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This document attempts to summarise some of the research conducted at the Allens Hub, which may assist the Commission in exploring issues relating to technology and human rights. We are aware that some of the research referred in our paper may relate to very specific topics, as they were not originally written for this paper. Nonetheless, we hope our research will aid the Commission in exploring issues relating to technology and human rights, particularly in the areas of social media regulations and AI-informed decision making. Overall, we are grateful for the opportunity to present our views and hope this paper will help the Commission in completing his final report.

Trust in institutions and political participation are both essential for democracy. This paper proposes modeling trust in institutions among 14-year-old students in schools comparatively using ICCS 2016 data from 13 European countries. Data include more than 54,000 students in their eighth grade of schooling. Based on previous studies, we hypothesize to find that social media harm trust in institutions and therefore negatively affect civic and democratic participation. Trust and civic culture systems are studied using SEM. Results indicate that trust in social media indeed negatively influences trust in institutions in almost all European countries, which in turn reduces expected political and electoral participation of students.

Widely known as the “Panama Papers,” the world’s largest whistleblower case to date consists of 11.5 million documents and involves a year-long effort by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to expose a global pattern of crime and corruption where millions of documents capture heads of state, criminals and celebrities using secret hideaways in tax havens. Involving the scrutiny by over 400 journalists worldwide, these documents reveal the offshore holdings of at least several hundred politicians and public officials, including the prime ministers of Iceland and Pakistan, the president of Ukraine, and the King of Saudi Arabia. More than 214,000 offshore entities appear in the leak, connected to people in more than 200 countries and territories.Since these disclosures became public, national security implications already include abrupt regime change, and probable future political instability. It appears likely that important revelations obtained from these data will continue to be forthcoming for years to come. Presented here is Part 1 of what may ultimately constitute numerous-installment coverage of this important inquiry into the illicit wealth derived from bribery, corruption, and tax evasion. This article proceeds as follows. First, disclosures regarding the treasure trove of documents from the Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca are reviewed. Second, is a discussion of the impact and cost of bribery and corruption to the global community. Third, I define and briefly explore issues surrounding “tax evasion.” Fourth, the impact of social media and technological change on transparency is discussed. Next, a few thoughts about implications for future research are offered.

The Arab Uprisings represented a series of events unprecedented in the history of the Middle East: mass, popular and largely non-violent uprisings took place starting in December 2010 in Tunisia and reverberating throughout the region. These protests threatened – and in several cases resulted in the overthrow of – apparently stable autocratic regimes. The unprecedented nature and extensive domestic, regional and international impact of the Uprisings in and of itself merits attention, but coming hard on the heels of a global financial crisis and given the resonance of the Arab Uprisings with protest movements beyond the region, these Uprisings appear all the more significant beyond the region itself. The significance of the Uprisings is not just academic, however: the Middle East is one of the most frequently conflictual regions in the world, it is central to the global political economy – e.g. as a source of hydrocarbon fuels, and as a global logistical nexus – it is a source of and transit point for migratory flows towards Europe, and its autocracies have been supported as key allies by Western governments, both in Europe and North America. This project aims to generate new data and analyses of the Uprisings themselves, but is also sensitive to the policy implications of these analyses. The objective of the ArabTrans project is to contribute particularly to a better empirical understanding of the Uprisings and of the longer-term processes that lead to them and which they epitomise. To do this, the project will a) identify the principal approaches to transitions between political systems as they pertain to the Middle East generally and to the Arab Uprisings in particular; b) identify a series of political, economic, and social categories and variables based on these orthodox approaches; c) evaluate the available literature and existing data on the basis of these variables; and d) design a survey based on available data in order to facilitate the creation of a useful longitudinal database against which long-term trends and transformations might be identified. While the project will use existing data sets from public opinion surveys to look at long-time trends and transformations in public opinion, it will update and integrate these data by carrying out a new survey which will provide up to date information on public opinion in the MENA countries in 2014. This survey will use relevant questions that have been used in previous surveys to facilitate the longitudinal analysis as well as adding new questions to answer questions that arise from the literature review, particularly focusing on security, detailed questions on participation in the Uprisings and on EU-MENA relations, as well as additional questions on media, including social media use. These survey data will then be combined in a longitudinal database with non-survey quantitative data, enabling measurements of long-term trends and transformations

The pervasive, alluring, and uniquely powerful nature of social media has swept across many social boundaries; broken the traditional ways of communicating, giving a voice to the voiceless and rendering those powerless powerful; all with the click of a mouse, a “status update” or in other cases a “tweet.” This new trend of the use of social media by the religious community shows in many ways the profound effects of new media technologies in shaping culture, actions and behaviours; of which the church has become active participants in its use. However, what really is the agenda of the church in this regard? Are the effects of new media technologies reshaping their “soul winning agendas? This paper will discuss the aforementioned, with reference to the use of social media, specifically facebook, among Christian churches in Guyana.

Social media, sites where users can generate content and interact with each other, such as Facebook, Twitter and Blogger, have placed trademark holders for “brand” new challenges and opportunities. Trademark holders seem to have unwittingly signed a Faustian pact with social media sites. On the one hand they can reap the benefits of two-way contact with users who co-create value for the brand. On the other hand, trademark holders seem to have lost all control over their brand integrity. A fortiori, because of the interconnectedness of social media good and bad brand exposure can spread like wild fire. Current trademark law as such cannot offer all solutions. But not all is lost for trademark holders. Social media are basing their business models on advertising. Social media have the characteristics of walled gardens which have the potential to better cater to the needs of all stakeholders than would be possible in the outside world. This paper asserts that if a balanced and transparent system is implemented in regard to brand integrity it would improve business predictability for trademark holders and social media, and legal certainty for trademark holders, social media and users alike.

The American Antitrust Institute (AAI) has released the White Paper, Update on Digital Technology: The Failure of Merger Enforcement and Need for Reform. The new White Paper updates and expands on analysis AAI originally released in July 2019. The widely cited 2019 AAI White Paper, The Record of Weak U.S. Merger Enforcement in Digital Technology, was the subject of AAI testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee and drew attention to the acquisitive history of the five largest multinational online service or computer hardware or software companies: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft (“Big Tech”). It also unpacked the history of merger enforcement under Section 7 of the Clayton Act in a major segment of the digital technology sector. The White Paper concluded that, as compared to enforcement across all sectors, the rate of merger challenges in digital technology is exceptionally low. Since then, much has happened in the digital technology sector. Big Tech has solidified its hold on the top-most slots, by market value, in the Fortune 500. Federal and state monopolization cases have been filed against Google and Facebook. Among other things, the Facebook complaints allege that acquisitions of small rivals, such as social media firms Instagram (2012) and WhatsApp (2014), were a strategy to snuff out potential competition to maintain a monopoly in personal social networking services. The public policy debate over the dominance of Big Tech has also generated numerous proposals to remedy competitive and consumer harm, including breakups and digital market regulation. A 2020 House Judiciary Committee report examined competitive issues raised by the platforms that are at the core of many of the large digital ecosystems. Moreover, the digital ecosystems have been the subject of ongoing economic, business, and policy research, which has advanced the state of thinking over potential policy solutions to the problems they raise. Results of AAI’s updated analysis indicate that expansion by acquisition continues to be a leading method by which the large digital ecosystems grow. Enforcers can expect to see further growth that, when juxtaposed with persistent, weak merger enforcement in the sector, will likely exacerbate competition problems. Indeed, stronger merger enforcement over the last two decades would have mitigated the monopolization concerns that AAI sees now. As it stands, however, Section 2 of the Sherman Act is virtually the only antitrust tool left to combat dominance in the digital technology sector. This White Paper turns first to updating data on acquisitions by Big Tech through 2020 and merger enforcement statistics through the latest available reporting year, 2019. It then examines the implications of Big Tech’s likely trajectory of further expansion through acquisition and growth in critical cloud infrastructure capability. It closes with an analysis of reforms necessary to revitalize merger enforcement in digital technology.

This report is the eighth in an annual series of publications, dating back to 2012, designed to share the latest stories, trends and research in social media usage from across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Using a wide variety of academic, industry and media sources, this White Paper identifies important insights from social media’s development over the previous year. Of particular note in 2019 is the continued, growing, importance of social media in the lives of Arab Youth, outside of Saudi Arabia and Turkey the declining usage of Twitter (once the poster child social network for the Arab Spring,) as well as greater scrutiny of social media usage by platform owners and governments alike. Last year’s report highlighted the increasing weaponization of social networks, a trend which continued in 2019. Facebook, Twitter and Telegram each closed hundreds of accounts due to inappropriate use by state sponsored actors and terrorist groups. Social networks were also the target of governments across MENA, in the midst of protests in many countries throughout the region. Meanwhile, the importance of social video and visually-led social networks, continued to grow from strength to strength. Snapchat introduced new advertising formats to the region and other exclusive functionality, Google highlighted the importance of YouTube in supporting parents and parenting, and in major markets such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Twitter has emerged as a leading platform for online video consumption. The year ahead is likely to result in a continuation of many of the trends outlined in this report, as social media becomes increasingly engrained across the lives of businesses, governments and residents across the MENA region.

This short paper reviews Hannibal Travis' "Copyright Class Struggle - Creative Economies in a Social Media Age, Cambridge University Press, 2018".

Using an international sample of 2,113 initial coin offerings (ICOs), we explore the role of disclosure and information intermediaries in the unregulated crypto-tokens market. First, we document substantial cross-sectional variation in the voluntary disclosure practices of ventures seeking to raise capital through ICOs, such as the extent of information released in a prospectus-type document called a white paper; releasing the technical source code; and communicating through social media platforms. Second, we find that, even with limited disclosure verifiability, ventures with higher levels of disclosure have a greater ability to raise capital. Finally, we find that this association is stronger in the presence of mechanisms that lend credibility to ventures’ voluntary disclosures, such as internal governance practices or external scrutiny from information intermediaries. Overall, our results suggest that voluntary disclosure and information intermediaries facilitate the functioning of ICOs as an alternative capital market.

This report is the sixth in a series of annual reports designed to highlight key developments and data related to usage of social media in the Middle East and North Africa. As in previous reports, this White Paper captures insights from a wide variety of academic, industry and media sources, distilling the key lessons from the past year. Social Media adoption, and usage, around the world continues to rapidly evolve; and the Middle East is no exception. This 2017 research and industry round-up highlights the increasing prominence of visually led social media in the region, and the ongoing popularity of Facebook’s different products.

New Yorkers are now safer in the city than they have been in years. Yet tensions between police officers and the communities in which they work have continued to mount in New York, as in other cities across the country. Just this past summer, racial violence erupted in Milwaukee and Baton Rouge in response to the fatal shooting of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. Milwaukee joined other cities like Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., in which police killings have been seen as brutal evidence of the disrespect that many African Americans say the police show them. The challenge facing the NYPD today is to maintain safe streets while ushering in a new era of mutual respect between officers and local communities. At this early stage of digital technology adoption, the NYPD’s attempt under Commr. William Bratton (2014-2016) to change the culture of policing by enriching communications between police and neighborhoods holds lessons for public agencies across the U.S. during a period of intense volatility. This white paper explores NYPD’s adoption of Twitter and an ideation platform called IdeaScale that was aimed at allowing community members to nominate “quality of life” issues for resolution by the police. It examines the department's pivot to Facebook as an interactive communications platform following its experience with IdeaScale. It connects these initiatives to the NYPD’s overall push for Neighborhood Coordination Officers throughout the city. Finally, it pulls together information about NYPD’s revisions to its training and recruitment programs and the department’s ongoing efforts to upgrade its basic digital assets, from precinct Internet access to smartphones. These programs, all made possible by Commr. Bratton’s strong leadership, were designed to create a virtuous cycle: The NYPD’s social media, neighborhood policing, and new recruiting and training programs aimed to increase mutual respect by helping officers understand and enhance their responsibility to serve and protect New York City communities — and help community members see police officers as human beings. Stronger community relations may, in turn, support crime prevention. Shifting from a confrontational to a collaborative approach may encourage community members to come forward when they learn about crime. And all of these steps are designed to lead policing away from an exclusive focus on crime reduction and towards a balanced strategy of crime prevention and community outreach — an effort, in Commr. Bratton’s words, to move from a “warrior” to a “guardian” policing mindset.

This white paper (adapted from a blog post at the EdTechResearcher website) provides a summary of the first scholarly publication from Distributed Collaborative Learning Communities project: “The State of Wiki Usage in U.S. K-12 Schools: Leveraging Web 2.0 Data Warehouses to Assess Quality and Equality in U.S. K-12 Schools.” The article was published in the February 2012 issue of Educational Researcher, the flagship journal of the American Educational Research Association. The article can be found through this direct link or at this landing page. I’m very grateful to the Hewlett Foundation’s Open Educational Resources initiative for financial support, and to my co-authors Richard Murnane and John Willett.The article is written for a general audience of education researchers, and while I think it’s highly readable (so far as scholarly articles go), many folks may prefer a simpler version of the article. This white paper, therefore, is particularly targeted at classroom teachers and other school educators to share a bit about our findings and suggestions for using social media in classrooms. First, I explain what we did, and then I give some advice for wiki using educators.

How conflictual realities on international boundaries are perceived and analyzed is the subject of this paper. Two techniques for evaluating conflict, belief systems and rational choice are contrasted. Quickness of evaluation is imagined as a value maximized, if possible. International relations realities are presented as ranging from the quick evaluation of Sarajevo in 1914 and subsequent forming of alliances to ordinary border conflicts. The conflict realities found in border conflict are deemed adequate for this paper’s logical rational analysis. Decision making conditions are presented as changing as a result of the rise of the service sector, the information economy, Internet, social networking, and Internet personalities. Perception strengths are increasing as social networking improves emotional intelligence. The realities from the present U.S. - Canada border closure are considered as exemplifying border conflicts. Likewise, conflictual possibilities in the closure of borders in the Schengen countries are included in the paper’s analysis. This research question confronts multidimensional concepts. Assumptions about when belief systems and rational choice are decision making tools are discussed. Belief systems are assume to offer quick decisions. Rational choice decisions are more likely used with complicated problems. If quickness is the prized virtue, belief systems are thought to be advantageous to rational choice. IT and social networking are presented as having an affect on which decision technique is chosen. While the research problem is difficult, qualitative methods offers genuine possibilities because of the strength of narrative analysis. An image narrative of the U.S. - Canadian border closure and the Schengen border closures is devised using theoretical sampling. As issues emerged and became better defined, resampling occurred in this research. The resulting data in vivid images is thought to be well connected to montage. The imaging process that went into each image significantly increases the data stored in each image. The various images in the sample when analyzed are analogous to listening to a focus group about the research subject. A more structured analysis of the image data is possible with a cognitive mapping variant. Images are first coded according to how possibly conflictual they are. Next an attempt is made to project if they are likely reasoned with belief systems or rational choice. The results are concerned that Internet and social networking possibly biases choice between belief systems and rational choice. The amount of information being produced by ever more sophisticated imaging techniques is found to be a significant variable. The two image narratives this research devised ask if increased information is more frequently preferencing rational choice techniques. Rational choice’s production of many options need be included among changing decision conditions. There is a need to develop abilities to accept changing conditions in both perception and how conflictual realities are evaluated.

This paper suggests the argument that Homi Bhabha’s Third Space, defined in his book The Location of Culture (1994) contributes to Neocolonialism in the sense that it stresses the fluidity of identity and the continuous engagement in ongoing negotiations and enunciations, which compromises the ability of former colonies to formulate their identity independently and to design their agendas for development. They are trapped within the project of Postcolonial Literature which imprisons them in the “us and them” paradigm and sets them the task of forever looking for Third Space and of engaging in continuous debates over identity formulation. On a larger scale, this paper argues, the notion of Third Space is at the heart of the World Trade Organization agreements and is the core of how Social Media Networks function. Hence, the paper views Postcolonial Literature, The World Trade Organization agreements, and Social Media Networks as being linked together through the notion of Third Space and, therefore, as being tools manipulated by Neocolonialism.

In today’s world, “[t]he threat of conventional warfare has changed, and we have to recognize that information can be a weapon (SCL, 2020)”. How can information serve as a weapon one might ask? What if data mining and analysis combined with targeted messaging were used as weapons and could influence politics globally? The Cambridge Analytica scandal not only answers this question but illustrates this concept. The Cambridge Analytica data breach was a data leak whereby millions of Facebook users' personal data was harvested without consent and used for political advertising (Chan, 2020). This paper will explore the details of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the role of social media giant Facebook in the incident, and the impact to privacy and associated privacy principles. Additionally, the paper will explore the concept of privacy and its ethical, sociological, and philosophical underpinnings.

We replicate the paper on adopter categories by Mahajan, Muller and Srivastava (1990) and on saddles by Goldenberg, Libai and Muller (2002) on new data, and offer explanations and extensions. While previous studies have chronicled the relative sizes of the categories and the prevalence of saddles on datasets that were available at the time, two decades have passed since these papers have been published, wherein a multitude of technologies were introduced (e.g., social media, smartphones, media streaming). We use a new dataset to replicate the results, namely the U.S. Consumer Technology Sales & Forecasts that provides longitudinal data on numerous consumer electronic products. Goldenberg, Libai and Muller utilized the same source for 1999, while we use the updated 2019 report for the adopter category as well as the saddle replication, thus using the same data source for both studies.

The era of information disruption has made major changes in collecting, processing, and utilizing information in general. Most people have switched to carry out their activities from the real to the virtual world. It cannot be separated from the emergence of digital technology in all community activities. This paper aims to describe what regencies or cities in Bali will detail media Balinese people most trust. This paper will also provide information about social media ownership to know to margin the mapping of people's habits through the media they use based on the age, education level, and regencies or cities in Bali. This paper uses a survey method for the 1.540 Balinese people spread over all nine districts/cities in Bali, using multi-stage sampling with an error of 2,5%. It shows differences in social media platforms based on age, educational background, and the regencies they live. Even though there are differences in media habits, the most trusted media for them is news from mainstream media like television and newspaper. Still, in groupage 17-25 years, there is increasing trust in media online.

The data science technologies like Blockchain, Big Data, Internet of Things (IoT), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have disrupted significant industries worldwide and provided intelligent, efficient, and secure solutions to conduct business in public and private sectors. With the internet, social media, and IoT devices generating increasing data volumes, the need for safe storage, transmission, and predictive data analysis is of paramount importance. This paper presents the five emerging trends across industries that use data science, Big Data, and Blockchain technologies: smart healthcare, smart cities, smart transportation, smart grids, and algorithmic government. The emerging trends that directly affect big data, data science, and blockchain advancement offer tremendous potential for process efficiency, reduced costs, and cross-industry adaptation with changing technologies. Our research shows that both Blockchain and Big data technologies have promising adoption in private and public sectors, with Governments and Private participants launching innovative projects at an increasing rate. The paper finally presents a conclusion.

Recommendation algorithms deeply influence human and internet interaction. While its use may differ somewhat among the various social media and technology companies, it mostly uses “implicit feedback to track clicks, views, and other measurable user behaviors.” This information is then used as part of the recommendation algorithm, “which has the ultimate power on deciding who sees what content and when.” This algorithm model is mostly utilized by companies like Facebook. Overall, the algorithm is tweaked with the end goal of producing the most profits from the user’s behavior. There have been countless stories written on the impact of these algorithms and how they are used. But, more specifically, what these algorithms do is promote a psychological effect on the end-user. That is why more and more stories have focused on the effect of recommendation algorithms and disinformation or the promotion of “fake news.” That is because the algorithm is set in a way where it takes away the ability for users to see any diversity of information and focuses on the confirmation bias that is fed from the user’s preference. This Paper proposes to create a working group consisting of social media companies that will dissect and showcase how recommendation algorithms are used and how users interact with the algorithm. By having a voluntary working group, discussions can be reviewed on how current legislation and regulations can help to dissuade the spread of disinformation meanwhile increasing the end user experience. The paper will, in particular, help to explain the development of these algorithms and look at ways to solve this issue. It will take a look at the current regulatory landscape to include explanations of section 230 and any First Amendment issues. Lastly, it will discuss the recommendation and how this will be effective for purposes of combating disinformation.

Social media use in the United States has been steadily increasing over the past decade as various social media platforms have become the primary channel of online engagement for the American internet user. Today, Americans use social media to communicate with friends, family, and peers, access entertainment and education, engage in various business and commercial activities, and influence the lifestyles of consumers. As the spectrum of purposeful use of social media diversifies, this paper examines geographic patterns of social media adoption, diffusion, and utilization in U.S. counties. Alongside, the paper also examines demographic and socioeconomic determinants of purposeful social media utilization. Overall, the study sheds light on an important aspect of the contemporary digital divide in the United States. To examine purposeful social network and media use, the paper focuses on penetration of popular social media/networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube in U.S. counties. The purpose of use of such platforms – to engage in e-communication, e-commerce, e-entertainment, e-health, and e-education are also examined through the dual lenses of geographic and socioeconomic variations. By borrowing from Adoption-Diffusion Theory (ADT) and Spatially Aware Technology Utilization Model (SATUM), the paper’s conceptual framework posits associations of 18 independent variables with 17 indicators of social media penetration and purposeful usage. Spatial patterns and disparities of social media penetration and purposeful use are analyzed and provide important clues about the geography of the social media digital divide. For example, social media penetration and purposeful use in counties in the U.S. rural south are found to rival counties in the Rocky Mountain States and in some cases exceed counties in urban metropolitan areas in the West- and East Coasts. The presence of spatial bias in social media penetration and use is also diagnosed using spatial autocorrelation analysis. This in turn influences the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression-based analysis of socioeconomic, infrastructural, and social capital underpinnings. For a sample of 3,076 counties in the lower 48 states, leading determinants of purposeful social media use are found to be age structure, urbanization, race/ethnicity and professional, scientific, technical services and overall service sector occupations are found to influence social network access and purposeful use. These findings have important policy implications to broaden the reach and impacts of social media in the U.S. Overall, as the digital divide literature expands its focus from access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) to their actual use and ultimate impact, this study is unique due to its focus on purposeful use of social media. Sourcing data from a variety of public- and private sources, the study focuses on social media usage as well as access and sheds light on county-level disparities and their socioeconomic underpinnings. As purposeful internet use continues to diversify, the findings of this study can inform social media adoption, diffusion, and use policies in light of the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure that all Americans can participate and engage in online activities and derive benefits in an equitable way.

Personalized and social commerce are becoming increasingly prevalent and are transforming how businesses operate and how consumers make choices. The primary goal of this paper is to review the existing literature relating to personalized and social commerce. To accomplish this goal, we first delineate and summarize the definitions of these two related concepts and highlight their intersections and differences. Second, we discuss the economics of personalized and social commerce by presenting the key economic frameworks used to analyze the welfare implications of these ecosystems, such as multi-sided platforms, intermediaries, social media, and other related marketplaces. We review distinct research streams encompassing perspectives from economics, marketing, management, information systems, sociology, and psychology. This paper bridges these distinct bodies of research in order to identify and systematize the evidence relating to the benefits and challenges of personalized and social commerce to both consumers and businesses. Finally, we identify existing limitations and gaps in the literature and discuss directions for future research.

Also known as influencers, content creators are a new iteration of the gig economy who engage in the generation and monetization of user content. Content monetization reflects a new era of social media business models that allow content creators to engage in the production of cultural content and gain money in the process. The financial success of content creators has traditionally relied on advertising. However, advertising-related content monetization has its perils. Influencer marketing is by now so ubiquitous on social media, that it has developed a negative connotation, stemming from the criticism of the fact that influencers sell their opinions. Seen as a limitation on the provision of independent opinions, some content creators (as they prefer to be called) choose to not engage in advertising, but rather pursue other avenues of making a living on social media through content creation. Crowdfunding is one of these avenues, and it reflects the practice of content creators asking their followers to support them either by a mix of donations or rewards-based contributions. In consequence, creators rely on followers to crowdfund their income as small entrepreneurs. This contribution focuses on the challenges arising out of narrow scope of the new European framework on crowdfunding, which focuses on investment crowdfunding, but which can provide meaningful regulatory inspiration also to practices which define the burgeoning creator economy. In doing so, it maps conceptual frameworks on crowdfunding, first by analysing the material scope of the Crowdfunding Regulation, and second by doing a brief multidisciplinary literature review to report on a variety of definitions regarding the concept of crowdfunding. The paper further looks into a new business model around crowdfunding in the practices of social media content creators (income crowdfunding). While exploring the policy considerations which have led to the narrow scope of Crowdfunding Regulation, the paper critically reflects on the pitfalls these considerations present to the broader landscape of Internet crowdfunding.

This paper examines frequent efforts by individual polyglots to monetize their linguistic capabilities through social media and YouTube. In drawing an analogy from microeconomic studies, the paper finds that the microeconomic logic of monetizing individual distinction in polyglots is flimsy, owing to the low barriers to entry, mass dissemination of videos, absence of monopoly power, language’s public nature, and indistinguishability of individual brands. This paves the way for rejecting monetization and the fostering of polyglotism as a public good, fostered and cherished by collectives rather than individuals, as done by HYPIA.

The antecedent imagination about U.S. politics has been shattered by the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021. Virtual politics’ two decades of development, experienced difficulty when hundreds of virtually empowered protesters laid siege to the U.S. Capitol disrupting the Electoral College’s confirmation of president-elect Joseph Biden. Virtual guru and incumbent president Donald Trump refused to accept the election outcome and encouraged his media conditioned following to protest. This paper is presented with a belief that the analysis contained in the paper could prove useful in pragmatic and rational adaptation to technological innovation and politics.Analysis of recent presidential elections in the U.S. has emphasized the increasing importance of virtual politics. The elections of 2008 and 2016 witnessed outcomes influenced by the candidate's ability to skillfully use virtual politics to build a dependable following. Little is known of how virtual reality influences behavior. The January 6 Capitol riot is presented as an example of virtual bonding in politics gone wrong. The paper follows the events of January 6 and the public opinion generated by the riot. Maturation effects in public opinion over months are observed. Contending public opinion influences including institutions, political parties, mainstream media, social media, and Internet personalities are mentioned. Analysis is included about the uncertainty resulting from 520 unresolved criminal riot cases. Differences in how Democrats and Republicans perceive various issues are noted.Since the Capitol riot is likely to be compared to other events such as Arab Spring, a research design about virtual empowerment is included. Theoretical sampling allows an image sample presenting rioters’ use of mobile devices. Interpretive techniques analyze this data. Two possible explanations for the empowerment emerge. First, mobile devices are seen as keeping rioters connected with reliable political information. Second, virtual reality is theorized to catalyze with the public place. Cognitive mechanisms may compel action as virtual reality and public place interact. Data analysis procedures to supplement interpretivism of the visual data, cognitive mapping is suggested. Placing each riot image on a graph analyzing two dimensions, political information and ethnography, was mentioned as a possibility for improved data analysis.

Recent research in behavioural finance has shown the importance of investor sentiment to explain stock market returns. In light of the changes in the media scene from traditional print media towards social media platforms over the past decade, this paper analyses and compares the effect of sentiment indices obtained from different media sources in their ability to explain stock market movements. Using a large set of articles and reader comments covering the time from 2006 to 2020, we show that social media is better in capturing investor sentiment than traditional media outlets. The results of the paper highlight the importance of alternative media sources to understand market behaviour.

In today’s world, individuals are surrounded by marketing and advertisements. The alcohol and tobacco industries have long faced advertising restrictions, and now cannabis businesses are beginning to see similar restrictions. Unlike other industries, cannabis is still illegal under federal law which creates confusing restrictions for companies who are located in states where medical or adult-use cannabis is legal. This split in ideology between the federal and state governments, along with the confusing state regulations written more for policymakers than industry workers, has set a crash course for cannabis. This paper will examine several marketing areas where the cannabis industry is currently facing strict regulations, such as billboards, social media, and text messaging, as well as the public policy aspects that have influenced the rules on cannabis advertisements. The paper also focuses on the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and the current rise of class actions associated with text-message marketing in the cannabis industry. The primary goal of this article is to discuss the current regulations for cannabis advertising and why these regulations are hurting the growing cannabis industry.

Nowadays, Sentiment analysis is mostly utilized in the sector of Machine learning and Natural language processing (NLP). This idea is extremely common within the field of Data Science. Reddit is a news channel in which all users discuss their views on this social media platform. Many user comments on the contents posted. From this social news platform, its analysis, news reports, user feedback, social media updates, etc. Responses are analyzed and picked up by this social media platform. In this paper, Reddit API is such a social platform in which every day thousands of headlines or post received from many users some news is positively given some news are negatively given on all scenarios. from these posts or news headlines, we fun with different Sentiment Analysis using PRAW. PRAW is a Reddit API wrapper. Also in this paper NLTK tool is used which is the platform for Python Programming, also it works with human language data written by different creators. Also, NLTK's Vader analysis is used, which divides the text into different sentiments like neutral, positive, or negative. In this paper, we have first created the Reddit App to get the Client id and Secret identification of Creator. then we used python packages like praw and nltk, then we downloaded lexicon and then imported Sentiment Intensity Analyzer for identifying the sentiments and then assigned polarity_ scores to each headline as 0, 1, and -1 as a compound value. based on the compound value we normalized the headlines as positive and negative or neutral and finally plotted the bar chart of positive, negative, or neutral headlines.

With many million users across all age groups and income levels, video games have become the world’s leading entertainment industry. Behind the fun experience they provide, it goes largely unnoticed that modern game devices pose a serious threat to consumer privacy. To illustrate the industry’s potential for illegitimate surveillance and user profiling, this paper offers a classification of data types commonly gathered by video games. Drawing from patents and literature of diverse disciplines, we also discuss how patterns and correlations in collected gameplay data may leak additional information in ways not easily understood or anticipated by the user. This includes inferences about a user’s biometric identity, age and gender, emotions, skills, interests, consumption habits, and personality traits. Based on these findings, we argue that video games need to be brought into the focus of privacy research and discourse. Considering the granularity and enormous scale of the data collection taking place, this industry deserves the same level of scrutiny as other digital services, such as search engines, dating apps, or social media platforms. The knowledge compiled in this paper can serve as a basis for privacy impact assessments, consumer education, and further research into the societal impact of video games.

This paper reveals ways in which algorithms on the Facebook platform have the effect of suppressing content distribution without specifically targeting it for removal, and examines the consequential stifling of users’ speech. At the heart of it is an examination of the colloquial concept of a ‘shadow ban’. This is a term that refers to specific scenario where users’ content is hidden or deprioritised without informing them. The paper reveals how the Facebook shadow ban works by blocking dissemination in News Feed. This is Facebook’s recommender system that curates content for users, and is also the name of the algorithm that encodes the process. The decision-making criteria are based on ‘behaviour’, a term that relates to activity of the page that is identifiable through patterns in the data. It’s a technique that is rooted in computer security, and raises questions about the balance between security and freedom of expression. The paper is situated in the field of research that addresses the responsibility and accountability of the large online platforms with regard to content moderation. It works through the lens of the user to examine the impact of the Facebook shadow ban. Users, whether they are acting as speakers or as recipients of information, have positive rights that must be protected and they should not be treated as passive victims. The user experience was studied over the period of a year from November 2019 to November 2020 across 20 Facebook Pages from the UK. Data provided to the Pages via Facebook Insights was analysed in order to produce a comparative metric, and it was considered how the shadow ban could be assessed under human rights standards. The paper concludes with a recommendation for quality controls on Facebook’s internal processes, potentially with a form of triage to identify genuine, lawful content that has been caught up in the security net. Overall, an improved understanding should be developed around the automated processes and algorithms that are used in content moderation. This is a vital step to safeguarding the online platforms as a forum for public discourse.

Novel Coronavirus or COVID-19 remains as the most prominent Pandemic disease since it spreads with a distinct composition with considerable intensity all over the world. Market psychology refers to studying the individuals, groups, organizations and processes they use to select, secure, use, and dispose of products, services, experiences, or ideas to satisfy needs. Herein, identify the hidden antecedents on consumer behavior during a Pandemic is worthwhile, since the market psychology directly influences on how consumer behaves with the “fear of Pandemic”. Within this contrary, the consumer stockpiling in the face of the COVID-19 Pandemic can be viewed as unconventional inventory accumulation, mainly meant to minimize a perceived threat of loss or fear of going without. The main objective of this paper to systemize and organize the contemporary knowledge on stockpiling behavior during a Pandemic. Herein, firstly the methodology is extensively discussed, secondly, the analysis and discussion section is presented, with, a) citation analysis which was performed to evaluate the emerging research studies of stockpiling behavior and, b) comprehensive analytical models within the literature. Research articles were selected from the well reputed research data bases, including Web of Science, JStore and Google Scholar, and total of 60 research papers were used for the analysis, whereas a limited number of studies available by catering to areas of “stockpiling behavior” and “Pandemic/disasters. Analysis was two folds, whereas (a) Citation Analysis conducted with themes and (b) identified the comprehensive analytical models. Citation analysis discovered five main themes, namely: (1) Post-Switch Stockpiling, (2) Brand Switching and Stockpiling Behaviour. (3) Social Media and stockpiling behavior, (4) Predictors of Stockpiling Behaviour and (5) Behaviour in Pandemic situations. Further , Within the analytical models proposed, the model by Ling & Ho (2020) have been identified to test empirically the hidden patterns, panic-buying behavior and social context of the consumer behavior deeply. Authors suggest to align the model to fill the empirical gap within the consumer behavior research context.

Digital design choices such as color and font, the size and placement of action buttons, and the number of steps required to execute an action all shape the user experience (UX) and what information people absorb and release. Digital platforms and service providers shape the UX in ways that can be respectful of user autonomy and advance accurate, high-quality information, or in ways that subvert user choice and promote deception. Social media platforms have used “deceptive design” in many respects, making it easier to manipu­late users into taking actions, sacrificing data, and succumbing to beliefs they might not otherwise want to. This paper proposes that platforms replace “decep­tive design” with empowering or “democratic design.” Regulators have incorporated design best practices in a number of offline policies. This paper surveys key examples, ranging from emissions labels on cars to health warnings on cigarette packs where regulations were guided by design principles. Design best practices should inform online policy as well.

The Federal Trade Commission is an administrative agency that has traditionally been aggressive when deploying its delegated authority. At the core of these actions is the FTC’s interpretive definition of deception as based upon a reasonable consumer standard. Specifically, the commission has regularly used § 5(a), in tandem with its interpretive definition of deception as a sword in a variety of contexts: bringing enforcement actions for deceptive advertising, endorsements and claim substantiation against a range of industries. These include successfully brought actions or obtained consent decrees in enforcement proceedings against powerful economic entities including Google and Facebook. Yet, in one area, the FTC has been reluctant to engage in the hard tactics it regularly deploys in other areas. The Commission has struggled to employ a coherent enforcement strategy for deceptive practices by Social Media Influencers. The Commission has taken significant steps towards deception and disclosure enforcement for influencers, including publication of a set of guidelines for disclosure. However, despite a series of warning letters sent to high profile influencers in April of 2017, the Commission has not released a significant enforcement action - choosing instead to launch an inquiry in February 2020 to review the disclosure guidelines. As empirical research demonstrates that consumers do not understand the nature of the influencer process, this paper argues that the FTC should employ a commitment to a strong enforcement stance. The FTC’s failure to “make an example” of high-profile influencers or to take a hard-line approach with influencers, as the Commission did with native advertising online, represents a parting with the manner with which the Commissions has traditionally enforced the deception standard in endorsement ads. This departure, this paper argues, is undermining the FTC’s consumer protections.

Social media is seen as a key platform for freedom of expression: anyone with access to the internet can create an account, which allows them to express their own opinions on a daily basis, through tweets, status updates, and photographs. Freedom of expression is considered to be a basic human right, so in this respect we can praise social media for furthering the fulfilment of this human right, through its accessibility. Freedom of expression is an integral part of freedom to information. An interesting example of the role of social media in freedom of information was, Twitter’s decision to revoke the use of an account called ‘Politwoops’, which let the public see tweets politicians had deleted. This account was shut down as Twitter suggested its use violated the politician’s privacy settings. However, it has now been reinstated to allow public transparency and freedom of information. An ideal world we would like to assume that our social media pages are a safe place for us to express ourselves. On the one hand, social media is an excellent resource for enabling the human right of freedom of expression, but on the other hand, it does pose deeply problematic questions regarding self-censorship and surveillance. Social media platform is garnering attention like never before. With lockdowns and nowhere to go people are hooked to Social media like never before. It is become the go to place for all sorts of news, socializing, learning and arguments. In India an estimated 11 gigabits data is consumed by mobile users on social media. The overall mobile data consumption in the country is increased by 47%during the Covid affected lockdown in the year 2019.The speed of internet is one another factor on which every person working from home is investing on. In this constrained physical socializing space and increased dependency on social media, there are concerns about the contents posted by the social media users. The data analysis shows intrusion into privacy, derogatory posts and personal data protection problems and hoax messages on the social media. However, to address the real impact of social media on freedom of expression, the meaning of ‘freedom of expression’ must be defined. The exceptions to this rule are when an ‘expression’ directly, and violently, threatens another person or group. Though there are certain regulatory controls through new law and regulations. IT ACT was enacted in the year2000 in India, it is continuously evolving with the time and new regulations are being incorporated continuously. This paper is an exclusive study of main regulations imposed by the IT Act in India. The paper also discusses the loss of immunity clause for the organizations which are not abiding the recent restrictions. An exclusive case study is presented on much discussed social media platform “Twitter, in this paper. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY), Government of India also set up experts committee to identify key data protection issues in India and recommend methods of addressing them. This paper analyzes the existing Information Technology Act 2000. The paper examines main provisions of the IT Act and the Rules that provide for the protection of personal data, the kind of personal data that they apply to, as well as some of the criticisms of these provisions and their enforcement.

The motivation behind this examination is to explore the status and the development of the logical investigations for the impact of interpersonal organizations on enormous information and utilization of large information for displaying the interpersonal organizations clients' conduct. This paper presents a far reaching audit of the examinations related with enormous information in online media. The investigation utilizes Scopus information base as an essential web crawler and covers 2000 of profoundly refered to articles over the period 2012-2019. The records are genuinely broke down and feline egorized as far as various standards. The discoveries show that explores have developed dramatically since 2014 and the pattern has proceeded at generally stable rates. In view of the review, choice emotionally supportive networks is the catchphrase which has conveyed the most noteworthy densities followed by heuristics techniques. Among the most refered to articles, papers distributed by re-searchers in United States have gotten the most noteworthy references (7548), trailed by United Kingdom (588) and China with 543 ci-tations. Topical investigation shows that the subject almost kept a significant and well-devel-oped research field and for better outcomes we can combine our exploration with "huge information examination" and "twitter" that are significant points in this field yet not grew well.

Man dies, but his online assets survive and, often, intestate. These digital assets by themselves may not have too much significance, but the data they hold is invaluable to the legal heirs, often mired in secrecy; man lives a secret life, and these online digital assets are privy to the same. The enormous digital assets a user creates during his or her lifetime result in a sizable amount of digital footprint posthumously. The consequence of all these cybernated dossiers is as unpredictable as the death itself, for there’s no uniform practice of preservation, removal, and inheritance of these digital assets by the data handlers like social media platforms and other content hosting websites. Adding to this is the lack of proper definition and legal consensus as to what constitutes digital assets and how the deceased user’s digital estate should be handled after his/her death. The objectives of this paper are to analyze the impact of death on digital assets and the association between unbequeathed online accounts and issues of identity theft and copyright violations of deceased user’s accounts. This paper has adopted a doctrinal research method. The paper also broached the concerns about how these data should be managed in the best interests of legal heirs of the departed. The study shows that there’s a lack of awareness among the netizens as to how to plan their digital estate while they are alive, and the personal laws of succession are also not drafted or revised foreseeing this new genre of assets.

This paper introduces a model for detecting low-quality information we refer to as the Index of Measured-diversity, Partisan-certainty, Ephemerality, and Domain (IMPED). The model purports that low-quality information is characterized by ephemerality, as opposed to quality content that is designed for permanence. The IMPED model leverages linguistic and temporal patterns in the content of social media messages and linked webpages to estimate a parametric survival model and the likelihood the content will be removed from the internet. We review the limitations of current approaches for the detection of problematic content, including misinformation and false news, which are largely based on fact-checking and machine learning, and detail the requirements for a successful implementation of the IMPED model. The paper concludes with a review of examples taken from the 2018 election cycle and the performance of the model in identifying low-quality information as a proxy for problematic content.

This paper argues the U.S. can and should regulate social media and search engines as commercial speech of the corporation instead of non-commercial individual speech. This is because the American individual’s speech on these platforms has been modified, edited, and transformed into the corporation's own commercial speech to advance the corporation’s economic interests. This paper proposes that social media and search engines should be required to either: (1) stop filtering of an individual's speech based on a corporation's economic viewpoints, in order to advance the interests of individual Americans and the political interests of the United States; or at the very least be required to, (2) take a balance approach to their filtering making it actually content neutral, and censor both sides of the spectrum equally, resulting in a fact-based social media. Such regulations comply with the First Amendment in view of the background of the Supreme Court’s rulings on types of speech, including commercial versus non-commercial. This paper additionally addresses the rise of foreign actors, such as China, influencing companies' speech through money at the expense of normal American citizens. These citizen's voices are stripped from them, by a foreign government using a U.S. company as a proxy, and is currently allowed under U.S. law. The paper additionally addresses how during a pandemic, such as COVID, people are confined to home by the government and unable to communicate, except almost exclusively through social media, which effectively strips them of their freedom of speech when it is censored.

Social media is used by billions of people around the world and has fast become one of the defining technologies of our time. Social media allows people to freely interact with others and offers multiple ways for marketers to reach and engage with consumers. Due to its dynamic and emergent nature, the effectiveness of social media as a marketing communication channel has presented many challenges for marketers. It is considered to be different to traditional marketing channels. Many organizations are investing in their social media presence because they appreciate the need to engage in existing social media conversations in order to build their consumer brand. Social Medias are increasingly replacing traditional media, and more consumers are using them as a source of information about products, services and brands. The purpose of this paper is to focus on where to believe the future of social media lie when considering consumer products. The Paper followed a deductive approach and this paper attempts to review current scholarly on social media marketing literature and research, including its beginnings, current usage, benefits and downsides, and best practices. Further examinations to uncover the vital job of social media, inside a digitalized business period in promoting and branding consumer products. As a result of the comprehensive analysis, it undoubtedly displays that social media is a significant power in the present marketing scene.

To understand why social media platforms’ potency as a tool for manipulation is inadequately apprehended through content-neutral, autonomy-focused analyses, this paper starts with an overview of the structural conditions that allowed such platforms to acquire their considerable regulatory power. Among these conditions, two elements stand out: the hidden -rather than non-deliberative- influence as well as its precise and comprehensive scope. While the hidden influence is what sets social media apart from other, non-manipulatory tools of influence, it is the comprehensive scope that exposes the limits of ‘value-neutral’ autonomy-based frameworks. When we are manipulated into acquiring a certain trait, there is normally enough left of us that is free of manipulatory influence to anchor some after-the-fact endorsement or alienation test. As an alternative to ‘value-neutral’ autonomy-based analyses, this paper analyses the harm that stems from such systematic manipulation through a capability account of autonomy. Of all the capabilities that are essential to what von Humboldt would call ‘self-realisation’, the capacity to imagine oneself as a different person is critical. It is also the capability that is most endangered by social media’s drive to optimise our online (and offline) environment to maximise user engagement.

This paper explores Chinese agenda setting during the COVID-19 pandemic to investigate whether or not the pandemic enhances the government’s role in agenda setting, and to clarify the relationship between government-led and public-led agendas. Combining big data analysis and a case study, this paper finds an overall public-led agenda pattern in China, and a mixture of government-led and public-led agenda setting during the pandemic. In addition, it is also found that Chinese government bodies pay attention to, and are responsive to citizens’ emotions expressed through social media.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to systematically review the academic literatures which have been published in the area of fashion brands and social media marketing (SMM) during the period of 2011 to 2019 and to highlight the reader’s attention on the key themes researched so far, types of methodology and research techniques used, and the implications of these themes for academic and managerial research. Research Methodology and Approach: The systematic literature review of the academic research on the topic of Fashion Brands and Social Media Marketing (SMM) was conducted by identifying the research topics published during the period of 2011 to 2019 on research database ScienceDirect, examining the research methodologies and techniques used by the researchers, and analyzing the research themes in details. The exclusion and inclusion criteria were identified, and manual and automatic forms of search were used to identify relevant articles on the research database. Quality assessment exercise was performed on all the identified research articles. Findings: Most of the research articles were of high quality and after conducting critical analysis of the research papers, the key themes discussed in the articles have been categorized into five main areas. Originality/Value: Till 2019, there has been very limited research in the field of fashion brands and social media marketing (SMM) and most of these literatures have focused on providing information regarding few of the social media platforms and have been associated with limited geographies. This literature review provides a systematic review which can enable academic and business practitioners to explore this field.

The concept of overtourism came into existence in the last decade yet it acknowledged in the recent years with a protest. Overtourism is basically related with the travel industry which is encouraging tourists for the sake of economic growth and resulted in the large number of increasing tourists at the cost of local’s peace. Various factors are responsible for overtourism, in this paper we have highlighted the digital trends & its role in increasing or decreasing the problem of overtourism. The emergence of digital technology, social media, mobile applications, travel booking platforms are playing an important role in increasing the number of tourists to the popular destinations. These digital trends are also responsible for influencing the behavior of the tourists. This influencing behavior of the digital trends can be adopted to combat the overtourism. The article concludes with the argument on digital trends and its negative as well as positive impact. Various suggestive measures are elaborated in this paper which can be helpful if implemented in a strategic way.

Since the arrival of ‘Big Data’ and social media’s meteoric rise in popularity, businesses have been forced to review, reinvent, and reallocate their marketing strategies. Having a social media presence is a requirement for most any firm that has goods or services to sell to consumers. In today’s environment of highly charged verbal-volatility, companies are not only scrambling to adjust to the YouTube generation of advertising, but also monitoring and protecting their corporate image. While branding is outside the scope of the paper, we do touch on artificial intelligence and how machine learning is employed to monitor user sentiment on social media platforms. The monitored data segments evaluated in this research paper are frequency, education level, gender, age, geographic location, and personal interests. In addition to data monitoring, the paper also includes a brief discussion of the online marketing environment. The ethos of this document is to demonstrate how small and mid-size businesses can best allocate their advertising budgets to maximize exposure, and ultimately conversions on the most popular social media platforms. By tracking conversions and impressions, we present a scenario of social media marketing optimization that demonstrates how Excel’s Solver add-in can be used for advertising allocations with the goal of highest potential sales.

This paper focuses on M-Pesa's newest feature - the group account. With this new feature, M-Pesa allows groups of people to divide shared expenses conveniently. However, much like other financial systems, M-Pesa also provides opportunities for malfeasance. In the case of the group account, malfeasance might be in the form of a group account administrator misspending the money. Using the interview data collected from 25 students from Daystar University in Kenya, this paper will discuss the impact of social media on consumer experience from three aspects: transparency, trust, and mutuality.

The field of civic engagement is at its cross-roads with more volunteers opting out of the activities recently. The problem is further compounded with a number of challenges that have affected the civic engagement movement. In addition, changing technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) have brought in new problems like lack of user understanding of the technology leading to confusion in the minds of people leading to questions on their participation in civic engagement activities. On the one hand technology is touted to be a very useful tool for human beings while on the other lack of understanding on how to use and employ the technology has the potential to drive away people leading to disengagement of people from civic engagement knowledge about which is lacking in the literature. This paper has thus tried to fill this gap in the literature through the method of literature review and developing a conceptual model that is based on the relationship between civic engagement and social media characterized by AI (a factor representing social capital). The research has brought into play the role of knowledge sharing, trust and value in the relationship between social capital and civic engagement characterized by AI. A theoretical model has been developed and hypothesis have been posited. Since this is work in progress this paper should be viewed as a contribution to the theoretical aspects surrounding civic engagement.

Social media is changing the practice of social accountability. The release of the Panama Papers on April 3, 2016 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) unleashed a tsunami of over 5 million tweets decrying corrupt politicians and tax-avoiding business elites, calling for policy change from governments, and demanding accountability from corporate and private tax avoiders. The current study uses 297,000+ original English-language geo-codable tweets with the hashtags #PanamaGate, #PanamaPapers, or #PanamaLeaks to consider how financial inscriptions participated in the subsequent Twitter conversation. We specifically examine four aspects of the Twitter- based social accountability process that get at, respectively, the public’s message-based reactions to the Panama Papers, the nature of the emergent social accountability interest network, the participation of financial inscriptions in network interest definition activities, and the “reactivation” of network members by the subsequent release of the Paradise Papers in late 2017. The results illustrate that financial inscriptions, as well as value-based inscriptions, participated in the emergence and coalescing of a social accountability interest network. Furthermore, both active and latent network participants were subsequently reactivated by the release of the Paradise Papers a year and a half later.

Social networking has been increasing the personal influence of information technology. The news required to evaluate politics is increasingly from social media. This paper intends to improve how three issues that arise from this political reality are comprehended. An impressive theme runs throughout all of these issues. Political news and analysis is now reaching people in a more personal way than ever. There is a need to improve concepts for analyzing the more personal media now presenting much of our political news. Political science education can make people more sophisticated in reasoning with changing sources of political news and information. Information technology's personal influence on political evaluation is presented as influenced by three issues. Better understanding of these issues improves ability to be critical of the social media and politics phenomenon. All three are related to developments in social networking. As 2020 politics are extensively influenced by social networking news, these issues educate about present politics. First, the paper considers if belief systems are vulnerable to social networking. Belief systems are effective and economic tools for evaluating information about changing conditions. The paper questions the possible harm to belief systems from social media’s salesmanship and manipulation. Second, effects social networking may have on personality are analyzed. Critics suggest social media may leave a chaotic legacy. A narrative in images is created for both the favorable and unfavorable opinion of social networking. Awareness of concern about problems occurring with multitasking, depression, addiction, and interpersonal relationships is produced from the narrative data. The third issue the paper is concerned with is how media rich political communications, networks, and political choice interact. The cognitive implications of framing political news with viral images is analyzed. Problems that could occur from mainstream media losing framing abilities to the increasing media richness of Internet images is discussed. The strength artificial intelligence has, theoretically, to manipulate networks is analyzed. How Internet personalities affect network transactions for political information is mentioned. The personal implications of how information technology delivers political news have been analyzed in this paper. Educational concerns about recognizing the paper’s three issues have been mentioned. The possibility of using narrative analysis from qualitative methods to improve analytic capabilities has been explained. Narrative techniques appear to have meaningful ability to increase perception of the issues that concern this paper. Methods to more effectively question innovations in ICT relevant to politics have been presented.

In March 2018, The Guardian newspaper published a series of articles about the subversive use of the social media platform Facebook during various elections in 2016. These articles sparked an online protest against Facebook, centred on the hashtag, #DeleteFacebook. This paper presents an analysis of this movement as a response to the individualistic barter model of platform capitalism. In doing so, this paper argues Facebook’s dominant platform position imbues it with data stewardship obligations which it violated, spawning the hashtag. By withdrawing oneself from the platform (i.e. deleting Facebook), users were essentially withdrawing Facebook’s access to their data in a sort of ‘negotiation’ with the platform over data protection and stewardship obligations. By collectivising around a hashtag, therefore, this movement can be described as a bottom-up data trust– a form of data ownership where access to data is governed in accordance with the interests of data subjects/users. In turn, the #DeleteFacebook movement can be seen as a response to and rejection of the individualistic barter model of platform capitalism. However, this paper also presents evidence that – as a data trust – the #DeleteFacebook movement was ultimately unsuccessful at establishing itself as an effective counterweight to Facebook’s dominant platform position. Again, using a platform capitalism framework, this paper argues the movement was structurally disadvantaged due to forces such as network effects, and thus unable to build an effective infrastructure.

The aim of this paper is to provide a critical appraisal of the Twitterverse, with a particular focus on reviewing the literature identifying the harmful and predatory activities that emerge and proliferate in this vast virtual public sphere. It also highlights the forms of anti-social, manipulative, and incendiary behaviours that are magnified by some of its users (the Twitterati). Although these dismal attributes are not the creations or planned intent of Twitter by any means, this paper emphasizes that the Twitterverse nurtures a new public sphere in which such nefarious and anti-social elements can thrive and multiply. The findings of the review suggest that Twitter’s popularity and expanse allow for a host of predatory behaviours and activities to go grow unfettered, with concomitant implications for individuals, societies, and polities.