Article Review #1
Level of Engagement with Social Networking Services and Fear of Online Victimization: The Role of Online Victimization Experiences
Social Science and cyber-security as an overall topic have such a broad spectrum of possibilities in research. This article goes over the public fear of “victimization” or fear of being involved in some sort of crime, involving the internet, particularly SNS or social networking (Park and Vieraitis M.). Park and Vieraitis’s hypothesis are that greater exposure on SNS increases online victimization therefore leading to a bigger fear in victimization (Park and Vieraitis M.). The article begins its focus on how social media has become a huge part of what the internet is today and its effect on real life communication. Studies showed that over half the world’s population is on some sort of SNS and almost three quarters of the United States Population is as well (Park and Vieraitis M.). Although social media is a great and fun thing it’s also something that everyone uses and therefore harbors a lot of bad people and issues. Socially this brings forth the main point of the article which is Victimization. Victimization is something that has been around for a while but in a cyber-security sense its relatively new. A big trend now in today’s society with social media is “canceling” someone. This can be seen as an example of victimization. Previous studies on victimization found by teenagers did not change when they became adults (Park and Vieraitis M.). In our world today people lack self-control, and it becomes a bigger issue and threat because of the anonymity of the internet. A big focus on the article as well as the hypothesis goes into three things which are “greater exposure to risk in SNSs increases the fear of cybercrime; personal victimization experiences increase the fear of cybercrime; and personal victimization experiences mediate the relationship between the level of exposure to risk and the fear of cybercrime” (Park and Vieraitis M.). Regarding the demographic most people who use social media are young adults. Social media allows a lot of problems to arise because it is so cut off from real life. Although the biggest demographic is young adults’ people of all ages use social media. Some of the worries on the Fear of Victimization Dependent Variable were that privacy may be compromised, people may be sexually harassed, or that it can turn into a real-world thing (Park and Vieraitis M.). I think a good example of the effect it has on people would be Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. Even if people on social media are afraid, they continue to go back and like I said earlier a big worry of users has to be Security which is one of the physiological needs on the hierarchy. People who cause harm are hiding behind a phone or computer screen. In the results of their study with data involving the level of engagement with victimization it was found that there was a positive correlation (Park and Vieraitis M.). However, when it involved gender and income it was negatively correlated (Park and Vieraitis M.). These clearly show the direct influence that how much time you spend engaging with people on these networks causes more things to happen regardless of income and who you are. It has more to do with the interactions itself. Park and Vieraitis stated that the current study started because SNS users were not aware of the amount of information they were providing (Park and Vieraitis M.). When creating a social media account, it requires that you put in a lot of information about yourself. A lot of people have multiple SNS accounts while putting their information in each one of them making it more likely to be at risk or victimization (Park and Vieraitis M.). This all has to do with the policy of these SNS companies. In their conclusion it was found that their hypothesis was correct in that victimization was directly caused by the engagements rather than something like demographics and that the more crimes that happen lead to more fear from the public about victimization (Park and Vieraitis M.). This conclusion shows how important it is to continue research for cybercrime because as a society technology is only going to become a bigger part of our lives.
Works Cited
Park, Yeonjae and Lynne Vieraitis M. “Level of Engagement with Social Networking Services and Fear of Online Victimization: The Role of Online Victimization Experiences.” International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence and Cybercrime, (2021): 4(2), 38-52.