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Online social networks (OSNs) suffer from forged messages. Current studies have typically been focused on the detection of forged messages and do not provide the analysis of the behaviors of message publishers and network strategies to suppress forged messages. This paper carries out the analysis by taking a game theoretic approach, where infinitely repeated games are constructed to capture the interactions between a publisher and a network administrator and suppress forged messages in OSNs. Critical conditions, under which the publisher is disincentivized to publish any forged messages, are identified in the absence and presence of misclassification on genuine messages. Closed-form expressions are established for the maximum number of forged messages that a malicious publisher could publish. Confirmed by the numerical results, the proposed infinitely repeated games reveal that forged messages can be suppressed by improving the payoffs for genuine messages, increasing the cost of bots, and/or reducing the payoffs for forged messages. The increasing detection probability of forged messages or decreasing misclassification probability of genuine messages also has a strong impact on the suppression of forged messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: News media is one of the major sources of publicly available information on animal welfare law enforcement. It has previously been established that the media are strong influences of public perceptions. Therefore, it is possible that news reports on animal cruelty offences are shaping public understanding of penalties for animal cruelty. To understand how penalties are portrayed in the media, we collected 71 Australian news articles which reported on penalties for animal cruelty over a 6-month period from 1 June 2019 to 1 December 2019. Using thematic analysis, three themes were identified: (1) laws are not good enough; (2) laws are improving; and (3) reforms are unnecessary. A connection between public perceptions, media reporting and statutory reform efforts to increase maximum penalties is proposed, which potentially could explain why the Australian public appear displeased with the penalties handed down by courts for animal cruelty offences. Further sociological research is required to confirm this theory. Media portrayals of animal cruelty can shape public understanding and perception of animal welfare law. Given that animal welfare law in Australia is guided partially by 'community expectations', the media might indirectly be influencing recent reform efforts to amend maximum penalties in Australia, through guiding and shaping public opinion. This paper reports on Australian news articles which refer to penalties for animal cruelty published between 1 June 2019 and 1 December 2019. Using the electronic database Newsbank, a total of 71 news articles were included for thematic analysis. Three contrasting themes were identified: (1) laws are not good enough; (2) laws are improving; and (3) reforms are unnecessary. We propose a penalty reform cycle to represent the relationship between themes one and two, and 'community expectations'. The cycle is as follows: media reports on recent amendments imply that 'laws are improving' (theme two). Due to a range of inherent factors in the criminal justice system, harsher sentences are not handed down by the courts, resulting in media report of 'lenient sentencing' (theme one). Hence, the public become displeased with the penal system, forming the 'community expectations', which then fuel future reform efforts. Thus, the cycle continues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how linguistic diversity gave rise to a multi-party interaction with strong elements of monolingualism and othering. The data analyzed comes from the official Facebook page of Brisbane City Council that very rarely creates posts in languages other than English. One of such rare posts in Korean attracted a number of negative comments in relation to the language used. This paper examines how the discourses of monolingualism and othering are constructed in those comments. The findings of this qualitative study show that, in the analyzed data, monolingualism is primarily indexed through the following discourses: "English only", English as the language of Australia, English as a national identity and monolingual beliefs, in general. Othering includes such practices as predominantly engaging in the "us vs them" discourse, positioning the non-dominant language and its speakers as the different 'other', ascribing negative identity and using impoliteness practices, such as challenges, warnings or accusations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the advent of digital and mobile communication technologies, scholars have been investigating how these technologies are changing experiences of migration and mobility. In the field of gender and migration, researchers have shown how the experience of migration can change maternal practices, and alter understandings of 'good motherhood'. These 'digital migrant' and 'migrant motherhood' literatures have intersected in studies of technologically mediated transnational mothering, in the context of mother–child separation. In contrast, this study focuses on migrant mothers in Australia who are co-located with their children. Drawing on interviews with migrant mothers from a range of migrant communities in Sydney and Melbourne, this article explores how the use of online migrant maternal communities helps women to navigate motherhood in a migrant context. Specifically, it draws attention to the ways migrant mothers use the affordances of social media to work through their complex and ambivalent feelings about their migrant maternal identities and practices, and about co-ethnic social networks. The paper foregrounds the role of the imagination and relationships in shaping migrant identities and experiences and proposes the 'migrant maternal imaginary' as a valuable concept for understanding migrant motherhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments across the world are struggling to address the market dominance of technology companies through increased regulation. The Australian Federal government found itself leading the world in platform regulation when, in 2021, it enacted the Australian News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code. The furore surrounding the introduction of the legislation, and Facebook's subsequent Australian 'news ban' exposed the limits of a regulatory model that has previously left the tech industry to moderate itself. In this paper, we argue the introduction of the Code is a leading example of a global trajectory towards regulatory change, which sees governments move from a reactive regulation model to specific interventions around the governance of digital media spaces. We discuss how best to measure the successes and failures around this more interventionist model through a case study of the implementation of the Code in Australia. More broadly we consider how global platforms have responded, and whether the reform is an effective regulatory model for other national governments to emulate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of social media has created a new medium for administering surveys for tourism research. While social media has great potential for tourism researchers, several aspects need to be considered. In the case of backpackers, a traditionally "difficult-to-sample" group, destination-based surveys, email surveys, survey links posted in online forums, and social media sites such as Facebook have all been used to administer surveys. The purpose of this paper is to present the case for a mixed-mode dual-frame sampling procedure as an optimum for targeting backpackers. The sampling procedure discussed in this paper included self-administered surveys through backpacker-specific groups on Facebook.com and self-administered surveys at backpacker hostels in Cairns, Australia. This paper argues that for this particular group, combining offline and online sampling modes allows the research to minimize errors while maximizing the diversity. Additionally, this paper provides some insights and recommendations into administering surveys through Facebook for tourism researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the support that Australian early career teachers are accessing through private groups within social media. It presents findings from 22 interviews with teachers who indicated that Facebook was a source of support. Participants describe using private online groups for: (a) support during casual employment; (b) accessing collegial support from pre-existing connections, in particular those formed during initial teacher education; and (c) support to deal with challenging situations such as a hostile work environment. The paper suggests that further research needs to be conducted into how private media groups might support the needs of early career teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the linguistic and sociocultural benefits of class-based email projects are widely acknowledged, there has been little investigation of what occurs after a curriculum activity finishes. In particular, what factors promote continued communication or cause communication breakdown have received less empirical attention. This paper explores factors which promote the continuation or non-continuation of email interactions between Australian and Japanese students after the conclusion of their coursework email exchange task via the analysis of two class surveys, in addition to collected email interaction and interviews with four key students (two continuers and two non-continuers) who serve as case studies. The experiences of these four students who were randomly assigned partners in the project are contrasted with those of a fifth student, Lucas, who chose to communicate with a long-term Japanese friend for the assessment, instead of being paired by the teacher. A number of factors which influence continuation are identified, including past sojourn experience, existing social networks, perceptions towards the curriculum task and their partners, shared topics of interest, time constraints, explicit statement of desire to continue, and potentially face-threatening behaviour, and several recommendations for enhancing online exchanges are given. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With more and more political candidates using social media for campaigning, researchers are looking at measuring the effectiveness of this medium. Most research, however, concentrates on the bare count of likes (or twitter mentions) in an attempt to correlate social media presence and winning. In this paper, we propose a novel method, Interaction Strength Plot (IntS) to measure the passive interactions between a candidate’s posts on Facebook and the users (liking the posts). Using this method on original Malaysian General Election (MGE13) and Australian Federal Elections (AFE13) Facebook Pages (FP) campaign data, we label an FP as performing well if both the posting frequency and the likes gathered are above average. Our method shows that over 60% of the MGE13 candidates and 85% of the AFE13 candidates studied in this paper had under-performing FP. Some of these FP owners would have been identified as popular based on bare count. Thus our performance chart is a vital step forward in measuring the effectiveness of online campaigning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Now in operation for 12 years, Facebook comes to serve as a digital record of life for young people. With significant parts of their lives played out on the site, users are able to turn to these profiles to reflect on how their use of Facebook has come to constitute a life narrative. In this paper, we report on findings from qualitative research into sustained use of Facebook by young people in their twenties in Australia and the UK. We focus on the ‘editing’ or re-ordering of narratives that our participants engage in while they scroll back through their years of disclosures – and the disclosures of others – that make up their Facebook Timelines. We present our analysis through three arenas (employment, family life and romantic relationships) subject to what we argue is a reflexive re-ordering of life narratives. We argue that Facebook profiles represent visual manifestations of Giddens [1991.Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press] reflexive project of the self, that serve not only to communicate a sense of self to others, but that also act as texts of personal reflection and of growing up, subject to ongoing revision. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Young onset dementia accounts for up to 1 in 10 dementia diagnoses. Those diagnosed face premature transition into the realm of aged care services and adjustment to an illness of ageing prior to age 65. To help elicit communication of the perceived psychosocial needs of this group, provide a platform to gain peer support and advocate for increased awareness, the Young Onset Dementia Support Group was established on the social networking site, FacebookTM. Followers post comments, read educational or otherwise interesting news feeds, share inspirational quotes and access others living with dementia worldwide. Facebook provides a means of rapid global reach in a way that allows people with dementia to increase their communications and potentially reduce isolation. This paper was authored by the page administrators. We aim to highlight the promising utility of a social network platform just entering its stride amongst health communication initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on a larger study of the uses of Australian user-created content and online social networks to examine the relationships between professional journalists and highly engaged Australian users of political media within the wider media ecology, with a particular focus on Twitter. It uses an analysis of topic-based conversation networks using the #ausvotes hashtag on Twitter around the 2010 federal election to explore the key themes and issues addressed by this Twitter community during the campaign, and finds that Twitter users were largely commenting on the performance of mainstream media and politicians rather than engaging in direct political discussion. The often critical attitude of Twitter users towards the political establishment mirrors the approach of news and political bloggers to political actors, nearly a decade earlier, but the increasing adoption of Twitter as a communication tool by politicians, journalists, and everyday users alike makes a repetition of the polarisation experienced at that time appear unlikely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Nurses and midwives have a professional obligation to promote health and prevent disease, and therefore they have an essential role to play in vaccination. Despite this, some nurses and midwives have been found to take an anti-vaccination stance and promulgate misinformation about vaccines, often using Facebook as a platform to do so. Research question: This article reports on one component and dataset from a larger study – 'the positives, perils and pitfalls of Facebook for nurses'. It explores the specific issue of nurses and midwives who take an anti-vaccination stance, deemed to be unprofessional by crossing professional boundaries and by providing medical information on Facebook that is not within their scope of practice. Participants: Data were collected via an online worldwide survey from nurse and midwife participants, distributed and 'snowballed' through relevant nursing and midwifery groups on Facebook. In total, 1644 Registered Nurses and Midwives, and Enrolled Nurses worldwide attempted the online survey. There were 1100 (66.9%) completed surveys and 54 partially (33.1%) completed surveys. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted online using Skype® with 17 participants in Australia. Ethical considerations: Ethical processes and procedures have been adhered to relating to privacy, confidentiality and anonymity of the participants. Findings/results: A mixed-methods approach was used, including descriptive and content analysis of the quantitative survey data and thematic analysis of the qualitative interview data. The main theme 'blurred boundaries' was generated, which comprised three sub-themes: 'follow the science, 'abuse of power and erosion of trust' and 'the moral and ethical responsibility to safeguard public health'. The results offer an important and unique understanding of how nurses and midwives interpret the conduct of fellow health professionals as unprofessional and crossing the professional boundary if they used Facebook to promulgate anti-vaccination messages and/or give medical advice online. Conclusion: There are many positives and negatives for nurses and midwives associated with using Facebook for personal and professional communication, which is in keeping with the results of the larger study from which this article is taken. Professional behaviour is a key theme in the larger research as is the ethical construct of 'every act has a consequence'; however, in this article, the theme 'blurred boundaries' offers an overall understanding of how nurses and midwives interpret the behaviour of their colleagues who espouse anti-vaccination sentiment and/or give medical advice online that is outside their scope of practice and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing concern around the dependency of news organisations on platforms like Facebook for audience traffic. However, scholars are still working out the extent of this dependency and how it manifests in practice. In this article, we draw on interviews with Australian news professionals and industry fieldwork to provide a nuanced account of this phenomenon. We find that news media organisations have recently started to diversify their distribution strategies and the business models associated with them in response to Facebook's algorithm changes. While Facebook remains important, we suggest that greater attention needs to be paid to the complex relationships that news organisations have with platforms. This article ends by considering the implications of these findings for international policy discussions centred around the prospect of platform regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents findings from a qualitative study concerning Australian women's use of Facebook for health and medical information and support and the implications for understanding modes of lay knowledge and expertise. Thinking with feminist new materialism theory, we identify the relational connections, affective forces and agential capacities described by participants as technological affordances came together with human bodily affordances. Affective forces were a dominant feature in users' accounts. Women were able to make relational connections with peers based on how valid or relevant they found other group members' expertise and experiences, how supportive other members were, how strong they wanted their personal connection to be and how much privacy they wanted to preserve. We identified three modes of engagement: 1) expertise claims based on appropriation and distribution of biomedical knowledge and experience; 2) sharing experiential knowledge without claiming expertise and 3) evaluation and use of knowledge presented by others principally through observing. We conclude that an 'expert patient' is someone who is familiar with the rules of engagement on sites such as Facebook and is able to negotiate and understand the affects and levels of disclosure and intimacy that such engagement demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little work has been conducted to understand how alcohol marketers engage users with their brands’ Facebook pages in India and Australia. We aimed to evaluate and compare (i) the types of marketing techniques alcohol marketers utilize to facilitate user engagement on their brands’ Facebook pages and (ii) the extent to which users engage with these techniques in two diverse national contexts. We identified the ten most popular alcohol brands on Facebook in India and Australia based on the number of ‘likes’ for each official brand site. Brand websites and data analytic sources were accessed to collect metrics relating to number of likes, frequency of posts made by alcohol marketers on their brand websites and the resulting comments from fans, and messages relating to responsible drinking. The identified brands accrued substantial user engagement (e.g. Budweiser beer attracted 12.8 million likes in Australia and Foster’s beer 802,807 likes in India). The strategies employed were a mix of country-specific (e.g. India: inspirational talks and livelihood skills vs. Australia: posts related to the brand’s tradition or heritage) and generic approaches (e.g. alcohol sponsorship of sport, music, and fashion, offering consumption suggestions, organizing competitions, giveaways, and use of memes). This cross-national comparison illustrates that alcohol marketing on Facebook is user-focused and flexible, works with specific national contexts, and capitalizes on the cultural meanings users invoke in their interactions with sites. The study results also demonstrate the potential for brands to engage those under the legal drinking age by delivering alcohol content on Facebook. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media platforms are important actors in the development of alcohol marketing techniques. While public health research has documented the activities of brands and consumers related to alcohol promotion and consumption on social media, there remains the need to develop an account of the native, participatory and data-driven advertising model of these platforms. This article examines the relationship between alcohol brands, media platforms and their users by analysing the activity of the 20 most popular alcohol brands’ Australian Facebook pages in 2012 and 2014. We report that the number of fans of alcohol brands increased by 52% from 2012 to 2014. While the number of posts dropped 12% from 2012 and 2014, total interactions with posts by users increased by 9%. Overall, brand activity and engagement became more consistent between 2012 and 2014. We argue that the changing character of user engagement with alcohol brands on Facebook can be related to changes in the platform architecture. Facebook is orchestrating a shift from exposure to engagement as its key advertising metric, and thus departing substantially from established mass media advertising paradigms. Effective policy responses to alcohol marketing in the digital era depend on a more rigorous examination of the marketing infrastructure of social media platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the potential role of sustained social media use in longitudinal qualitative research. We introduce the research design and methodology of a research project exploring sustained use (five or more years) of the social network site Facebook among young people in their twenties. By focusing on this group, we seek to uncover how ‘growing up’ stories are told and archived online, and how disclosure practices (what people say and share on social media) change over time. We question how we can understand the ‘digital trace’ inscribed through the Facebook Timeline as a longitudinal narrative text. We argue that ‘scrolling back’ through Facebook with participants as ‘co-analysts’ of their own digital traces can add to the qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) tradition. QLR and the scroll back method attend to a similar set of concerns around change over time, the depth of inquiry, and uncovering rigorous, rich life narratives. We explore limitations (especially around intentionality) and ethical challenges, while also arguing for the inclusion of these often highly personal, deep, co-constructed digital texts in qualitative longitudinal research. We also consider how the scroll back method could apply to other digital media, as the sites and applications that people use diversifies and changes over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our society is changing the manner in which it communicates. The Internet has catapulted us to a new way o f life. Social media has changed the way we communicate. We are creating online communities to share our thoughts and lives. This research investigates effective ways of using social media, particularly Facebook. A sample o f the 37 churches represented by the Australian Christian Churches movement in South Australia is utilized. The churches' Facebook posts are classified to determine their purposes, and Facebook metrics are measured to determine the effectiveness of these posts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facebook, the most widely used social media platform, has been adopted by public health organisations for health promotion and behaviour change campaigns and activities. However, limited information is available on the most effective and efficient use of Facebook for this purpose. This study sought to identify the features of Facebook posts that are associated with higher user engagement on Australian public health organisations’ Facebook pages. We selected 20 eligible pages through a systematic search and coded 360-days of posts for each page. Posts were coded by: post type (e.g., photo, text only etc.), communication technique employed (e.g. testimonial, informative etc.) and use of marketing elements (e.g., branding, use of mascots). A series of negative binomial regressions were used to assess associations between post characteristics and user engagement as measured by the number of likes, shares and comments. Our results showed that video posts attracted the greatest amount of user engagement, although an analysis of a subset of the data suggested this may be a reflection of the Facebook algorithm, which governs what is and is not shown in user newsfeeds and appear to preference videos over other post types. Posts that featured a positive emotional appeal or provided factual information attracted higher levels of user engagement, while conventional marketing elements, such as sponsorships and the use of persons of authority, generally discouraged user engagement, with the exception of posts that included a celebrity or sportsperson. Our results give insight into post content that maximises user engagement and begins to fill the knowledge gap on effective use of Facebook by public health organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite increasing popularity of social networking sites (SNSs) among customers, it is still unclear for many small-medium enterprises (SMEs) why they may need to embark on a presence on SNSs such as Facebook, and what are the opportunities and/or challenges of customer relationship management (CRM) on these websites. Using diffusion of innovation theory and interviews with twenty Australian organizations, this study found that SNSs governance is the most influential factor for SMEs in effective implementation of Facebook for CRM. Results also show that market pressures, direct customer service, brand promotion, and experimental purposes are among key motivations for organizations to use Facebook for CRM. Ease of use, ease of receiving customers' feedback, availability of rich tools, and the opportunity to reach a large number of potential and existing customers are amongst the key benefits; and dealing with negative comments, finding qualified human resources, reliability of Facebook policies, and scalability of Facebook page are key challenges in using Facebook for CRM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural deficit discourses maintain that young people are disadvantaged by the rurality of where they live. Consistent with this is an assumption the Internet will alleviate isolation through its ability to collapse physical and temporal constraints. This article challenges such modes of understanding by privileging young Australian rural people’s voices and perspectives about online social environments. Focusing on the social networking site Facebook, the question of whether rural young people make use of the site to cross geography is posed. In order to cut through rhetoric positing a redemptive, transcending online space, Hogan’s revision of Goffman’s ‘presentation of self’ thesis is utlised to analyse how rural young people talk about using Facebook. Rather than realising the total collapse of geographic boundaries, young rural people talked about using the site to mold careful, but representative images of themselves to interact with their friends at a place and time of their choosing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media has become a major information platform allowing businesses to engage with tourists. Small Tourism Enterprises (STEs) have commenced using social media for tourism purposes by maintaining a brand page on Facebook. The literature on Facebook adoption by STEs is expanding but limited, especially the discussion around building Facebook presence and strategy. Indeed, Facebook use by STEs is at an early stage of uptake hence the early adopters of this relatively new phenomenon can provide important insights regarding their Facebook use and strategy. The article examines separate case studies of eight Australian accommodation STEs and reports insights into Facebook use and implementation. Notably, even with early adopters, a pre-planned Facebook strategy was found to be poorly understood and in many instances had not been developed and implemented appropriately. Although focused on Australia, the findings have the potential to be related to small tourism operators in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: It is imperative to understand how to engage young women in research about issues that are important to them. There is limited reliable data on how young women access contraception in Australia especially in rural areas where services may be less available. Objective: This paper identifies the challenges involved in engaging young Australian women aged 18-23 years to participate in a web-based survey on contraception and pregnancy and ensure their ongoing commitment to follow-up web-based surveys. Methods: A group of young women, aged 18-23 years and living in urban and rural New South Wales, Australia, were recruited to participate in face-to-face discussions using several methods of recruitment: direct contact (face-to-face, telephone or email) and snowball sampling by potential participants inviting their friends. All discussions were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: Twenty young women participated (urban, n=10: mean age 21.6 years; rural, n=10: 20.0 years) and all used computers or smart phones to access the internet on a daily basis. All participants were concerned about the cost of internet access and utilized free access to social media on their mobile phones. Their willingness to participate in a web-based survey was dependent on incentives with a preference for small financial rewards. Most participants were concerned about their personal details and survey responses remaining confidential and secure. The most appropriate survey would take up to 15 minutes to complete, be a mix of short and long questions and eye-catching with bright colours. Questions on the sensitive topics of sexual activity, contraception and pregnancy were acceptable if they could respond with "I prefer not to answer". Conclusions: There are demographic, participation and survey design challenges in engaging young women in a web-based survey. Based on our findings, future research efforts are needed to understand the full extent of the role social media and incentives play in the decision of young women to participate in web-based research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Lack of breastfeeding support is often cited by mothers as one of the key reasons for premature weaning. The experiences and perceptions of breastfeeding mothers in a range of contexts and their support needs have been studied, but there has been little exploration of the specific breastfeeding topics that women are investigating via social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook, and how breastfeeding peer supporters respond to queries about breastfeeding concerns on a SNS. Methods: This online ethnography took place in the Australian Breastfeeding Association's (ABA) closed Facebook groups. These groups have been created for breastfeeding mothers to seek and provide support to their peers. All wall posts, comments and images for 15 of these groups were captured over a four-week period between 21 July and 17 August 2013. Results: The data were collected on a total of 778 wall posts with a total of 2,998 comments posted into the initial wall posts. Analysis revealed that 165 (21%) of these wall posts were queries and 72 (44%) of the queries were specific breastfeeding questions. Twelve breastfeeding topic areas were identified, and the top three topic areas were further analysed for not only their content but the nature of informational and emotional support provided to the community members. Conclusions: The closed Facebook groups hosted by the ABA provided both informational and emotional support that appeared to be facilitated by an authentic presence from both trained peer breastfeeding counsellors and other mothers. The group administrators played a vital role in both responding to the queries and overseeing the discussions to ensure they adhered to the ABA's Code of Ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]