that align with their preferences and interests. Travelers can use the insights gained from this research to enhance their travel planning processes. They can identify reliable sources of information, seek real-time recommendations, and learn how to effectively engage with content and communities on social media to optimize their travel experiences. Applying the "Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment (WASPAS)" method, those making decisions are able to evaluate possibilities based on a wide range of parameters. It involves providing criteria weights, determining scores for every potential and summing the results to determine the most suitable option. From the result Destination A is in first rank where as Destination E is lower rank.

The Use of Social Media by Spanish Feminist Organizations: Collectivity From Individualism

In recent years, social media platforms have become a popular tool for feminist activists and the main medium of communication for new feminist organizations to gain higher visibility. However, along with opportunities, they also bring a reshaping of communication forms and challenges in the modes of organization of these groups, which seek to transform the prevailing individualist logic of the mediated social media landscape into a collective identity. Through the findings of qualitative, semi-structured interviews and the analysis of the content published online, this article looks at the structures of interactions and organizing processes in the social media accounts of new Spanish feminist groups. The findings show that although the committees are aware of the importance of an online presence, they face many obstacles in the creation of collective profiles due to the lack of guidelines, having no clear organized steps on how to post content with consensus within each committee, and the many demands of the speed-driven nature of social media platforms.

Reshaping How Universities Can Evaluate the Research Impact of Open Humanities for Societal Benefit

During the twenty-first century, for the first time, the volume of digital data has surpassed the amount of analog data. As academic practices increasingly become digital, opportunities arise to reshape the future of scholarly communication through more accessible, interactive, open, and transparent methods that engage a far broader and more diverse public. Yet despite these advances, the research performance of universities and public research institutes remains largely evaluated through publication and citation analysis rather than by public engagement and societal impact. This article reviews how changes to bibliometric evaluations toward greater use of altmetrics, including social media mentions, could enhance uptake of open scholarship in the humanities. In addition, the article highlights current challenges faced by the open scholarship movement, given the complexity of the humanities in terms of its sources and outputs that include monographs, book chapters, and journals in languages other than English; the use of popular media not considered as scholarly papers; the lack of time and energy to develop digital skills among research staff; problems of authority and trust regarding the scholarly or non-academic nature of social media platforms; the prestige of large academic publishing houses; and limited awareness of and familiarity with advanced digital applications. While peer review will continue to be a primary method for evaluating research in the humanities, a combination of altmetrics and other assessment of research impact through different data sources may provide a way forward to ensure the increased use, sustainability, and effectiveness of open scholarship in the humanities.

HYPOCRISY AND FALLACY OF SOCIAL MEDIA FREEDOM ON NATIONAL SECURITY: MIRRORING THE 2021 TRUMP BLOCKAGE AGAINST SELECTED AFRICAN CASES

Social media are praised as arenas for free speech which came with emancipation and reversing authoritarian governments control of media. This article compares and contrasts the hypocrisy of the alleged promotion of free speech in Africa and the global South and denying it to Trump and his supporters in the USA when the messages had comparatively the same effects of fomenting ‘public disorder’ in the name of free speech. Using Facebook and Twitter as the case social media platforms of analysis, the paper critically reviewed literature related to the subject. It is observable that social media has often times promoted the circulation of violent and protest foment information in the global South, and regarded this as emancipatory and democratic. Whereas, in the global North, more specifically, by focusing on the 2020 USA’s contested Presidential election, it is noted that social media companies quickly stepped in to block Donald Trump statements deemed to ignite political insurrection and glorification of violence. What we then observe is the hypocritical nature of social media platforms and a continued perpetuation of the centre- periphery prism hinged on maintain a hegemonic force on the global South states that do not own and control the social media platforms.

Social Media Use in Cardiovascular Imaging.

Social Media is a rising influence in the global world of cardiovascular medicine, allowing for a dynamic approach to physician education, research dissemination and collaborative discussion. The visual nature of social media platforms, particularly Twitter, lends itself particularly well to the tremendous advances and stunning visuals of cardiac imaging. The hashtag “#cardiotwitter” provides around the clock, asynchronous, ubiquitous, free education. It allows connection among cardiac imagers across the world to share ideas and discuss contemporary issues pertaining to multimodality imaging. This review highlights the role of social media in advancing the practice of cardiac imaging and provides guidance on gaining visibility in the social media imaging community.

Towards a Stylometric Authorship Recognition Model for the Social Media Texts in Arabic

Numerous studies have been concerned with developing new authorship recognition systems to address the increasing rates of cybercrimes associated with the anonymous nature of social media platforms, which still offer the opportunity for the users not to reveal their true identities. Nevertheless, it is still challenging to identify the real authors of social media’s offensive and inappropriate content. These contents are usually very short; therefore, it is challenging for stylometric authorship systems to assign controversial texts to their real authors based on the salient and distinctive linguistic features and patterns within these contents. This research introduces a new stylometric authorship system that considers both the shortness of data and the peculiar linguistic properties of Arabic. A corpus of 20, 357 tweets from 134 Twitter users. A document clustering based on Document Index Graph (DIG) model was used to classify input patterns in the tweets that shared common linguistic features. A comparative analysis using Vector Space Clustering (VSC) model based on the Bag of Words (BOW) model, conventionally used in authorship recognition applications, was used. Results indicate that the proposed system is more accurate than other standard authorship systems mainly based on vector space clustering methods. It was also clear that the model had the advantage of providing complete information about the documents and the degree of overlap between every pair of documents, which was useful in determining the similarity between documents.

Analysis of Techniques for Rumor Detection in Social Media

The ubiquitous nature of social media platforms resulted into generation of large amount of multimedia data in social networks. The openness and unrestricted way to share the information on social media platforms fosters information spread across the network regardless of its credibility. Such kind of spreading the misinformation happens usually in the context of breaking news. Due to unverified information, such misinformation, also known as rumors may cause severe damages. Despite overwhelming use, uncontrolled nature of social media platforms usually results in generation and unfold of rumors. Therefore, automatically detecting the rumors from social media platforms is one of the highly sought-after research area in the domain of social media analytics. Motivated by the same, this paper focuses on detailed discussion of datasets and state-of-the-art approaches of rumor detection. Moreover, this paper sheds light upon supervised and unsupervised methods and deep learning approaches for rumor detection.

'Many People Are Saying…': Applying the Lessons of Naïve Skepticism to the Fight against Fake News and Other 'Total Bullshit'

‘Fake news’ has become an increasingly common refrain in public discourse. The term itself has several uses, at least one of which constitutes Frankfurtian bullshit. After examining what sorts of fake news appeals do and do not count as bullshit, I discuss strategies for overcoming our openness to such bullshit. I do so by drawing a parallel between openness to bullshit and naive skepticism—one’s willingness to reject the concept of truth on unsupported or ill-considered grounds—and suggest that this parallel indicates three principles for how we ought to combat our openness to fake news and other bullshit. First, the root causes of bullshit openness are not monolithic; we should adopt anti-bullshit strategies in recognition of this fact. Second, our efforts to overcome bullshit openness should be collaborative efforts to create an environment that allows for sustained interrogation of our bullshit openness, rather than a confrontational provision of contrary evidence, despite the fact that such strategies are more time-intensive. Third, social media is unlikely to be a fertile ground on which we will make meaningful progress in the fight against bullshit because of the inherent nature of social media platforms as spaces for short, declarative, confrontational claims.

Follow my Snaps!

Using third-person perception as a theoretical framework, a survey of 1,167 American adolescents explores their social media use and its relationship to verbal, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Despite the sexual nature of social media platforms like Snapchat, which are popular with adolescents, even adolescents who have experienced sexual violence in the past. Snapchat users were more likely than non-users to report abusive behavior to others. Adolescents exhibited third-person perception, believing others were more affected than they were by negative social media posts. This was related to experience with violence, and social media use. A third-person effect emerged, as adolescents who exhibit third-person perception were more likely to engage in abusive behaviors, both face-to-face and in an electronic medium.

Public sentiment and discourse about Zika virus on Instagram

ObjectiveSocial media have strongly influenced the awareness and perceptions of public health emergencies, and a considerable amount of social media content is now shared through images, rather than text alone. This content can impact preparedness and response due to the popularity and real-time nature of social media platforms. We sought to explore how the image-sharing platform Instagram is used for information dissemination and conversation during the current Zika outbreak. Study designThis was a retrospective review of publicly posted images about Zika on Instagram. MethodsUsing the keyword ‘#zika’ we identified 500 images posted on Instagram from May to August 2016. Images were coded by three reviewers and contextual information was collected for each image about sentiment, image type, content, audience, geography, reliability, and engagement. ResultsOf 500 images tagged with #zika, 342 (68%) contained content actually related to Zika. Of the 342 Zika-specific images, 299 were coded as ‘health’ and 193 were coded ‘public interest’. Some images had multiple ‘health’ and ‘public interest’ codes. Health images tagged with #zika were primarily related to transmission (43%, 129/299) and prevention (48%, 145/299). Transmission-related posts were more often mosquito-human transmission (73%, 94/129) than human–human transmission (27%, 35/129). Mosquito bite prevention posts outnumbered safe sex prevention; (84%, 122/145) and (16%, 23/145) respectively. Images with a target audience were primarily aimed at women (95%, 36/38). Many posts (60%, 61/101) included misleading, incomplete, or unclear information about the virus. Additionally, many images expressed fear and negative sentiment, (79/156, 51%). ConclusionInstagram can be used to characterize public sentiment and highlight areas of focus for public health, such as correcting misleading or incomplete information or expanding messages to reach diverse audiences.

Social media and mobile applications in chronic disease prevention and management.

Social media, online social networks and apps for smartphones and tablets are changing the way we communicate. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 73% of Internet users among US adults engage in social networking to access, create, and share contents (Duggan and Smith, 2013). The number of smartphone users is growing worldwide [56% of American adults are currently smartphone owners (Smith, 2013)], and millions of applications (most of them related to social media or other communication tools) are available on the Google Play or iTunes store. The increased prevalence of chronic (and non-communicable) diseases in high-income countries is today largely attributable to the convergence of an aging population with the persistence of several risk factors, including physical inactivity, use of tobacco and alcohol, high blood pressure and cholesterol, stress, depression, and overweight and obesity. Many of these risk factors can be mitigated by health interventions and education, and communication tools could support healthy lifestyle and behavior change. In the past years there was an increasing interest in the use of digital technologies to support these changes because they contribute to enhance levels of surveillance over behaviors and have the potential to provide acceptable and cost-effective interventions by transferring treatment, rehabilitation and prevention of a condition to self-care in the community (Castelnuovo et al., 2010). Social media and smartphone-based applications are now changing how people interact with the healthcare and public health systems (Santoro, 2013; Santoro and Quintaliani, 2013). The participatory, interactive nature of social media platforms allows for information to be generated and shared in a viral fashion, and provide new mechanisms to foster engagement and partnership with consumers, to change their behaviors and to fight against unhealthy lifestyles. More than 100,000 health related apps are also available in the market allowing people to record, track, and analyze vital signs and physical health data over time, to obtain feedback and general information about the disease they suffer from, and to receive alerts to remind them to take their medications or to measure their blood glucose levels. Due to their possible implications in public health a growing number of scientists suggests to incorporate social media and mobile health in health promotion and healthcare programs (Burke-Garcia and Scally, 2014).