Communicating and Sharing in the Semantic Web: An Examination of Social Media Risks, Consequences, and Attitudinal Awareness

Background Social media come in many forms from bookmarking services like Delicious, Pinterest, and BibSonomy, to 3D Virtual Worlds like Second life, professional networking systems like LinkedIn, Blogging tools like Blogger, microblogging tools like Twitter, collaborative content creation tools such as Wikipedia or Wikispaces, photo sharing services like Flickr and Instagram, profile and friend/social management systems like Facebook and MySpace, video sharing services like YouTube, and micro-video blogging services like Vine. Inherent to all is the concept of user generated content, sharing, and social commentary, which have been found to encourage social expression and participation (Buzzetto-More, 2014a). Further, they have all been found particularly effective at appealing to digital natives (Buzzetto-More, 2013). The major tools and services are best expressed by the infographic shown in Figure 1: Social Media Landscape 2013, which is provided courtesy of Fred Cavazza (2013) (www.FredCavazza.net,), and which categorizes social media tools into the areas of publishing, sharing, networking, and discussing and places Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ at the epicenter. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] A study (Duggan & Smith, 2013) reported that as of September 2013, 73% of all online adults use social networking sites with 90% of adults ages 18-29 being social media users. Additional findings included in the report are as follows: * Social networking sites are increasingly used to keep up with social ties, * Facebook users are more trusting than others, * Facebook revives "dormant" relationships, * The majority of Facebook users check the site multiple times per day, * Most social media users are active across multiple platforms (Duggan & Smith, 2013). Today's college students are habituated to using technologies that have changed practices of identity formation and self-expression. This raises issues about the unsafe activities of teens and young adults who frequently fall victim to invasion of privacy, unauthorized disclosure of personal information, inappropriate self-disclosure, internet addiction, cyber-bullying, stalking, scams and hoaxes, identity theft, and defamation (Buzzetto-More, 2012a). More specifically, when Facebook use is considered, the following are among the most significant dangers for young adults (Buzzetto-More, 2014b): * Social media can harm a user's image by presenting them in a less than desirable and/or unprofessional light. This can stop a young adult from obtaining a job or internship. * Services like Facebook keep everything forever. Whether something has been deleted, untagged, hidden, removed, Facebook keeps a record of it. Click on a profile, upload a photo, update your status, change your profile, Facebook remembers. * Social media sites encourage users to enter and share as much as possible. However this data is exposed to cyber criminals. Further, the social networking systems themselves are not secure from hacking. * Social media is plagued by scams, hoaxes, computer viruses, identity theft, malware, and click jacking. * ALL social media sell user information. Also, once a user approves a website or app to interact with Facebook or another social network, all activity will be automatically shared with Facebook, whether the user is logged in or not. * When Facebook saves photos, they don't just make a copy of the original, but instead they make multiple copies to use in various ways. And each photo that is uploaded to Facebook carries with it the metadata that digital cameras include with each image. On some cameras, such as the iPhone, metadata can also include the precise GPS location of where the photo was taken. * Bad behavior on social networks is cause for termination by many employers. Complaining about one's job and/or sharing work information violates many employer acceptable use policies. …