Summaries, 2nd assignment

22. Summary 2.

                  There is a lot of information about social network users. In his article, Thiago Guimaraes (2014) shows new data about Facebook as the top of the social network sites. This article focuses on the importance of this statistics in the marketing field. He uses the new report from BI Intelligence to show the importance of demography in this social media.

                  Despite the growth of other social media, Facebook still has the highest number of subscriptions. Also, in North America more than 84% of the web users have an account on Facebook. In terms of gender, females are still using significantly more of this social media than males.

                  One of the most remarkable facts is that while other social media as Instagram and Twitter have more young people, the top users of Facebook are people in their late 20s early 30s. Finally, around 68% of the people with a college or university degree are registered on this social network. (MCRB)

Guimaraes, T. (2014, September 12) 7 new statistics about Facebook users that reveal why it’s such a powerful marketing platform. Business Insider. Retrieved: September 12, 2014. URL. http://www.businessinsider.com/a-primer-on-facebook-user-statistics-2014-9

21. Article Summary #2

Adapted from:

Terantino, J. M. (2011). Emerging technologies: Youtube for foreign languages. Language Learning & Technology, 15(1), 10-16.

                  The main objective of this article was to discuss how opportunities, developed by YouTube, can be integrated into foreign language teaching and learning. The author, Joseph M. Terantino, begins with a brief history of this media and various purposes of using it. Before discussing the educational benefits of YouTube, the author depicts the unique characteristics of digital natives, who were first defined by Prensky (2001). He continues by describing how several features of YouTube can be applied to meet the specific educational needs of this generation (digital natives) especially for learning foreign languages. Providing opportunities for creating linguistic and cultural content, student-created videos, and collaboration among multiple students is identified as an important capability of YouTube to serve foreign language learners and teachers. However, ESL students are warned about privacy and safety in YouTube. Finally, the article concludes that integrating YouTube videos, as educational tools, into foreign language classrooms has positive results. (SV)

References

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.

20. Summary

                  The article talks about a new kind of information technologies; these are called a social media. The author criticized some researchers who often depend on social network analysis (SNA) when they try to understand this phenomenon. He illustrated the differences among traditional offline social networks and online social media networks. According to the article, there are "several key differences between traditional offline social networks and online social media networks by juxtaposing an established typology of social network research with a well-regarded definition of social media platforms that articulates four key features."  The outcomes of the article are about four points that have impact on social media. These points determine a series of theoretical research questions for SNA in social media. Finally, he concluded that it was important "for researchers to investigate the theoretical implications introduced by social media and lay the groundwork for a robust social media agenda potentially spanning multiple disciplines."  (FA)

Reference:

Al-Deen, H. S. & Hendricks, J. A. (2012). Social media : usage and impact. Lanham, Md. : Lexington Books, c2012.

19. Summary#1: College students’ social networking experiences on Facebook

                  Facebook is playing a leading role in college students’ social network activities (Tiffany et al., 2009). Few studies have been done to explore the total time they spend on Facebook, the reason they use Facebook, or how they use Facebook. In this article, 92 undergraduate students (60 females and 32 males) at a private university from different departments took a survey about Facebook use and a diary-like measure to record their activities on Facebook for one week. It showed that most friends in their Facebook accounts had already had a pre-established relationship with them. Females have more friends on their accounts than males. College students spend approximately half an hour on Facebook every day. More time is spent reading contents posted by their friends than creating their own contents. Such contents display people’s identities, such as romantic relationships, religion, and work. Thus, Facebook is used not only for communicating with friends but also for establishing personal identities. (YL)

Pempek, T. A., Yermolayeva, Y. A., & Calvert, S. L. (2009). College students' social networking experiences on Facebook. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 30(3), 227-238.

18. 5 Things Politicians Should not Do on Social Media

Social media gives the politicians a chance to have an interaction with voters. "But with great social media power comes great social media responsibility" (Rollins, 2013). According to the author people should be careful with what they like on Facebook, Twitter etc. She thinks that politicians must change their habits with respect to what they liked before; for example, Charles Minor, Assemblyman of Jersey City, who liked inappropriate pages on Facebook. Also the author warns politicians to not to send pictures of their body part to anybody or they need to take the risk of losing their job, for example, Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York lost his job.

The author thinks that politicians should not use social media for their personal life, like texting with a secret daughter, as Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee did. Samantha Rollins says that politicians had better not write everything they did. For example, former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown wrote ‘Bqhatevwr’ instead of ‘Whatever’ while he was drunk.

There is a certain thing about social media; even though it was deleted, people never forget what you posted. (KNA)

References

Rollins, S. (2013, February 19) 5 Things Politicians Should not Do on Social Media. theweek.com. Retrieved from theweek.com/article/index/240298/5-things-politicians-shouldnt-do-on-social-media

17. Summary

                  Kylie Burchat in her article "Social media: Changing communication forever" claims that the usage of social media might cause negative effects on communications.  According to her, using social media is a good way to keep connected with family and friends who are living abroad; however, its long term effects on the young generation could be damaging. In old times, young generations used to gain experiences about how to build relationships at their neighborhood or school; nowadays people are doing that online. It may cause people to become more and more introverted in real life and young adults can have problems at job interviews. Another effect of social media on communication is that people have started to use short forms of words instead of using complete sentences. People have started to share much more personal information and they have started to communicate frequently and shortly. The applications on smart phones are causing people to use social networks more frequently and it is supporting people's addiction. Burchart states that face to face communications are disappearing thanks to the online features of the social media. (SK)

Burchart, K. (2013, March 13). Social media: changing communication forever. The Argus .

Retrieved (September 11, 2014) http://www.theargus.ca/articles/opinion/op-ed/2013/03/social-media-changing-communication-forever

16. Summary 2# nonacademic paper title: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube Grapple With Islamic State Censorship

Risen (2014) wrote an article to discuss the fight of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube against terrorist groups. In this article, it was reported that the White House had required social media sites to remove texts and videos about terrorism to prevent terrorist groups from hiring new members and Twitter, Facebook and YouTube had promised to support it. However, it was a big challenge for these social network sites to absolutely stop the flows of information about terrorism. This was because: (1) some news sites like New York Post did not ban this type of information; (2) it was hard to identify a reasonable line between what is and what is not regarded as hate speech. Additionally, because of political reasons, a few governments like the Indian government deleted posts from social media sites according to 2013 Freedom on the Net report.  (FL)

Reference:

Risen, T. (Sept. 5, 2014). Twitter, Facebook, YouTube Grapple With Islamic State Censorship. Available from: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/09/05/twitter-facebook-youtube-navigate-islamic-state-censorship [Accessed date Sept. 11, 2014]

Academic Summaries

15. Summary 3

                  It is well known that the use of social media can affect relationships with both good and bad consequences. In certain ages these effects can be more evident as we can see in teenagers and young adults. In the study made by Masin and Foubert (2013), they surveyed 200 students in the Midwestern United States. The goal of this study was to evaluate the effect of the use of social media such as Facebook on the maturity of their relationships. Also they evaluated whether there was any effect on the relationship between genders.

                  In general, this study found that when the use of Facebook increases, there is a decrease in the maturity of interpersonal relationships. Also, when you see the peer relationships, there is a strong influence of the use of Facebook on the health of a relationship. (MCRB)

Masin, R. and Foubert, J.D. (2013) Effect of gender and Facebook use on the development of mature interpersonal relationships. Journal of Student Affairs, Vol. XXIII 51-59. URL. http://www.sahe.colostate.edu/Data/Sites/1/journal-of-student-affairs/2014-journal-of-student-affairs.pdf#page=51

14. Article Summary #3

This article discusses the results of a one-year ethnographic study on YouTube participants to examine how they use YouTube’s video sharing and commenting features to identify themselves as a part of a specific social group. The author begins with reviewing the concepts of "social networks" and "public/private" dichotomy in literature. She believes that deep understanding of how and why media like YouTube videos are viewed, enjoyed, and forwarded reveals many aspects of social networking and the way networkers distinguish between public and private. The results of data, collected through semi-structured interviews and observations, show that video-sharing practices help participants to both support their existing social circles and create new connections. The author highlights two degrees of publicness in video sharing, "publicly private" and "privately public," which emerged from the dataset. She found the former to be private contents shared by video-makers who reveal their identities easily, and the latter to be widely-accessible videos created by video-makers who do not want their identity disclosed. Based on the findings, these two categories are the special types of behavior in YouTube participants, which are neither strictly public nor strictly private. (SV)

References

Lange, P. G. (2007). Publicly private and privately public: Social networking on YouTube. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 361–380.

13. Summary of A study of the impact of social media on consumers.

                  The study shows about social media and their role in the improvement of e-commerce into social commerce. The author said the social media have presented new opportunities to consumers to use them on the internet. The article illustrates some benefits for traders and consumers to shopping on the internet. This study uses a SEM-PLS model to investigate how the social media developed the e-commerce.  The results of study appear to show that consumers trust buying on the internet. At the end of the article, the author discusses the results, along with implications, limitations and recommended future research directions. (FA)

Reference:

Hajli, M. N. (2014). A study of the impact of social media on consumers.  International Journal of Market Research 56(3). Birkbeck, University o f London. pp. 387-404.

12. Summary#2 Findings on Facebook in higher education: a comparison of college faculty and student uses and perceptions of social networking sites

                   Facebook, as a kind of modern social media, is widely used in colleges for educational communications and collaborations between students and faculty (Roblyer, et al., 2010). In this article, a survey is taken in a mid-sized university to compare the use of Facebook between faculty and students. The results show students use Facebook more than faculty. Faculty use Facebook to interact mostly with their friends and family members. Traditional communication tools, such as email, are widely used for faculty to communicate with their students.  (YL)

Roblyer, M. D., McDaniel, M., Webb, M., Herman, J., & Witty, J. V. (2010). Findings on Facebook in higher education: A comparison of college faculty and student uses and perceptions of social networking sites. The Internet and Higher Education, 13(3), 134-140.

11.  Links Between Politicians and Journalists

                  The article shows the Twitter network between 150 Dutch politicians and journalists. During the 2010 general election in The Netherlands, the journalists used this hashtag ‘rtldebat’ to ask voters about their opinion about political issues. Even though none of politicians answered any ‘tweets’, responses were more than they expected.

                  The study showed unexpected information. "The high volume of tweets sent by more traditional parties, like Christian Democrats, Conservatives, and Conservative Christian Democrats could also be explained by their central role in the current government coalition" (Verweij, 2012), because post-modern parties were known for using social media effectively.

                  The research states that, since the network makes politicians and journalists dependent on each other, their network is close but not as much as it is supposed to be.

                  The author said the results from this research are limited, but this is the first step to do a deeper research. (KNA)

References:

Verweij, P. (2012, March 27).  Twitter Links Between Politicians and Journalists. Retrieved from  www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17512786.2012.667272#tabModule

10. Summary #2

                  In the article "Why Americans use social media," Aaron Smith explains the results of the survey that was conducted of 2,277 adults between April 26- May 22, 2011. According to their survey, 66% of the adults are using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.  2/3 of the social media users are using these social media technologies in order to stay connected with family members and friends. Other reasons why they use social media are: Connecting with other people about a shared hobby or interest (14%), making new friends (9%), following public figures (5%) and finding a romantic partner (3%).

                  According to the survey, staying connected with family members is a common reason to use social media in all age groups; however, women social media users tend to use social media more to stay connected with family members than men users. (72% vs. 55%) In addition, the social media users who are under the age of 50 use social media to stay connected with their friends.

                  Another result that they gained from the survey is that middle aged and older social media users prefer using social media to connect with other people about a shared hobby or interest. Following public figures is a more common reason among Twitter users, African Americans and Latinos. Using social media to find a romantic partner is not a major reason for people. Generally people who are single, divorced or separated are using social media for this purpose. (SK)

Smith, A. (2011, November 15). Why Americans use social media. Pew Research Internet Project.

Retrieved (September 11, 2014) http://aosresourcecenter.com/file_depot/0-10000000/390000-400000/398422/folder/1145143/WhyAmericansUseSocialMedia.pdf

9. Summary 1#: Academic paper title: ePluribus: Ethnicity on Social Networks

                  In this paper, Chang et al. (2010) presented a Bayesian approach to estimate the ethnicities of population in terms of people's names and the statistics for census names. This approach has been demonstrated to be better than natural alternatives to predict the ethnicities of individuals and an overall population. After applying this approach to Facebook users, it was found that the diversity of Facebook users had grown as time went on, resulting in a great similarity to that of the real world population. Moreover, it was pointed out that population groups in different ethnicities have various profiles in demographics, religions, and customs of using site features. (FL)

Reference:

Chang, J. et al. (2010). ePluribus : Ethnicity on social networks. In Proceedings of the Fourth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (Washington, DC, May 23-26, 2010). Available from: http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM10/paper/viewFile/1534/1828 (Accessed date: Sept. 11, 2014).