Recent trends in social network services (SNS) have taken the rates of personal information sharing, storage and processing to an unprecedented level, which yield both benefits and undesirable consequences for their users. SNS is being exploited by criminals to fraudulently obtain information from unsuspecting users. User’s awareness of privacy protection has been far left behind by the increasing and popularizing utilization of social network services (SNS), the privacy security problems will become one of the important factors influencing the healthy development of social network service industry. This study was designed to collect data and produce knowledge about the security awareness of WeChat users (i.e., randomly selected from all over China), their preferences and their experience of using WeChat while facing security issues as well as the perspectives of how people perceive a specific security problems, in order to find out what factors influence user's security awareness. In order to carefully conduct the research process and explain the empirical findings, seven principles of interpretive field research and protection motivation theory is adopted as core theoretical foundation. Participants were asked to provide information about and their personal views of questions from their different experience and value. Eight persons interviewed for our research and their responses confirmed our objectives of the study. As a result, six factors are indentified in related to WeChat user’s security awareness. PMT helps to explain and understand that how six indentified concepts influence behaviour intention and security awareness of user.

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Introduction: Community mitigation strategies (CMS) have demonstrated to be effective in the reduction of transmission and incidence of COVID-19, especially in the population with symptoms associated with the disease. The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between the presence of COVID-19 symptoms and adherence to CMS in Latin American adults. Methods: We carried out a secondary analysis of a database developed by the University of Maryland and Facebook social network during the COVID-19 pandemic. We included Latin American adults that used the Facebook platform and participated in a survey conducted from April 23 to May 23, 2020. The principal outcome variable was reported compliance with the three main CMS (physical distancing, use of face masks, and hand washing). The exposure variable included symptoms suspicious for COVID-19 defined as the presence of three or more symptoms of an acute clinical case of COVID-19. We performed generalized linear models of the Poisson family with a logarithmic link function to evaluate the association between the presence of COVID-19 symptoms and reported compliance with CMS. We calculated crude and adjusted prevalence ratios (PR) with their 95% confidence intervals (95%CI). Results: We analyzed 1,310,690 adults from Latin America; 48.1% were male and 42.9% were under 35 years of age. The prevalence of suspicious symptoms of COVID-19 was 18.5% and reported compliance with the three CMS was 45.3%. The countries with the highest proportion of reported compliance with the three CMS were Peru, Bolivia and Panama, while those with the lowest reported compliance were Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras. In the adjusted model, people with suspicious symptoms for COVID-19 had a 14% lower compliance with the three CMS (aPR = 0.86; 95%CI: 0.85–0.87; p < 0.001). Conclusions: Less than half of the participants complied with the CMS, and those presenting suspicious symptoms for COVID-19 had lower reported compliance with the three CMS. / University of Maryland / Revisión por pares

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Social networking sites are channels that allow companies to appeal to their target audience through personalized advertising which has become an increasingly common way for companies to reach their target customers. Personalization is possible through the use of customer data which allows designing an advertisement based on individual consumers' preferences benefiting the consumers with more personally appealing advertisements. However, the collection of the data has led to consumers’ experiencing costs from the personalization involving concerns for the safety of personal information. Because of the tension between benefits and costs of personalization, consumers' behavior has become paradoxical. The consumers’ behaviour does not always correspond to their concerns by which the consumers trade off their privacy to receive benefits from the personalization in return. With that said, this study aims to explore how the personalization privacy paradox appears in the consumers’ response to personalized advertisements on social networking sites by assessing their perception of the benefits and costs of personalized advertisements. Semi-structured interviews of eight participants lead to the main findings of this research identifying four factors that have an impact on consumers’ interaction with the advertisement; (1) simplified purchase decisions, (2) personal interest, (3) personal gain, and (4) trustworthiness. In addition, the research revealed additional findings indicating that consumers' concern for data collection could be changing from privacy risks regarding themselves to concerns about the consequence of data collection on a societal level. Furthermore, the findings show an indication for an emerging dilemma of personalized advertising for companies to overcome. Finally, this research provides implications for both academia as well as practitioners.

As new media grow, so do the users who navigate the virtual world. People and organizations are forced to adapt in order to stay relevant in a technologically driven marketplace. The sports world has been changed drastically because of new media. Athletes no longer communicate with the general public solely through traditional media outlets such as newspapers. Social networking sites such as Twitterallow athletes to directly communicate with mass audiences. This direct communication raises several questions with regard to dynamics of communication and uses of Internet portals. A content analysis examined professional athletes' "Twitter" posts to help answer these questions. While some of the hypotheses were not supported, results were telling. Topics among the sample of posts included direct communication with Twittermembers or links to videos and pictures, as well as "tweets" about each player's job. Findings suggested that professional athletes are mainly neutral overall when posting messages regarding their sport, team, peers, or fans. Limitations of the study and implications for future research are addressed.

Language students today have grown up with a plethora of technology tools at their fingertips, which has in some cases earned them the title of "digital native". 'Students' high use of technology outside the classroom has led teachers and researchers to believe that technology could be highly effective for language learners when used appropriately. Yet little is known about how students actually react to technology-based tools for language learning purposes. This study seeks to not only understand student attitudes toward technology in general, but also to see how those attitudes might affect student attitudes toward online language learning tools in a social media context. Using a design-based research approach, we implemented a curriculum that utilizes a social networking environment in which students could consume authentic language samples and practice using the language in a controlled environment. Through the analysis of pre and post surveys, it was discovered that age was the most significant predictor of student attitudes toward technology, but that the extent to which students use technology proves to be a more significant predictor when other variables are factored in. Furthermore, it was discovered that general attitudes toward technology do affect the ways in which students will react to a technology-based curriculum. Nevertheless, the way in which a curriculum is presented can be a stronger factor in predicting how the curriculum will be received.

MySpace is a type of "social networking" website where people meet, socialize, and create friendships. The way MySpace members, particularly younger individuals, interact online underscores the changing nature of mass media. Media system dependency states that individuals become reliant on media in their daily life because of fundamental human goals. This reliance, termed a dependency, leads to repeated use. Media system dependency was applied in the current study to explain how and why individuals became habitual MySpace users. To attain results a survey was administered to a convenience sampling of 401 adult undergraduates at the University of Central Florida. Members reported MySpace dependency had a moderate correlation to MySpace use, and they actively used the website an average of 1.3 hours of use per day. Results indicated members use MySpace to primarily satisfy play and interaction orientation dependencies. MySpace use was found to have a correlation with number of MySpace friends. "Number of friends created" in turn had a correlation with MySpace dependency, as people returned to interact with their friends. Individual factors were also found to be a source of influence in MySpace dependency. These individual factors were demographics, psychological factors related to use of the Internet, and psychological factors related to use of MySpace. Factors related to MySpace, extroversion and self-disclosure, were positively correlated with intensity of dependency. The influence of factors related to the Internet was partly supported; computer self-efficacy was not significantly related to MySpace dependency, while computer anxiety was significantly related to MySpace dependency. Speed of connection to the Internet and available time to use the Internet were not related to MySpace dependency. Additionally, significant differences were found between genders in overall dependency, extroversion, self-disclosure, computer anxiety, and computer self-efficacy. These findings provide evidence that MySpace members were little, if at all, constrained by factors related to use of the Internet, but were attracted to the websites for similar reasons as real-life relationships. Finally, MySpace is just one of the large number of online resources that are predominantly social, such as email, message boards, and online chat. This study found that through a "technology cluster" MySpace members use these other social innovations more frequently than non-members. However, members also used significantly more non-social innovations, which may indicate that MySpace members are part of a larger technology cluster than anticipated or perhaps are in the same category of innovation adopter.

Embedded in the quilt top, the fabric patches are relays, time pathways to stories and memories of their former owners. Through the quilts, the voices of the past survive. The stories trace a path of connection between oral traditions, storytelling, the invention of meaning, and the preservation of cultural memory. The theory and method described herein use the quilt patchwork metaphor as the basis for a web interface for designing and modeling knowledge-based graphical, narrative, and multimedia data. More specifically, the method comprises a digital storytelling and knowledge management tool that allows one or more users to create, save, store, and visually map or model digital stories. The method creates a digital network of a community's stories for digital ethnography work. Digital patches that represent the gateway to the stories of an individual are pieced together into a larger quilt design, creating a visual space that yields the voices of its creators at the click of a mouse. Through this narrative mapping, users are able to deal with complexity, ambiguity, density, and information overload. The method takes the traditional quilt use and appropriates it into a digital apparatus so that the user is connected to multiple points of view that can be dynamically tried out and compared. The hypertextual quilting method fulfills the definition of a deconstructive hypertext and emancipatory social science research methodologies by creating a collaborative, polyvocal interface where users have access to the code, content and conduits to rewrite culture's history with subaltern voices. In this digital place of intertextuality, stories are juxtaposed with images in a montage that denies the authority of a single voice and refuses fixed meaning. In dialogue, contestation, and play, the digitextuality of the Digital Story Quilt provides a praxis for critical theory. The Digital Story Quilt method concerns itself with questions of identity, the processes through which these identities are developed, the mechanics of processes of privilege and marginalization and the possibility of political action through narrative performance against these processes.

The advent of Social Networking Systems (SNS) has introduced new possibilities for planners to refine and extend conventional engagement and data-gathering techniques by leveraging user-contributed, spatially-referenced content freely available online. This study examines the use of SNS content as community input, complementing input gathered through traditional participatory processes such as workshops, public comment hearings, and charrettes. Four case studies of recent community planning projects in the United States are analyzed, comparing the data gathered from traditional participatory processes with available SNS content related to each project study area, to determine to what extent the inclusion of SNS data would improve the overall data- gathering efforts of these projects. Three significant findings emerge from this analysis: (i) that SNS data analysis can positively complement data gathered from traditional participatory processes, (ii) that although SNS data analysis can provide useful data to planners, it is not a direct replacement for conventional engagement techniques, and (iii) that SNS data analysis is most effective for projects in neighborhoods with a well- defined identity. The study also examines the characteristics of effective SNS data analysis integration and discusses broader implications for planning practitioners and additional research needed.