Negative Effects Of Social Media

The past seven years have seen the rapid adoption of social media platforms by users all over the world, today there are more than 2.46 billion active social media users in the world . Social media enables users to consume timely news inexpensively, and allows them to further comment, share and discuss the news with other social media users, making news consumption on social media attractive to a large portion of these users. For example, a recent study by Pew research center found that 67% of American adults get news on social media . However, compared to primitive news media like radio and television, news in social media is easy and less expensive to produce and distribute and it is not fact-checked or filtered by a third party prior to dissemination. This has made social media a very attractive platform for fake news creators, i.e. news that is deliberately created to deceive the reader to believe something that is not true.

Sina Weibo (hereinafter referred as Weibo) is a microblog in China that is akin to a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook . It is one of the most popular social media platform is China which has 600 million registered users in 2013 and 76.6 million daily users in 2014 . The vast number of users allows faster and easier communication and information spreading, which then creates social benefits which traditional media did not offer (Chang, 2013). Weibo has formed a lively virtual public space (Magistad, 2012) where Chinese citizens communicate and which is a main source of immediate news.

Social media is a popular network in today’s society and according to Internet World Stats (2017), “3.773 billion is the total number of global internet users.” Social Media can easily be used for criminal purposes and Drew Hendricks (2014) explains that, “78 percent of burglars admit that they use social media to seek out their victims.” Social Media has become of significant use for professionals working in the Criminal Justice System, since they can use social media to track down criminals or use it as evidence to build a case (Hendricks, 2014). Social media has also been used significantly for people living in secluded societies to voice their opinions on global situations (Steinberg, 2012). Social media should have a place in the Criminal

As of the end of December 2013, the users in China had risen to 618 million with the social network usage rate, which includes blogs and personal spaces, standing at 70.7%. The duo also show that these sites had become the main channel through which people gleaned information; in addition, they suggest that Chinese social network sites differed from similar sites in other countries where Facebook held the lion’s share of the market; by contrast, the ranking in China is Qzone (50%), Renren (37%), Sina (36.6%), 51com (27.1%) and Kaixin

Twitter is expanding its social media business into China. This report seeks to describe the potential problems of this expansion by analyzing Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft’s mistakes after attempting to enter the Chinese market in 2006.

Social network site Twitter’s mission statement as listed on its website is ‘To give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.’ From this statement, it can be assumed that one of Twitter’s main purposes is as a platform for free speech. This has proven to be correct, with twitter becoming a platform for individuals to start uprisings and revolutions, as well as to criticise those in power. Twitter has consequently been blocked in many countries whose governments are opposed to free speech. Twitter has been key in the ability for ordinary people to keep up with the lives of celebrities, with a system of people being able to send out messages called ‘tweets’ to twitter users who ‘follow’ them. Twitter users have the ability to ‘follow’ people, these ‘followers’ will have a feed that lists ‘tweets’ by the people they follow. This gives the ability for companies to market their products to target audiences by ‘promoting’ their accounts and tweets.

Weibo changed the traditional way of news dissemination, many argue that it is a huge improvement to the Chinese media censorship, thus to the freedom of speech. For the advertisers, ordinary people, Weibo means a

A number of scholars have done research on the contributions of Sina Weibo to the Chinese society. In doing this, some researchers compare the features of Sina Weibo with those of Twitter, as Sina Weibo is often regarded as a copycat of Twitter. For example, though a quantitative study of the trends of topics on Sina Weibo and Twitter, Yu, Asur and Huberman (2011) discover that users of Sina Weibo are more likely to use it for entertaining purposes, whilst on Twitter there are more topics related to current issues. Sullivan (2012) examines the political discourse of Chinese netizens on Chinese microblogs and on Twitter and argues that the political impacts of these tools are dependent on particular social

Weibo is seems like the real-time monitoring system for China to supervise what has already happen in China. New York Times discussed the increasing popularity of Weibo has already built the debate and critical kingdom in the inner social of China in order to profoundly alter the theory formation and social feature of China. For its benefits, it could improve the supervision by the public and push forward the civil society. While in China, as civil enjoy the freedom and space in Internet, the Internet is full of a great numbers of unidentified rumors. The net citizens could not distinguish the true or false of rumors. The judgment of information posted in Internet is rumor or truth is extremely important for citizens, as net citizens need face with

According to McQuade, the most commonly used social media platforms includes; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter that attract so many users around the world. The increasing number of victims of cyber-crime is attributed to the pace at which the technology is advancing and the careless attitude of the people that exposes them to the cyber rated crimes (Mcquad, 2006). Personal details are not treated with the utmost respect and care they deserve making them easy to be accessed by the perpetrators. McQuade (2006) said that there is an ultimate need for the social media users to protect their sensitive details that can potentially be used by the perpetrators to cause harm to the owners.

With scientific and technological progress, anything develops, especially the advent of the Internet era spawned a number of new things. The United States has been certainly walking in the forefront of the times, but China who has 731 million Internet users can also not be underestimated. As the one who earliest accessed to the Internet era, United States is always the leader of the social media in the world. China’s social media users try to catch up from behind. Today, more and more information is available through the social media across the world.

(Small, T 2012: 109-110). However, Twitter didn’t gain its popularity in Taiwan like in the Middle East. Instead, Facebook was much more popular and Taiwanese are the biggest Facebook users in Asia with the highest penetration rate (Wu, S& Wu, S 2013; Cole, J

The topic of this Online Research is about the Microblogging and Public Sphere. Microblogging is a new type of online social platform appeared in recent year. An example of such case is Weibo in China, which was released in October, 2006 and now it is an ideal tool of public communication among the Chinese netizens (Mou, 2014). Ma (2013) mentioned that, different from the traditional social networking, such as Facebook, in which users are more likely to link back to their real life. This means Microblogging makes its users focus more on things they are interested in which might be less connected to their daily life. Besides, according to a statistics, the proportion of Weibo users occupied more than 50% of the total internet population (CNNIC, 2013, cited in Mou, 2014).

Sina Weibo is a Chinese microblogging website, and it is one of the most popular social tools in China. Sina Weibo was launched on August 14, 2009, and it has 222 million subscribers and 100 million daily users by the third season of 2015. Sina Weibo provides many ways to access it, for example, users can post word messages or upload photos through online website, WAP, mobile applications, and mobile phone text. There are five type of posts on Weibo, original words, picture, video, music and article. And users can share their feeling, thinking and even their daily life on Weibo anywhere and anytime. On this microblogging websites, people can follow others, discuss with others, and share their opinions with everyone. Sina Weibo also has its identification policy. Because there are many famous people and organization users create their official account on Sina Weibo, once those users who get through the verification on the internet, a blue or gold ‘V’ will be added behind their user name. Moreover, there is a list called HOT TOPIC on Weibo, people always are attracted by those topics.

As technology continues to grow and the internet expands, generations continue to be glued to their phones and computers. Many people use the internet for work and school, but the majority is being used on social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Twitter is constantly being used to communicate with other people around the world and occasionally read the news. I use twitter to pass time during the day and to occasionally read some news since I follow news accounts. It is affecting our everyday lives since it is a constant timeline of thoughts, news, and polls.