Learning Reflection

Over the course of this module I have discovered the technical intricacies of the online platform. The most surprising read was based on the datafication that some websites are able to manage due to the large abundance of data they receive from consumers using their websites. The Facebook Ads running online that specifically target users based on characteristics such as occupation, political view, living location and even if you have a child is surprising to me. It creates a sense of insecurity of data and therefore I feel obliged to tighten up my habits of updating personal information every so often other than LinkedIn as that is purely a professional networking website.

These teachings of social media metrics (consumption, engagement, lead-generation and sales) will undoubtedly help my research in my marketing major and career. It has been an insightful experience to discuss the investment within websites, the short term returns and the long term returns. This can be done through product awareness, building the brand image and reputation and gaining consumer loyalty. As the founder of Quaker once said, he would take all the trademarks and branding whilst leaving his partner the bricks and mortar of the physical shop and he would still fare better than his counterpart. The reason for this is the importance of social contagion and the effectiveness of the advertising they are able to utilise.

The social narratives, location, demographics, behaviours, connections, relevant events, timed events and trending topics are all things I will now consider when discussing the use of social networking/media in advertising. The social network is an incredibly powerful tool, as the modernisation of the industry has allowed us to track the statistics of effective advertisements, rather than static posters that can only be tracked through the recording of increased sales and servicing. This is especially true for tailored marketing – as Eric Schmidt once quoted “The power of individual targeting – the technology will be so good it will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that, has not in some sense been tailored for them’. This ties into the consequences of personalisation and another interesting topic that I learnt about is the cultural differences and requirements that different countries use in their social networking applications.

Japan use LINE, Korea use KAKAO, China use WeChat and the majority of Europe use WhatsApp and Facebook. The vast differences in application hold the same principle, however China’s WeChat is exclusive only to China, almost like a mass internal server that is cut off from outside sources. With it, the consumers are able to do a wide range of activities such as pay for their utility bills, order a taxi, sort banking errands, order food etc things to help them with their daily lives. Whereas WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger only hold the purpose of chatting and this is the difference in culture and regards of their online data for safety and protection.

Do the human rights laws and censorship laws in China make this type of mass abundance of data acceptable to them? Is there a reason why Europe is susceptible to adopt a similar style of wide use application based on the security threats?

It is these types of questions that MN3536 has prompted me to ask about many things in the course, it has sparked critical thinking and been an utmost enjoyable course.

Gephi analysis of Xbox Facebook page

In this screen cap we are able to see that Xbox, being the brand name and central point of all these nodes, that it is the most prominent. The surrounding nodes are games and apps that are commonly associated with Xbox, as they are licensed and exclusive to the Microsoft company. Using Netvizz to extract data from Facebook, a network analysis provided insight into the connections that Microsoft has established; 19 nodes (major brands), 53 edges (connections).

Blog Post 2 – Virtual Identity

A virtual identity is part of an interface that represents the user in a virtual world such as a virtual world, chatroom, gaming server etc. “The first revolution of instant messaging, for example, came through the invention of the telegraph. Households first became connected to a global network of instant communication through the widespread use of the telephone.” (Niezen, 2005). Through decades of innovation, the world wide web is the most expansive network, it gives the opportunity for people to hide behind the anonymity of the web and even the ability to hide their physical location from the world. “The fact that self-presentation is written in text means that there is time to reflect upon and edit one’s “composition,” which makes it easier for the shy to be outgoing, the “nerdy” sophisticated. This ties into the principle of ‘social contagion’ which occurs naturally when the behaviours of one’s peers change, it is a type of social influence – a behaviour that is copied by others who are either “in the vicinity of the original actor, or have been exposed to media coverage describing the behaviour of the original actor”. (Stephenson, 1971). For example, someone who has recently purchased a very expensive set of sound speakers and displayed it at a social event may influence those present at the party. Similar situations occur every day without consumers noticing how much the opinion of others has on their own decision making. The original actor who had bought the speaker, if their position within a social circle was considered high (someone with a high level of social capital) – it gives them a greater magnitude of social impact. This is true in shopping online and the use of E-commerce, websites such as TripAdvisor and users who hold a high level based on their numerous reviews will generally be followed more than someone with a lower reviewer level. Social influence is likely to work when the branding is less important and the consumers have little expertise in a product. The influence of the social cascading will be powerful enough to overcome basic protocols of reading reviews online, hearing about the product through word of mouth etc. If the product is promoted well through social networks by a reliable opinion leader – then it is most likely to push sales (Aral and Walker, 2012).

Discussing another side of the virtual identity, we can discuss social networking platforms. Below is a screen cap of my following social profiles. From left to right; Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. These are used primarily for socialising and career networking.

The virtual identity can also transcend further into creating a personality online, it is common in Asian countries for there to be those that are famous by live streaming their daily lives or eating meals. Popular apps such as WeChat for China is able to do a wide range of tasks from a single app. The app boasts 700 million users and has an abundance of personal data – an advertiser’s dream.

This may have implications for security and how such transformative technology also does harm to society through security threats, not just help it. This has been a recent revelation before in infamous cases such as Edward Snowden and the NSA. Based on all of these characteristics shown in the profiles, a Facebook Ad can be designed to target people similar to myself. A screen cap is provided below to show how the data you upload, can be used for monetary purposes.

The objective data such as ‘location, age, gender, demographic and interests’ are all factored in to filter out and target specific groups of people that the researcher wants. This is all shown through the trail of exposed data consumers leave on their social network profiles, despite if they have it on private settings – the advertisement will reach them if they fall into this category of search criteria.

References:

1. Niezen, R. (2005) Digital Identity: The Construction of Virtual Selfhood in the Indigenous Peoples’ Movement. Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Jul., 2005), pp. 532-551
2. Stephenson, G. M., & Fielding, G. T. (1971). An experimental study of the contagion of leaving behavior in small gatherings. Journal of Social Psychology, 84(1), 81-91.

Blog Post 1 – Online Privacy

Online privacy is the security protection of personal data published via the internet, which requires robust and hard to breach data storage systems. “Privacy has been framed as a matter of security, freedom of expression, human rights, and more”. (Epstein et al, 2014). “Through these and other activities, we reveal information – both knowingly and unwittingly – to one another, to commercial entities and our governments” and this gives company’s the “ability to aggregate, analyse and draw sensitive inferences from individual’s data” (Acquisti et al, 2015). This can be applied to the most popular social networking websites used today; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and more.

In an example of Facebook, every post you react to on your news feed and every page you visit begins to create a profile based on your interests, with this Facebook begin to understand your likes and interests and begin to tailor specific advertisements based on what you’ve recently viewed/visited. This is stated in the Facebook Data Use Policy, updated 2016. “We are able to deliver our Services, personalize content, and make suggestions for you by using this information to understand how you use and interact with our Services and the people or things you’re connected to and interested in on and off our Services.” Most people who sign up for social network platforms tend not to read the terms and conditions when registering. 70% of people disagreed with the statement of “privacy policies are easy to understand” (Turow et al, 2005). It was also found in a study that when shopping online, consumers are more likely to pay a premium charge from a website that offers privacy protection, this “suggests that businesses can leverage privacy protection as a selling point.” (Tsai et al, 2011). This is interesting as it implies that consumers value personal data and provide evidence through purchasing decisions, in the study – participants paid $2 more for the privacy protection – reasons from consumers ranged from “Didn’t want to give name,” “Didn’t want to be linked,” “[Wanted] privacy,” “Didn’t want to disclose my information,” and “Would rather it be anonymous.” (Acquisti et al, 2013).

Moving on, online privacy and geo-location tracking has become a widely used feature for social networking apps to promote socialising and interaction with events and businesses. An example of this is Facebook’s ‘check in’ feature when it realises you have visited a popular attraction, such as Hyde Park in London. To further illustrate this point, Acquisti added that we now “leave trails of data exposed: Interests, traits, beliefs, and intentions.” This is true in the sense of location tracking, it may be worth checking your own GoogleMaps history if you have it enabled unknowingly. I will display my own history below to exemplify the effectiveness of this feature.

In the image below, we are able to see that Google kept track of my initial start point of my journey, what method of travel I took and how long I spent in Five Guys, accurately stating what time I entered and exited. This shows the data consumers expose to corporate entities that can then use this and translate it into marketable and location based advertising. You can then combat this by disabling the tracking feature, as I have done so since late 2015 after realising the security implications this can have for myself.

 

References:

1. Acquisti, A., Cranor L., Egelman S., and Tsai, J. (2011) The Effect of Online Privacy Information on Purchasing Behaviour: An Experimental Study. Information Systems Research. [online] Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/23015560.pdf
2. Acquisti, A., Brandimarte, L., and Loewenstein, G. (2015). Privacy and Human Behavior in the Age of Information. Science, 347(6221), 509–514. [online] Available at:  http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6221/509.full
3. Boyd, d. and Hargittai, E. (2010). Facebook Privacy Settings: Who Cares? First Monday 15(8). [online] Available at: http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3086/2589
4. Facebook Full Data Use Policy (2016) [online] Available at: https://www.facebook.com/full_data_use_policy
5. Acquisti, A., John, L., and Loewenstein, G. (June 2013) What Is Privacy Worth? The Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 42, No. 2 pp. 249-274 Published by: The University of Chicago Press for The University of Chicago Law School.

 

 

Introduction and About Me

The academic discussion of social media and networks is relatively new grounds as it was only in the recent technological generation that it has become so prevalent in today’s society. I decided to study this module as social networks have an incredibly strong impact through not only social bonding, but also career networking and advertising. It is a module that proved very useful in expanding my knowledge about the importance of understanding factors such as privacy of data, datafication, cultural differences and needs, social media metrics and social contagion.

My name is Long Nguyen and I studied A-level English Literature and Language, Information Communication Technology, Sociology and Psychology during my time at Lilian Baylis Sixth Form. These subjects have equipped me with the necessary experience and skills to comprehend much of the MN3536 content. The subject of Sociology and Psychology has allowed me to better understand how social capital and social contagion occurs in real life and the theoretical principles lead back to Karl Marx. The subject of ICT introduced me to elements such as ‘big data’ and the importance of data privacy, as well as means of protecting yourself from threats online in which I discuss in a further blog post.