Social Network Users Research Articles

"Russian-Ukrainian conflict" through the prism of users of the Chinese social network "Weibo"

The subject of this article is the views of Chinese netizens on the "Russian-Ukrainian conflict". The object of the study is posts about this topic on the Chinese social network "Weibo". The authors analyze the importance, functions of the Weibo in the production of public opinion and its main opinion leaders. Then the article examines the number of posts in month (15.02-15.03) compared to other international events and makes a content analysis of posts to find out the main topics and the attitude of users on the social network "Weibo" to the "Russian-Ukrainian conflict". At the end of the article, authors learn the relationship of the research results with stereotypes about the image of Russia in China. The results of the study show that Chinese Weibo users began to care about the event from the beginning of a special military operation, but interest faded with the first round of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Chinese Weibo users pay attention to the role of the United States in the conflict and Western sanctions against Russia. They mainly reflect support for the Russian economy and opposition to Western sanctions, which also affects the Chinese government's statement on this event. The article considers that such views are closely connected with stereotypes about the image of Russia in China. The results of the study show that in future international events, the peoples of Russia and China have more opportunities to reach agreement.

Impact of exposure to Covid-19 related News on the sensation of fear among Brazilians

Seventeen months after the decree of the COVID-19 pandemic and in a scenario of greater certainty and knowledge about the disease and its behavior, a survey was carried out with the objective of investigating the Impact of exposure to Covid-19 related News on the sensation of fear among Brazilians. For that, a self-administered electronic questionnaire was applied to 246 social network users selected through the snowball method. Data interpretation was performed using descriptive statistics and the use of a correlation matrix. The results pointed to a significant relationship between nervousness and anxiety when hearing news about COVID-19 and the physical and psychological sensations of fear Fear of COVID-19, Discomfort when thinking about COVID-19 and Fear of die from COVID-19 is in line with other research. Contrary to the academic literature, a significant reference to Sleep trouble from worry about contracting COVID-19 was not found in this study. In this study, questions were not asked about the influence of different means of communication in this process or the role of moderators such as gender and age, gender or age, being this information (at the same time) limitations of this work and suggestions for future studies . Because it was conducted seventeen months after the pandemic was declared, the results reflect the consequences of prolonged and frequent exposure to the subject.

The <i>fake news</i> during the chilean social outbreak and the role of <i>fact checking</i> against disinformation

The objective of this research is to understand the impact generated by fake news on the political perception and critical thinking of citizens who receive information through social networks during the Social Outbreak in Chile, and to assess the value of new independent fact checking media created during the same period. The methodology employs a mixed approach with an exploratory scope, involving the creation of an assessment tool used to evaluate 95 subjects from the Biobío Region, Chile who assessed and categorized a news item as true or false. The primary findings reveal that participants perceive sharing fake news as a perilous action, and they hold the belief that fake news has the potential to alter political and social ideologies. In conclusion, assessing subjects' strategies for identifying fake news allows for the development of evaluation tools that promote data verification and enhance media literacy. This becomes crucial as the criteria for verification among active social network users are often low, indicating a level of credibility in published content without thorough scrutiny of data sources or acknowledgment of the risks associated with disseminating potentially false information.

Model development of the system for avoiding echo chambers in social networks

This article examines the problems that appear in the process of the development of social networks. The focus of the study is on the echo chamber effect in various social networks. It turned out that the echo chamber effect is the result of the work of a deep neural network, which analyzes the interests and priorities of each social network user, checks other similar posts and priorities of other users, and then forms a “circle” of like-minded people for each user. Thus, the main drawback of the standard content generation algorithm is the selection of only publications and comments that support the user’s position. The goal of the study is a software architecture to solve the echo chamber problem in highly loaded social networks in real-time. The main idea was to cluster opinions on controversial topics and include user opinions from different clusters in user content. Data on controversial topics is collected from news, scholarly articles, publications, and comments with hashtags. The collected topics are clustered usi ng the K-means algorithm and the “elbow” method is used to find the optimal number of clusters. The result of the clustering of opinions by topic is provided as input data for the generation of a news feed by a recurrent neural network. The system uses Kafka as a message broker between microservices and AZURE blob storage for storing publications and comments. Both solutions support high scalability.

Evaluating the Impact of Social Networks on Human Communication in the Digital Era

The widespread adoption of social networks has significantly transformed human communication and interaction patterns in contemporary society. The purpose of the study is to examine how individuals perceive and experience social network usage, aiming to shed light on its implications for interaction frequency, communication styles, social unity, collective action participation, and overall well-being. Employing an observational and descriptive research design, data was collected from a diverse sample of 120 participants using surveys administered online or in-person. Convenience sampling techniques ensured a balanced representation across age groups, genders, occupations, and geographical locations. Data analysis involved a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches, with descriptive statistics summarizing demographic characteristics and survey responses. Thematic analysis was employed to identify recurring themes and patterns in qualitative data. Results reveal diverse perceptions regarding social network impact, with Facebook emerging as the most preferred platform for human communication. Participants reported varying levels of interaction frequency, communication styles, and concerns about negative effects on mental health. In conclusion, the study underscores the nuanced nature of social network dynamics and their implications for human communication and well-being. Recommendations include promoting digital literacy and mindfulness to mitigate potential negative impacts while harnessing the positive aspects of social network usage for enhancing social connections and community engagement.

Enhancing Multi-Scale Diffusion Prediction via Sequential Hypergraphs and Adversarial Learning

Information diffusion prediction plays a crucial role in understanding the propagation of information in social networks, encompassing both macroscopic and microscopic prediction tasks. Macroscopic prediction estimates the overall impact of information diffusion, while microscopic prediction focuses on identifying the next user to be influenced. While prior research often concentrates on one of these aspects, a few tackle both concurrently. These two tasks provide complementary insights into the diffusion process at different levels, revealing common traits and unique attributes. The exploration of leveraging common features across these tasks to enhance information prediction remains an underexplored avenue. In this paper, we propose an intuitive and effective model that addresses both macroscopic and microscopic prediction tasks. Our approach considers the interactions and dynamics among cascades at the macro level and incorporates the social homophily of users in social networks at the micro level. Additionally, we introduce adversarial training and orthogonality constraints to ensure the integrity of shared features. Experimental results on four datasets demonstrate that our model significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods.

Professionals' digital competences and user profiles in social agencies and their impact on professional practice, family autonomy and wellbeing.

The health crisis of the last 3 years has revealed the weaknesses of the child and family support system based on the professional use of digital resources in social agencies. This study addresses three aims: to examine the level of professional digital competence; to analyze the user profiles in a variety of digital resources; and to test the impact of level of competences and user profiles on four aspects: professional practice, family satisfaction with the services, child and family wellbeing, and family autonomy in the exercise of the parenting role. Participants were 148 practitioners from social agencies who voluntarily responded to an online survey with 47 questions. Results showed that professionals perceive themselves as more competent in areas of information / data management and communication / collaboration than in the creation of digital content, security measures, and technical problem solving. Websites, email, and instant messaging were the sources more frequently used and with higher satisfaction, than structured programs, social networks and multimedia content. Variability in the user profiles showed three clusters: Cluster 1 Social network user (n = 13), Cluster 2 Diversified user (n = 75) and Cluster 3 Communicative instant user (n = 60). Participants in Cluster 2 compared to those in the other clusters were the most proficient on their digital competences and acknowledge the positive impact of digital resources on their professional practice and the psychological and social wellbeing of families. This study points the need for improvement in professionals' digital competences in some of the measured areas and the user profile of digital resources since both provide benefits on professional practice and family autonomy and wellbeing.

Uses and gratifications of social networking use: Associations with social capital and subjective well-being

BACKGROUND: In recent years, social media has surged in popularity and affected every facet of people’s lives from the office environment to leisure time by transforming their lifestyles and influencing well-being. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of social networking usage on the subjective well-being of users by first determining the key gratifications that motivate them to use social networking sites by applying the uses and gratification theory, and then focusing on psychological outcomes such as social capital that affect their subjective well-being. METHOD: The data were collected from 400 students of reputed universities in North India by adopting a judgemental sampling technique. RESULTS: Results indicated that key gratifications such as entertainment, tension release, personal integration, information seeking, emotional connection and socialization played a significant role in social networking usage. Moreover, social networking usage had a significant impact on bonding social capital, bridging social capital and subjective wellbeing. Furthermore, results showed that bonding social capital, and bridging social capital could significantly mediate the relationship between social networking usage and subjective well-being. CONCLUSIONS: Social networking usage has the potential to promote social capital and subjective well-being by addressing the fundamental needs of users in life.

How social media sharing drives consumption intention: the role of social media envy and social comparison orientation

BackgroundSocial media benign envy, an upward comparison-based and painful emotions associated with the motivation to improve oneself, has attracted increasing attention from researchers due to its ubiquitous and significant impact on social network users’ intentions and behavior. However, the results of previous studies on whether material or experiential consumption is more likely to cause social media envy (treated as a single construct) have been inconsistent, and there is a lack of research on what triggers social media users to experience more intense benign envy and thus inspiring their consumption intentions. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the type and luxuriousness of shared consumption and viewer’s social comparison orientation jointly affect social media users’ consumption intentions through benign envy.MethodsA 2 (type of consumption sharing: experiential vs. material) × 2 (luxuriousness of consumption sharing: luxury vs. non-luxury) × 2 (social comparison orientation: high vs. low) mixed-design experiment was conducted to test theoretical model with data from 544 undergraduates in China. SPSS 26.0 and the Process macro were used to test the model.ResultsThe results revealed that luxury experiential consumption information shared on social media triggered more benign envy compared with other types of shared consumption information. When social media users shared non-luxury consumption, experiential consumption was more likely to inspire benign envy among users with high social comparison orientation than material consumption. However, when luxury consumption was shared, benign envy acted as a mediator between purchase type and participants’ purchase intention regardless of whether participants’ social comparison orientation was high or low.ConclusionThis study revealed that whether and how social comparison orientation of social media users who read the shared content influences the mechanism by which the type of consumption sharing on social media affects social media users’ consumption intentions through benign envy as a mediator is dependent on the luxuriousness of the shared consumption. The findings not only provide new insights for researchers to better understand social media envy and the underlying psychological mechanism for social media readers’ consumption intention, but also have practical implications for practitioners.

New secular holidays in modern Kazakh culture. Westernization of everyday life and transfor-mation of family rituals

The growing attention to processes related to the revival of Islam throughout Central Asia leaves in shadow some no less interesting tendencies associated with the westernization of the daily life. These processes have been recorded across the entire Central Asia but presently they manifest themselves to the greatest extent specifically in Kazakhstan, where interweaving of traditional elements of the East and the West created a remarkable distinctive culture of the 21st century. The voluntary or involuntary neglect of these processes undoubtedly leads to serious misrepresentation in our understanding of further routes of development of the traditional rites. Equally important is the fact that problems of Islamization itself undoubtedly appear more prominent when taking into account factors linked with the new ‘westernized daily routine’. In this regard, very interesting are the new secular rituals and festivities which appeared in modern Kazakh culture not long ago: gender reveal party, baby shower, tilashar (Kaz., literally ‘opening of the tongue’), constituting the subject of this research. This study employs methods of his-torico-cultural and ethnographic approaches, and it is based on fieldwork data obtained during the ethnographic studies in Western Kazakhstan in recent years and data from monitoring personal profiles of users of social networks and services. Gen-der reveal parties and baby shower celebrations are widespread in the entire world, and they are of a secular nature. The analysis of evidence from Kazakh culture shows an example of how modern Kazakhs attempt to fit the ‘westernized’ practices into the universal matrix of present-day Kazakh ritual activities based on three constituents: a repast with an indispensable na-tional dish of ‘meat in Kazakh style’, a symbolic exchange of presents between members of socially kindred group, and bata beru i.e. ‘best wishes from senior relatives’. This is also supported by the search for parallels in the rites, conventional synonymity of the new practices and established family rites. Thus, the secular celebrations of gender reveal and baby shower are acquiring a national colour. The culture is adapting the ‘westernized’ practice; copying of the original example and its re-interpretation at a new level is taking place. In contrast to family rites, the gender party and baby shower are not obligatory; following of such practices is rather a fashion of its kind — a response of the modern Kazakh young people to cultural globalization. The author is trying to find an answer to the ques-tion: why indeed the Kazakh culture is so readily accepting and adapting practices of this kind? The answer seems to lie in the specifics of the social organization of the Kazakh society, in the emergence of new channels for storing and broadcasting of information, and in the overall orientation of modern Kazakhstan towards globalization.

The importance of social networks in neurosurgery training in low/middle income countries.

Neurosurgery is evolving with new techniques and technologies, relies heavily on high-quality education and training. Social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn have become integral to this training. These platforms enable sharing of surgical experiences, fostering global knowledge-sharing and collaboration among neurosurgeons. Virtual conferences and courses are accessible, enhancing learning regardless of location. While these networks offer real-time communication and collaborative opportunities, they also pose challenges like the spread of misinformation and potential distractions. According to the PICO format, the target population (P) for the purpose of this paper are medical students, neurosurgical residents and consultants on the role of social media (I) in neurosurgery among Low-Middle income countries (C) with the main outcome to understand the collaborative domain of learning. This cross-sectional survey, conducted in June-July 2023, involved 210 medical students, neurosurgery residents, fellows, and practicing neurosurgeons from low and middle-income countries. A structured questionnaire assessed social network usage for neurosurgery training, covering demographic details, usage frequency, and purposes like education, collaboration, and communication. Participants rated these platforms' effectiveness in training on a 1-5 scale. Data collection employed emails, social media groups, and direct messaging, assuring respondent anonymity. The survey aimed to understand and improve social networks' use in neurosurgery, focusing on professional development, challenges, and future potential in training. In a survey of 210 participants from low and middle-income countries, 85.5% were male, 14.5% female, with diverse roles: 42.9% neurosurgery residents, 40% practicing neurosurgeons, 14.6% medical students, and 2.4% other healthcare professionals. Experience ranged from 0 to 35 years, with Mexico, Nigeria, and Kenya being the top participating countries. Most respondents rated neurosurgery training resources in their countries as poor or very poor. 88.7% used social media professionally, predominantly WhatsApp and YouTube. Content focused on surgical videos, research papers, and webinars. Concerns included information quality and data privacy. Interactive case discussions, webinars, and lectures were preferred resources, and most see a future role for social media in neurosurgery training. Our study underscores the crucial role of social media in neurosurgery training and practice in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Key resources include surgical videos, research papers, and webinars. While social media offers a cost-effective, global knowledge-sharing platform, challenges like limited internet access, digital literacy, and misinformation risks remain significant in these regions.

Changes in functioning and health during the first 6-months of the COVID-19 pandemic among individuals with a spinal cord injury.

Single-cohort longitudinal survey design. To identify what ongoing impact the COVID-19 pandemic has on functioning and health in individuals with SCI. Using the ICF model as a guide, outcome measures were chosen to explore potential constructs and aspects of health and functioning which may have been affected by regulations. Online, Canada. Participants provided demographic and clinical characteristics at baseline. They completed standardized online measures at three time points, each roughly one month apart (June, July, and August of 2020). The measures assessed mental health, resilience, boredom, social support, technology use, life space, and participation. Repeated measures ANOVAs were used to identify longitudinal changes for each measure. We collected data from 21 participants with SCI (mean age 54 years, 12 male). We found a large effect size for participation (η2 = 0.20), which increased over time. We also found medium effect sizes in both anxiety (η2 = 0.12) and social network usage (η2 = 0.12). Anxiety decreased over time and social networking usage fluctuated slightly but with an increase from time point one to time point two. The results indicate that individuals with spinal cord injury appear to be staying relatively stable during the pandemic with improvements in a few key aspects, such as potentially increased participation and decreased anxiety. The results also suggest that it is important to continue fostering ways for individuals with spinal cord injury to stay connected, engaged, and informed.

Measuring user influence in real-time on twitter using behavioural features

Identifying influential users in online social networks, specifically Twitter, has drawn considerable research interest due to their profound influence on real-world events. Existing studies have primarily focused on topological aspects to identify influential users, which necessitate a complete network structure and ignore the behavioural aspects of the users. However, real-world network structure can be challenging to obtain. Thus, this study presents the BehaviourRank Influence (BRI) method, which focuses on evaluating Twitter user influence by analysing behavioural characteristics instead of traditional network structures. This approach acquires data in real-time to derive six behavioural characteristics by employing new metrics to achieve accurate and uniform characterizations. The proposed metrics are compared to baseline metrics from the literature using a user classification prediction model to validate their predictive ability. It also ranked behavioural characteristics by importance using SHAP and Information Gain approaches. To determine overall influence, a unique Rank-based Exponential Smoothing algorithm is proposed. The findings indicate that most features incorporating proposed measures exhibited superior performance compared to features with baseline metrics across all three datasets. The proposed feature sets achieved accuracy scores of 86.67%, 73.47%, and 85.87% in the respective datasets, while the baselined feature sets attained scores of 64.23%, 63.30%, and 66.30%. Moreover, the Rank-Based influence measurements algorithm provides a detailed and adaptable structure for measuring influence, recognising the significance of feature ranks in capturing the evolving nature of user behaviour.

Community detection based on nonnegative matrix tri-factorization for multiplex social networks

Abstract Nowadays, community detection is one of the important fields for understanding network topology and has many applications in information diffusion, interaction mining and migration behaviour analysis. Therefore, community detection in social networks can help to understand user behaviour and network characteristics. There are many community detection methods, which are often designed for single-layer social networks. However, real-world networks use several types of relationships to establish connections between users, each of which has different characteristics. Hence, real-world networks can be modelled as multiplex networks. In general, multiplex networks are an example of multilayer networks in which the relationships between users in different networks can be considered simultaneously. In these networks, each layer represents the connections between users in a social network. Meanwhile, communities in multiplex networks are identified based on the structure and connections between overlapping users in different layers of the network. In this article, the nonnegative matrix tri-factorization (NMTF) strategy is used to model multiplex social networks, and a solution for community detection is developed based on it. According to this strategy, a common consensus matrix and then an alignment matrix are extracted based on similarity metrics and network structure. The use of these matrices as a flexible modelling framework enables the detection of coherent community between overlapping users in multiplex social networks. We evaluate the proposed NMTF method through various metrics on a multiplex social network. The results of this evaluation show the better performance of NMTF in terms of community quality compared to equivalent methods.

Social networks in the context of postmodern theories � A case of Kazakhstan

Relevance. Social networks are developed and spread to an increasing number of people every day. This is due to the dynamic process of digitalization, which provokes changes in all vectors and categories of society.Purpose. The purpose of the work was to determine the role of the blogger and social networks in the process of shaping and demonstrating the lifestyle that a wide range of people aspire to.Methodology. The following methods of scientific research were used in the article, namely analysis, synthesis, comparison, content analysis and abstraction.Results. As a result, it was possible to establish that the dissemination of information in society, as well as the development of mechanisms for monitoring the consumer needs of society, were characteristic of the postmodern period. They have undergone significant changes as a result of reforming the conditions for the development and activities of the state. However, it has been established that their role is one of the determining ones in the development of the institution of blogging as a driving force in the field of marketing and consumption of things and services. The study managed to prove that bloggers, based on the demonstration of various objects, events directly related to their lives, provoke the formation of a certain associative series. The latter concerns the description of the features of a rich life, its dissemination to the masses, for the acquisition of high consumer value among individual products and services.Conclusions. The article found that consumer behaviour in modern Kazakh society is formed under the influence of social networks. The results of scientific research can be used in the formation of advertising integration plans or the description of marketing ways to form consumer behaviour among social network users.

Fake Instagram Account Detection using ML Algorithms

Abstract—Nowadays, the majority of people utilise social networking sites on a daily basis. Numerous people create profiles on social networking websites every day and connect with others there, regardless of their location or time. False identities are used in additional malicious operations in addition to playing a significant part in advanced persistent threats. Users of social networking sites can benefit from them, but they also have to worry about the security of their personal information. We must first determine the user's social network accounts before we can determine who is endorsing threats in these platforms. Social media usage has dramatically increased in recent years, according to statistics. Social networking sites have made things easier as they allow us to connect to people effortlessly and converse with them without the requirement for physical meetups. One of the major issues with Online Social Networks (OSNs) is fake interaction, which is used to artificially boost an account's popularity. Because phoney involvement causes businesses to lose money, inaccurate audience targeting in advertising, inaccurate product prediction systems, and an undesirable social network atmosphere, its detection is essential. Based on the classification, it is required to distinguish between real and phoney profiles on social media.Several categorization techniques have traditionally been used to identify phoney social media accounts. However, there are ways to improve social media's ability to detect phoney profiles. The suggested effort uses technology and machine learning to boost the percentage of predicted phoney profiles. Chi-square technique is used in feature selection models to find the best data. The several machine learning methods, including the Logistic Regression and Random Forest algorithms, are used in the classification approach. The classification outcome based on recall, sensitivity, specificity, f1-score, accuracy, and precision. Keywords—Machine learning, online social networks, Instagram, Social media, Natural language process.

Pattern of Cybercrime Among Adolescents: An Exploratory Study

Background: Cybercrime is common phenomenon at present both developed and developing countries. Young generation, especially teenagers now engaged internet frequently and they commit cybercrime frequently in Bangladesh. Objective: To assess consequences of cybercrime among teenagers was the motto of the study. Methods and tools: This study was a cross-sectional study, descriptive in nature. Non-probability accidental sampling technique has been applied to select the sample because of the nonfinite population and the sample size was 167. A printed semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data. Results: The study identified consequences of cybercrime on various aspects of individual and social life such as lack of trust and confidence hinders profitable transaction, economic loss, tarnishing the country reputation towards foreigners, denial of innocent Bangladeshi’s opportunity abroad, loss of life in various ways, inimical to the progress and development in the country, and favor of loss of employment. Respondents thought that social network users are the prime victims of cybercrime (92.8%). Moreover, financial institutions also another victim (82.6%) followed by mobile internet users (80.2%). About 80.2% said that criminals were always on the net, 82.0% told of spend money lavishly, 67.1% in favor of riding the best automobiles, 65.9% for date the most beautiful lady, 62.3% for mainly clubbers, 47.3% on indulged in religious activities and 45.5% in live like kings in the society. Conclusion: The study concluded that consequences of cybercrimes are alarming and increasing day by day. Finally, it is recommending that the private public partnership and execution of existing laws can be controlling this crime along with gray area of social media and net-work.

Students' participation in social networks' conflicts (based on the materials of a sociological study of Barnaul universities)

In the modern world, there is a significant number of collisions in the Internet space, which occur not only in interpersonal communication online, but also on various social networks with a large number of participants. Almost any social network that supports the function of discussion, commenting on the information provided, allows you to observe a number of pre-conflict and conflict situations. Despite the fact that the space in which communication takes place is virtual, the consequences of conflicts in it can be more than real, both for an individual and for a number of participants. Conflict situations can have an impact on the daily life of opponents and collectively affect social processes in society. In his work, the author studies in depth the nature of conflicts in social networks. The study was implemented through a quantitative method of collecting information – a survey in the form of a questionnaire. The general totality of the study was made up of students from Barnaul who are users of social networks. The study was conducted using a selective method. The sample totals 367 respondents. The sample size was determined by the capabilities of the researcher. A single-stage sampling was used, the selection unit was specific students. According to the results of the study, the following conclusions were made. Firstly, the vast majority of students use social networks every day, but only half of them have participated or are involved in conflicts. Secondly, students most often conflict on social networks with strangers and in community comments. Thirdly, trolling is still one of the important problems of social networks. A significant part of the (interviewed) students became victims of trolls. Fourth, most of the conflicts in social networks in which students participate are short-lived and occur through verbal debates. Fifth, most students choose a more "peaceful" behavior strategy. Sixth, many students determine the beginning of a conflict in a social network by negative emotions from interaction and consider the presence of physical distance to be the main feature of the described conflicts.

ROLE OF MEDIA AND SOCIAL NETWORKS IN PROMOTING THE POSITION OF AFGHAN WOMEN’

This research endeavours to explore and identify the impact of media and social networks on advancing the position of Afghan women during the final year of Ashraf Ghani's presidency, prior to the Taliban's resurgence. Employing a qualitative approach, this study utilizes semi-structured interviews for data collection, and theme analysis is applied for data interpretation. The research focuses on educated women, social activists, and users of Afghan social networks as the target population. Sampling is conducted through targeted and snowball methods, resulting in 15 interviews until theoretical saturation is achieved. The findings of the study reveal divergent perspectives, categorized into two main patterns of thought: agreement and disagreement, regarding the role of media in promoting the status of Afghan women. Supporters of media's positive role highlight themes such as "leaving the traditional space," "reducing social isolation," and "modelling and identification." They advocate for the positive influence of media in enhancing the status of women. Conversely, opponent’s present themes such as the "Pathology of Media Activities," "Intra-Media Challenges," and "Causes of Media Failure," expressing scepticism about the effectiveness of media in promoting women's social eminence. The research also uncovers a noteworthy conflict between traditional religious media and secular media in Afghanistan concerning women's issues. This conflict is indicative of a virtual battle between traditional and modern media outlets in the representation of women's positions. The findings illuminate the complex landscape in which Afghanistan's media landscape operates, revealing the struggles and challenges faced in shaping public perception and discourse on the status of women. In conclusion, this research provides valuable insights into the nuanced interplay between media, social networks, and the position of Afghan women. The contrasting viewpoints and conflicts within the media landscape underscore the complexity of the societal discourse surrounding women's roles and the challenges faced in leveraging media for positive societal change.

Passive social network usage and life satisfaction among Vietnamese university students: a moderated mediation model of self-esteem and gender

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the role of self-esteem in mediating the relationship between passive social networking usage (PSNU) and life satisfaction, as well as whether the relationships between PSNU and self-esteem/life satisfaction as well as self-esteem and life satisfaction vary by gender.Design/methodology/approachThis research is conducted in compliance with the ethical standards of the American Psychological Association’s study on a subject of 304 students. Study participants are invited to participate in the survey by completing the anonymous questionnaire regarding passive social network usage, self-esteem and life satisfaction.FindingsThe findings indicate that self-esteem mediated the relationship between PSNU and life satisfaction. Furthermore, gender moderated the self-esteem and life satisfaction relationship, and such an effect was stronger for females than males.Research limitations/implicationsThis study, adopting a cross-sectional design and self-report scale, examined the relationship between PSNU and life satisfaction. However, the short study duration hindered establishing a cause-and-effect relationship. Credibility concerns arose from participant-induced noise variables in the self-report scale. Future research should use diverse methods to validate underlying mechanisms. Despite limitations, the study revealed self-esteem as a mediating factor, alleviating the negative impact of PSNU on life satisfaction. Both male and female users are encouraged to engage in self-education, valuing their self-esteem for heightened life satisfaction.Originality/valueThese findings contribute to the understanding of how passive social network usage predicts life satisfaction (mediating effect of self-esteem) based on social comparison theory and when self-esteem increases life satisfaction (moderating effect of gender) based on social role theory of gender differences.