Introduction and BLUF
The article “Cybercrime Risk Fear Among University Students’ Social Networking Sites: Validity and Reliability” discusses elements that contribute to the fear that university students feel towards cybercrime. The analysis within the article leads to research that was conducted by sending out surveys to various participants.
Cybercrime Risk Fear and the Social Sciences
Throughout the article, various social sciences are brought into the discussion. The most notable of them is psychology. One can easily agree that the emotion of fear has a large psychological aspect to it. This point is also the main focus of the article. In addition, the social science of law is often referred to as well. Cybercrime is another huge part of the article.
There were two main aspects within the article that had also been discussed in the PowerPoints. The first was about cyber-victimization. One very intriguing bit of information related to cyber-victimization was that a lot of users on the internet are more afraid of cybercrimes than they are of real life crimes. (Fakhrou et al., 2022 as cited in Reinhart, 2017) The second was about behavioral aspects. The behavioral aspects of the fear of cybercrime risk was also tied in with psychological theories that were discussed in the most recent PowerPoint.
Research and Analysis
The research that was conducted within the article was a survey sent out to 612 students. The survey’s contents included a “cybercrime risk fear questionnaire” with 15 questions. The surveys were sent out to students with an Arab background, these students were then asked to forward the survey on to others. The purpose of the questionnaires was to measure the manifestation of anxiety that a person felt while interacting on social media. This also specifically dealt with how these users felt towards the subject while dealing with the on-going COVID-19 pandemic. (Fahkrou et al., 2022)
Conclusion
In conclusion, the research in this article found that the two factor and three factor models relating to fear of cybercrime might be acceptable but that the risk interpretation model was unsuccessful. The two factor and three factor models were composed of multiple factors such as awareness and experience. The awareness deals with the behavior towards their payments online after hearing about theft or fraud. (Fahkrou et al., 2022 as cited by Behl et al., 2019) The experience factor deal with exploiting information to abuse their social status. (Fakhrou et al., 2022 as cited by Virtanen, 2017)
References
Behl, A., Pal, A., & Tiwari, C. (2019). Analysis of effect of perceived cybercrime risk on mobile app payments. International Journal of Public Sector Performance Management, 5(3-4), 415-432. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJPSPM.2019.101062
Fakhrou, Abdulnaser, et al. “Cybercrime Risk Fear Among University Students’ Social Networking Sites: Validity and Reliability.” International Journal of Cyber Criminology, vol. 16, no. 1, 2022.
Reinhart, R. (2017). Cybercrime tops Americans’ crime worries. Gallop News. https://news.gallup.com/poll/221270/cybercrime-tops-americans-crime-worries.aspx
Virtanen, S. M. (2017). Fear of cybercrime in Europe: Examining the effects of victimization and vulnerabilities. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 24(3), 323-338. https://doi.org/10.1080/13218719.2017.1315785