Social Network Service Providers Research Articles

Exploring the antecedents of social network service fatigue: a socio-technical perspective

Purpose Despite the various benefits of social networking services (SNSs), users have begun to experience fatigue in recent years, as evidenced by a decline in active user numbers. This relatively new phenomenon has only recently received significant managerial and academic attention. The antecedents of SNS fatigue are still unclear in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to identify the key factors causing SNS fatigue, based on a socio-technical approach. Design/methodology/approach The authors empirically tested this research model with 424 SNS users via an online survey. Structural equation modeling with partial least squares was used to analyze the data. Findings The results showed that the social factors of social comparison, social interaction overload, social surveillance and social information overload, and the technical factor of system complexity are significantly related to SNS fatigue. Practical implications This research benefits SNS providers by allowing them to better understand how to effectively design social networking platforms to retain and attract more users. It also benefits users by providing guidance on how to actively manage their own behavior to avoid potential negative outcomes induced by SNS usage. Originality/value This study focuses on the “dark side” of SNS from the perspective of fatigue, extending existing research on technostress. It also extends the applicability of the socio-technical approach to the phenomenon of SNS fatigue. Moreover, it enriches SNS fatigue research by addressing the importance of both social and technical factors in causing SNS fatigue.

Can we analyse political discourse using Twitter? Evidence from Spanish 2019 presidential election

Social networking service provider such as Twitter has become very popular communication tools for Internet and Mobile users. Our paper aims at participating into the topical debate if a tweet can shed light on future elections. After listening tweets collected during the Spanish 2019 presidential campaign between April 12 and April 26, we perform a statistical and computing analysis (based on R software) in order to reveal political discourse of the parties engaged and highlight the main messages conveyed and their resulted impact in the share of candidates’ voice. Our results show that Twitter information could be converted into a performant tool to organize digital department of the candidates helping to clarify the impact of their messages on the future voters. Our methodology is based on the use of different machine learning algorithms to clean and analyse 1.7 million of tweets.

The rise of social networking sites

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the technology acceptance model, privacy concerns and demographic factors on intention to use (ITU) social networking sites (SNSs).Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire survey was developed and administered to a convenience sample of 838 university students.FindingsThe findings indicate that perceived privacy, demographic factors and perceived usefulness (PU) have a significant effect on the ITU SNSs, and that age does not moderate the relationship between perceived ease-of-use and PU.Originality/valueThis study confirms the growing importance of SNSs. It also provides social networking service providers with insights into user intentions towards such networks.

Empirical analysis of the intelligent influence factors of social network services effectiveness in e-commerce based on human learning behaviors.

Background: It is crucial for companies to understanding users’ choices and learning behaviors, and the corresponding influencing factors and cognitive patterns regarding social network services to communicate with potential customers.Methods: In this study, a casual structural model was constructed and developed to model and characterize the relationships between problems to be resolved as antecedent variables and success factors as consequent variables with the intermediary variables based on human learning behaviors, whereas the concept of social network service was introduced to summarize the current issues of social network services and empirically factors affecting effectiveness of social network services.Discussion: This study highlighted the corporate need to examine the intelligent role and learning effectiveness of social network services when studying social creativity and intelligence in a social networking environment. Firstly, the framework and hypotheses of social network services were introduced to summarize the current issues of social network services and the main influencing factors affecting the working patterns of social network services. Subsequently, the empirically established model was further tested to explore the possible meaningful relationships among those variables used.Results: The study revealed that the social network services provider and the customer should improve their social creativity and community collaboration; these could be expanded and enhanced by increasing the social intelligence to raise the social network services’ effect and the customer’s externalization. Furthermore, social intelligence, community collaboration, and customer externalization were factors significantly influencing customers’ social creativity, while the customer externalization and community collaboration were the two important factors affecting social intelligence.Conclusion: The study implied that social network services providers should provide more and more intelligent and inspiring services for their customers.

Encryption-Then-Compression Systems Using Grayscale-Based Image Encryption for JPEG Images

A block scrambling-based encryption scheme is presented to enhance the security of Encryption-then-Compression (EtC) systems with JPEG compression, which allow us to securely transmit the images through an untrusted channel provider, such as social network service providers. The proposed scheme enables the use of a smaller block size and a larger number of blocks than the conventional scheme. Images encrypted using the proposed scheme include less color information due to the use of grayscale images even when the original image has three color channels. These features enhance security against various attacks such as jigsaw puzzle solver and brute-force attacks. In an experiment, the security against jigsaw puzzle solver attacks is evaluated. Encrypted images were uploaded to and then downloaded from Facebook and Twitter, and the results demonstrated that the proposed scheme is effective for EtC systems.

Social network services and Libraries

Online Social Networks and Blogs are two leading web 2.0 technologies that can be adapted as a part of online services in the libraries. The history of social network service providers is discussed. The authors highlight the basic structure, additional features and the new emerging trends in the field of social networking services. In this paper author review the different impact on the society of the social network sites. Different types of domains are working for social networking. These networks can also be used for information distribution. The new generation users can get the library services at their own space and time by the libraries profile on these networks. To improve the status of Library and LIS professionals in the society in today’s busy digital era, social networking is one of the best media, because most of internet users are frequently using the social networking sites. And it is the best way of marketing of library services as well as strengthen the Library and LIS Profession and Professionals. A lot of libraries are using this for marketing of library services, promoting events, books reviews, users support, CAS, SDI, reference desk, library consortia etc. The merits and demerits of these social networking tools are also mentioned. Keywords: Social networking, Emerging trends, Social impact, Marketing of library services.

Internet Architecture and Human Rights: Beyond the Human Rights Gap

Internet architecture and infrastructure are generally not at the top of the concerns of end users, and the overlying logical arrangements of root services, domain names, and protocols remain largely invisible to its users. Recent developments, however—including massive user data leakages, hacks targeting social networking service providers, and behavioral micro‐targeting—have turned a spotlight on Internet governance defined broadly, and its relationship with civil liberties and human rights. The articles in this special issue examine the policymaking role of influential private intermediaries and private actors such as ICANN in enacting global governance via Internet architecture, exploring the implications of such a mode of governance for human rights. They consider: to what extent are human rights standards mediated and set via technical infrastructure, such as the DNS and platform policies, rather than by governmental structures? What are the implications of governance via Internet architecture for individual human rights? And what frameworks—be they legal, technological or policy‐related—are needed to address the contemporary privatization of human rights online, in order to ensure the effective protection of human rights in the digital age?

Image Manipulation Specifications on Social Networking Services for Encryption-then-Compression Systems

Encryption-then-Compression (EtC) systems have been proposed to securely transmit images through an untrusted channel provider. In this study, EtC systems were applied to social media like Twitter that carry out image manipulations. The block scrambling-based encryption schemes used in EtC systems were evaluated in terms of their robustness against image manipulation on social media. The aim was to investigate how five social networking service (SNS) providers, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr and Flickr, manipulate images and to determine whether the encrypted images uploaded to SNS providers can avoid being distorted by such manipulations. In an experiment, encrypted and non-encrypted JPEG images were uploaded to various SNS providers. The results show that EtC systems are applicable to the five SNS providers.

A challenge-response mechanism for securing online social networks against social bots

Social bots is fast becoming a serious security threat to online social networks (OSNs). Social bots are automated software tools able to execute malicious activities in OSNs systems in an automated fashion. It can perform auto-sharing and posting, sending fake friend requests, harvesting private information, etc. There is evidence that social bots play a crucial role in penetrating privacy and security of social networks. Hence, these malicious software tools represent a big security challenge against social network service provider (SNSP). In this paper, we introduce a novel antibot mechanism called Necklace CAPTCHA for securing OSNs platforms against the automated behaviours of social bots. Necklace CAPTCHA is an Image-based CAPTCHA, which utilises the functionality of Necklace Graph approach to generate its challenge-response tests in a novel fashion. The results demonstrated that Necklace CAPTCHA is an effective and secure anti-bot mechanism compared with other CAPTCHAs in the literature with respect to the usability and security metrics.

A challenge-response mechanism for securing online social networks against social bots

Social bots is fast becoming a serious security threat to online social networks (OSNs). Social bots are automated software tools able to execute malicious activities in OSNs systems in an automated fashion. It can perform auto-sharing and posting, sending fake friend requests, harvesting private information, etc. There is evidence that social bots play a crucial role in penetrating privacy and security of social networks. Hence, these malicious software tools represent a big security challenge against social network service provider (SNSP). In this paper, we introduce a novel antibot mechanism called Necklace CAPTCHA for securing OSNs platforms against the automated behaviours of social bots. Necklace CAPTCHA is an Image-based CAPTCHA, which utilises the functionality of Necklace Graph approach to generate its challenge-response tests in a novel fashion. The results demonstrated that Necklace CAPTCHA is an effective and secure anti-bot mechanism compared with other CAPTCHAs in the literature with respect to the usability and security metrics.

Driving Factors for Opinion Diffusion Behavior in Consumers on Online Social Networks: A Study of Network Characteristics

Online consumer social networks have become an important marketing channel for product-related information diffusion in the technological landscape. This paper aims to identify the factors that drive opinion diffusion behavior in consumers on online social networks. To empirically test the theoretically driven hypotheses, the study uses firsthand survey responses from 614 respondents based in two major cities in China: Shenzhen, an eastern city, and Xi’an, a western city. A survey of online shopping consumers shows that both network heterogeneity and network influence have a positive impact on consumers’ level of online opinion leadership and online opinion seeking behavior. However, network acquaintance has an insignificant impact on the level of opinion diffusion. Furthermore, online opinion diffusion has a positive impact on behavioral consequence, which has two dimensions: online forwarding and online communication. An online opinion leader is more likely to forward and communicate information than an online opinion seeker. Multiple-group analysis indicates that gender and city moderate the effect of opinion diffusion. Theoretically, this paper makes several contributions to marketing literature, particularly from a social networking perspective. The results from this study can help online retailers and social network service providers utilize consumer networks to improve online opinion diffusion. Within social networking literature, this is a unique attempt to explore the factors driving opinion diffusion behavior in consumers’ online social networks.

Internet Architecture and Human Rights: Beyond the Human Rights Gap

Internet architecture and infrastructure are generally not at the top of the concerns of end users, and the overlying logical arrangements of root services, domain names, and protocols remain largely invisible to its users. Recent developments, however—including massive user data leakages, hacks targeting social networking service providers, and behavioral micro-targeting—have turned a spotlight on Internet governance defined broadly, and its relationship with civil liberties and human rights. The articles in this special issue examine the policymaking role of influential private intermediaries and private actors such as ICANN in enacting global governance via Internet architecture, exploring the implications of such a mode of governance for human rights. They consider: to what extent are human rights standards mediated and set via technical infrastructure, such as the DNS and platform policies, rather than by governmental structures? What are the implications of governance via Internet architecture for individual human rights? And what frameworks—be they legal, technological or policy-related—are needed to address the contemporary privatization of human rights online, in order to ensure the effective protection of human rights in the digital age?

An Efficient Social Attribute Inference Scheme Based on Social Links and Attribute Relevance

Social network is a critical component in mobile multimedia systems, where users share their videos, photos, and other media. However, the information (e.g., posts, user profiles, etc.) shared on the social network platforms usually reflects many users’ personal (private) information, which could be mined and abused for malicious purposes. To address privacy concerns, many social network service providers adopted privacy-preserving mechanisms, e.g., anonymizing user identity, hiding users’ profiles, etc. As a result, the attributes in user profiles are usually set up to be accessed only by friends to prevent privacy leakage. Several attacks have been proposed to infer the hidden attributes to Several the efficiency of current privacy-protecting mechanisms. Most of these solutions are based on the social links among users or their behaviors. In this paper, we systematically analyze the social features related to user privacy inference and found that there are relevances among social attributes, which has a great impact on inferring users’ hidden attributes. According to our findings, we propose an efficient social attribute inference scheme based on social links and attribute relevance properties. We develop a relevance attribute inference method (ReAI) using random walks with restart. We analyze attribute relevance on inference performance and use Kulczynski measure to quantify attribute relevance as edge weights of attribute nodes in an improved social-attribute network. We evaluate our method and compare it with the traditional attribute inference method. The results show that our method performs better than the traditional method. We also use Kulczynski measure and Information Gain Ratio to evaluate the improvements. The results show that the bigger relevance between attributes contributes to higher improvements.

Examining Gifting Through Social Network Services: A Social Exchange Theory Perspective

The increasing popularity of social network services (SNS) presents an opportunity to offer gifting services through SNS. For givers, gifting can be an important means to enhance social relationships. On the other hand, for SNS providers, members’ gifting can serve as a major source of revenue. As SNS providers continue to face challenges in generating revenues, understanding how to stimulate gifting through SNS can allow them to profit from members’ relationships. However, there is little understanding of what drives members’ gifting through SNS, with limited prior research on online gifting. Thus motivated, we develop a research model of the antecedents of SNS gifting that builds on social exchange theory and prior gifting literature, and incorporates the unique aspects of such gifting (that we refer to as microgifting, with low-price digital voucher gifts). The theoretical model was validated through a field study, in which both subjective and objective data were collected from an SNS that has been successful in offering such gifting services. Our findings highlight the effects of perceived worth, SNS gifting experience, and the number of SNS friends on the frequency of SNS gifting. The results also show that expected benefits (i.e., reciprocity, pleasure, relationship support, convenience, and immediacy of gift sending) and costs (i.e., impersonality) indirectly impact SNS gifting frequency through the assessment of perceived worth. The study contributes to research by adding to our understanding of this new approach of gifting through SNS, i.e., microgifting. It also lends insights on how SNS providers can offer such services to tap this source of revenue.

SaW: Video Analysis in Social Media with Web-Based Mobile Grid Computing

The burgeoning capabilities of Web browsers to exploit full-featured devices can turn the huge pool of social connected users into a powerful network of processing assets. HTML5 and JavaScript stacks support the deployment of social client-side processing infrastructure, while WebGL and WebCL fill the gap to gain full GPU and multi-CPU performance. Mobile Grid and Mobile Cloud Computing solutions leverage smart devices to relieve the processing tasks to be performed by the service infrastructure. Motivated to gain cost-efficiency, a social network service provider can outsource the video analysis to elements of a mobile grid as an infrastructure to complement an elastic cloud service. As long as users access to videos, batch image analysis tasks are dispatched from the server, executed in the background of the client-side hardware, and finally, results are consolidated by the server. This paper presents SaW (Social at Work) to provide a pure Web-based solution as a mobile grid to complement a cloud media service for image analysis on videos.

Examining Mobile SNS Continuance from a Dual Perspective of Social Capital and Privacy Concern

This article contends that due to the intense competition, it is crucial for mobile social networking services (SNS) providers to retain users and facilitate their continuance. Integrating both perspectives of social capital and privacy concern, this research examined mobile SNS continuance. Social capital includes three dimensions: structural capital, relational capital and cognitive capital. The results indicated that both social capital and privacy concerns have significant effects on continuing usage. The results imply that service providers need to develop social capital and curb privacy concerns in order to facilitate users' continuance usage of mobile SNS.

Selling trust in cyber space: social networking service (SNS) providers and social capital amongst netizens in South Korea

Apart from excessive bonding amongst co-ethnics, social capital studies have sparsely discussed the negative effects of social capital, including excessive collective actions towards downward social mobility (e.g. imprisonment of social and political elites). As Bourdieu has noted, social capital can conflate problems of upward social mobility through various glass ceilings in the reproduction of elite power groups. However, it is also important to notice that less fortunate groups can debunk the dominant elite social network by participating excessively in social networking service (SNS) platforms, where they exchange distorted information about the elites to organize collective actions towards their downward social mobility. Gleaned from the recent cases of ferry sinking and candlelight vigilance in South Korea, SNS providers can sell trust in cyber space that can be easily transformed into social capital for collective character assassinations, political demonstrations, and economic sabotages at workplace. Based on the big data gathered from Naver, one of the leading SNS providers in South Korea, we find that Naver provides SNS users with a rare opportunity to encounter myriad opinion groups who will over time converge into one or two similar opinion groups that can be easily mobilized towards collective actions. Selling trust in cyber space on the internet and mobile devices is a unique commercial development in South Korea and its neighbouring countries, including Japan and Taiwan.

Could the mobile and social perspectives of mobile social learning platforms motivate learners to learn continuously?

Learning with smart mobile devices and mobile social networks is an emerging and current trend that deserves attention. Nonetheless, the post-adoption continuance behaviours of learners are still a neglected research focus. Moreover, not much study has examined this research area from a mobile and social perspective. In view of these, this study aims to investigate the continued use of mobile social networks as a platform for learning through a mobile and social perspective. The Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling technique was engaged to analyse a sample that consists of 229 university students, who involve themselves in using mobile social learning platforms for learning purposes. Mobile usefulness, mobile ease of use, and sense of belonging were found to have significant direct influence over satisfaction, which directly influences learners’ site attachment and continued use. Other than satisfaction, site attachment is another direct and significant predictor of continued use. From the mediation analysis, although perceived mobility and social presence have no direct impact over satisfaction, they affect satisfaction indirectly through mobile usefulness and sense of belonging respectively. Serving as a forerunner in examining the continued use of mobile social learning platforms for learning from a mobile and social perspective, this study has closed several crucial literature gaps and provided useful insights to learning institutions and mobile social networking service providers on developing a better mobile social environmental for learning purposes.

Towards improving existing online social networks' privacy policies

The privacy policies of online social network (OSN) service providers are criticised as falling short of satisfying their users' privacy expectations letting huge quantities of their personally identifiable information (PII) exposed to unknown audiences. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to assess the conformance of the privacy policies applied in the five topmost leading OSNs to an internationally acknowledged benchmark such as the ISO 29100:2011 standard, and to propose improvements based on the findings of the assessment. Further, as serious mismatches between these privacy policies and the adherence criteria set out in the ISO 29100:2011 standard were identified, a data lifecycle model is proposed as the basis for an improved OSN privacy policy. A restructuring of the existing policies according to the data lifecycle model will allow them to enjoy characteristics that are known to be important in forming users' perceptions.

Modeling Privacy Leakage Risks in Large-Scale Social Networks

The current culture that encourages online dating, and interaction makes large-scale social network users vulnerable to miscellaneous personal identifiable information leakage. To this end, we take a first step toward modeling privacy leakages in large-scale social networks from both technical and economic perspectives.From a technical perspective, we use Markov chain to propose a dynamic attack-defense tree-based model, which is temporal-aware, to characterize an attack effort made by an attacker and a corresponding countermeasure responded by a social network security defender. From an economic perspective, we use static game theory to analyze the ultimate strategies taken by the attacker and the defender, where both rational participants tend to maximize their utilities, with respect to their attack/defense costs. To validate the proposed approach, we perform extensive experimental evaluations on three real-world data sets, triggered by the survey of over 300 volunteers involved, which illuminates the privacy risk management of contemporary social network service providers.