Social Media Study

An analysis of the real name issue on social media sites (FL)

Introduction

It is reported that 58% people around the world use social media and the number of people using social media is still increasing (Social Networking Statistics, 2014). For example, Facebook says that it has over 1 billion people using Facebook every month, 23% percent growth from last year (Associated Press, 2013). Social media is becoming an important part of our society and redefine the way modern people interact with each other (Guha, 2014). Social media is changing the world in terms of news (Bennett, 2013), human interactions (Jones, 2013), political landscape (Tchong, 2012) and learning (Cushard, 2013) and marketing (Whaling, 2011). However, it is warned that the risks of false information are growing with the increment of the use of social media (Goodwin, 2013). Fake user names are considered as one type of false information on social media sites and result in confusion for some social media users. Therefore many social media companies have presented a real name policy. However, a few social media users have fight against it. In fact, it has raised a war between users of social media and social media companies (Tao, 2011). Thus it is urgent and important to know how many people support the real name policy in order to better understand this conflict.

In this proposal, people’s attitudes toward the real name policy of social media companies are investigated. To be specific, the percentage of people that agree with the real name policy will be computed. The percentage of people who use real names to register on social media sites will also be determined. Therefore, a survey about these two questions will be conducted for Tech students considering their ages and genders etc. At last, the survey result will be analyzed.

Literature review

The real name policy states that everyone registered on social media sites is mandated to use the real name by social media companies (Levy, 2014). However, a few social media users disagree with this policy and have a conflict with social media companies. This conflict is called Nymwars (Galperin, 2011). This word is very popular because of the hashtag “#nymwars” on Twitter (Twitter, 2014). Google+ first released the real names policy to help flight spam and stop fake user profiles in June, 2011. After that, Facebook implemented the same policy to identify users’ real names and asked users to change their names from fake ones to real ones in November, 2011 (Coldewey, 2014).

However, many social media users fought against this policy (Kayyali and York, 2014). Owing to the great pressure of these social media users, social media companies successively determined to stop the real name policy. Google+ dropped the real-name policy and apologized to Google+ users in July 2014 (Doctorow, 2014). Facebook also canceled the real name policy and apologized to Facebook users (Coldewey, 2014).

Research Questions

1) What percent of Tech students support or go against the real name policy on social media sites?

2) What percent of male Tech students support or go against the real name policy on social media sites?

3) What percent of female Tech students support or go against the real name policy on social media sites?

4) What percent of Tech students report using real name or pseudonyms on social media sites?

5) What percent of male Tech students report using real name or pseudonyms on social media sites?

6) What percent of female Tech students report using real name or pseudonyms on social media sites?

Hypothesis

1) Most of Tech students will go against the real name policy on social media sites.

2) More female Tech students will go against the real name policy on social media sites than male Tech students.

3) Most of Tech students would like to use their real names on social media sites.

4) More male Tech students would like to use their real names on social media sites than female Tech students.

Reference

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Facebook over the years. Available from: http://news.yahoo.com/number-active-users-facebook-over-230449748.html (Accessed date: Oct. 08, 2014).

Bennett S. (2013, July 25). How social media is changing the world. Available from:

http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/social-media-change-world_b46821 (Accessed date: Oct. 08, 2014).

Coldewey D. (2014, October 1). Facebook Apologizes to Drag Queens Over ‘Real Name’ Issue.

Available from: http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/facebook-apologizes-drag-queens-over-real-name-issue-n216211 (Accessed date: Oct. 02, 2014).

Cushard B. (2011, July). How social media has changed learning: a few answers via tweet chat.

Available from: http://www.mindflash.com/blog/2011/07/how-social-media-has-changed-learning-a-few-answers-via-tweet-chat/ (Accessed date: Oct. 08, 2014).

Doctorow C. (2014, July 16). Google Plus drops "Real Names" policy. Available from:

http://boingboing.net/2014/07/16/google-plus-drops-real-names.html (Accessed date: Oct. 02, 2014).

Galperin E. (2011, December 26). 2011 in Review: Nywars. Available from:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/2011-review-nymwars (Accessed date: Oct. 02, 2014).

Goodwin B. (2013, January 8). Misuse of social media could wreak havoc, warns World

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Guha S. (2014, March 7). How Social Media Has Changed the World? 5 Impacts of Social Media

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Jones H. (2013, June 7). Social media’s affect on human interaction. Available from:

http://www.hastac.org/blogs/haley117/2013/06/07/social-medias-affect-human-interaction (Accessed date: Oct. 08, 2014).

Kayyali N. and York J. (2014, September 16). Facebook’s ‘real name’ policy can cause real-world

harm for the LGBTQ community. Available from: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/09/facebooks-real-name-policy-can-cause-real-world-harm-lgbtq-community (Accessed date: Oct. 08, 2014).

Levy K. (2014, October 1). Facebook meets with the LGBT community regarding ‘real name’

policy. Available from: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-might-change-its-real-name-policy-2014-10 (Accessed date: Oct. 08, 2014).

Social Networking Statistics. (2014, July 9). Available from:

http://www.statisticbrain.com/social-networking-statistics/ (Accessed date: Oct. 08, 2014).

Tao L. J. (2011). The Nymwar: social media networks and the laws. Available from:

http://www.academia.edu/5660313/The_Nymwar_Social_Media_Networks_and_the_Law (Accessed date: Oct. 08, 2014).

Tchong M. (2012, September 13). Three ways social media is reshaping the political landscape.

Available from: http://readwrite.com/2012/09/13/3-ways-social-media-is-reshaping-the-political-landscape (Accessed date: Oct. 08, 2014).

Twitter. (2014). Tweets about #nymwars hastag on Twitter. Available from:

https://twitter.com/hashtag/nymwars (Accessed date: Oct. 08, 2014).

Whaling H. (2011, May 12). Five ways social media has changed marketing campaigns. Available

from: http://mashable.com/2011/05/12/social-media-change-marketing/ (Accessed date: Oct. 08, 2014).