Table of Contents

Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 2
Compare and contrast the positive and negative aspect of Social Media on the Internet ............... 2
Positive aspect of Social Media .................................................................................................. 2
Negative aspect of Social Media................................................................................................. 3
Challenges and measures of security and privacy that are taken when Social Media services are
used online ...................................................................................................................................... 5
Challenges of using Social Media............................................................................................... 5
Security and privacy issues taken when Social Media services are used online ........................ 6
Uses of Social Media on Business .................................................................................................. 7
WeChat: ...................................................................................................................................... 7
Snap Chat: ................................................................................................................................... 9
Effectiveness of Social Media as Medium of Communication ................................................ 10
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 11
References ..................................................................................................................................... 12

List of Figures
Figure 1: Positive aspect of Social Media....................................................................................... 3
Figure 2: Top 5 Social Media scams ............................................................................................. 4
Figure 3: Negative aspect of Social Media ..................................................................................... 4
Figure 4: Users who do not trust that social network will protect their data and information ....... 6
Figure 5: Measures of security and privacy setting ........................................................................ 7
Figure 6: We Chat features ............................................................................................................. 8
Figure 7: Top media according to users .......................................................................................... 8
Figure 8: Snap Chat key features .................................................................................................... 9
Figure 9: Global Users comparison .............................................................................................. 10
Figure 10: Effectiveness of Social Media as a Medium of Communication ................................ 10

List of Tables
Table 1: A comparison of merits and demerits of the Social Media .............................................. 5

LSC/UoS Integrated Professional Skills for Digital Age - Level 3 Foundation in Business
Introduction
It is known to all that information plays a very significant role in day to day life ranging from
personal life to business. By using the internet from different portals, websites, one can be exposed
to a lot of information. Now a day Social Media has become a great source of information. Social
Media allows people to become interact with other people and share ideas, emotions, feelings or
any types of information through virtual network communication (Hardwick, 2016). People can
use Social Media in any types of media where the internet can be used such as smartphone, laptop,
tablet etc. Social Media helps a person to connect with other people which not only helps to get
help when he is in danger but also in case of business create brand awareness. Social Media works
as a medium of sharing knowledge with other people and getting knowledge from other people.
But it has some disadvantages too. When people become connected to other people through Social
Media, they become addicted to it. The security issue is a buzzing word in this modern world
because hacking, cyberbullying and cybersquatting occur every now and then.
Compare and contrast the positive and negative aspect of Social Media on the
Internet
Social Media is a great blessing for the people of the 21st century because people become busy to
communicate with their nearest one as well as they cannot get enough time to watch Television or
hear radio to know what is happening around them but Social Media provides this facility to
human. Though Social Media has many benefits, it does not refrain from disadvantages. Below
section shows the advantages and disadvantages of using social media.
Positive aspect of Social Media
Social Media increase the connectivity of the people among the people. Once it became difficult
one people to connect other people who are living far behind from him. Now through Social Media,
he can connect and do greetings and share any news or information to him. By using Social Media,
one can share problems and seek help from other people, for example, one person needs blood
for his relative, he can share this information on Facebook, Instagram, Ask F.M or any other media.
Someone sees that and help that person and solves his problem (Ramzan, 2013). Social Media
helps a person to teach someone and to learn something from someone. A person may be an
expert in one field and he likes to teach others about this. In this case, he can make a video on the
topic which he knows well and share those videos on Social Media and people who do not about
that topic can educate themselves. For example, Marques Brownlee is a popular Facebook
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personality. He is skilled at the technology-related product. In this Facebook channel, he reviewed
all technological products to make the people educated as well as a good source of revenue.

Figure 1: Positive aspect of Social Media

Source: (Douglas and Loader, 2013)

One can get updated news and information on Social Media because nowadays TV and print
media revel biased news or sometimes even do not publish due to some constraint but through
some research, one can get this news on Social Media. Social Media opens a new horizon of
business. Through using Social Media many people open their pages and offer goods to the
customers for selling (Morgan, 2012). Social Media plays a great role in the case of promoting
business no matter whether you are doing business online or offline. One can post on Social Media
if he/she launches a new product or service for the customers or about business. Many small
business persons use Social Media as a tool for promoting their business as it reaches more people
than TV or print media. One of the great uses of Social Media is for Nobel cause. On Social Media,
you can invite one to involve own self into it (Bates and Ciment, 2013).
Negative aspect of Social Media
In this world, there is nothing without having side effect just like Social Media has some side
effects. Hacking is a serious disadvantage of Social Media. Social Media can be hacked anytime
by the unwanted person who may post some vulgar things on Social Media cause both financial
loss and personal defamation.

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 Figure 2: Top 5 Social Media scams
Source: (Douglas and Loader, 2013)

In recent years there have been occurred a lot of hacking both in Facebook and Twitter account.
Cyberbullying is one of the serious miscreants that occur on Social Media. Anyone open any fake
id and post unwanted status or pictures on social and defame the person. Teenagers are mainly
affected by this cyber bullying (Mahoney and Tang, 2015). A lot of suicide has been occurred due
to this. Fraud and scams are a regular issue now a day in Social Media. Top 5 Social Media scams
are all given below:
Reputation can easily be abolished through Social Media. One can make fake news about
someone and spread it on Social Media which causes bad reputation of that person and business
suffers a lot about what types of problem.

Hampers
Fraud and
Hacking productivit
Scams
y

Cyberbully
Reputation
ing

Figure 3: Negative aspect of Social Media

Source: (Deetz, 2014)

Social Media causes the death of some persons. For example: when people watched some stunts
on Social Media particularly biker is motivated to conduct that stunts and throw their life on the
verge of death. A boy of 14-year-old from Mumbai was doing stunts on a running train which

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resulted in his death (Vogiazou, 2014). Social Media hampers productivity a lot because once
people started to using Social Media he becomes addicted to using it to see if anyone posts anything
on Social Media and reduced his concentration. One study proved Social Media reduced 3-5%
productivity after using Social Media.
A summary of the advantages and disadvantages of Social Media are given below:
Table 1: A comparison of merits and demerits of the Social Media

Subject Advantages Disadvantages

Social Media Saves Valuable Sometimes people become addicted to Social

Time
time. Media, as a result, our time wastes
Social Media is filled up by fake news so
Social Media helps to get the
Information before sharing any news to anyone users need
authentic news.
to check its authenticity.
Social Media is hacked by an unwanted
Standard content in Social
person and posted some unwanted contents
Reputation Media helps to increase the
results in bad reputation of that person whose
reputation of a person
Social Media has been hacked.
Social Media helps to increase
the productivity of a business Social Media decreases the productivity of
Productivity
by generating more leads and the employees because without doing
prospect
Challenges and measures of security and privacy that are taken when Social
Media services are used online
Using Social Media has become very much challenging with the passage of time due to its security
issue and some other factors and when using Social Media, one should take some measures to
maintain its security and privacy. Below challenges and measures of security and privacy when
using Social Media is given below:
Challenges of using Social Media
Controlling Rumour has become a serious challenging issue in this modern time. It has not
become very easy for mankind to tackle this issue. Though content filtering technique has been
invented, it has not been proved so much effective. It has become very difficult for a Social Media

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manager to measure the ROI (Return on investment) on Social Media. Social Media uses as
an important component of the marketing mix tool promotion (Ceruzzi and Aspray, 2012).
Maintaining Civility is a great challenge of using Social Media. While using Social Media, people
showed very much excitement and reach any types of conclusion within a short time but when
they take time to think about own decision they may understand that this should not be said for or
this decision was not justified but it is very difficult to retrieve them but it has been recorded
(Asamen and Berry, 2017). Social Media does not have any their own content. Users of different
Social Media provide content for the Social Media but now a day it has been a challenging issue
for a user to make standard content from where people will learn something. Maintaining
Boundaries has become a serious problem challenges now a day.
Security and privacy issues taken when Social Media services are used online
From a research, it came to know that when a person creates a password by using word and number,
it takes 4 days to break this password but if a person sets password by using word, number, upper
case and lower case and symbols, it takes 361 days to break this password so strong password
should be set to make the security and privacy policy strong (Ramzan, 2013). Sometimes users got
a request from many unknown ID and the Profile picture and the Id seems very much weird. To
avoid privacy and security problem, one should not accept weird ID. Avoiding Social Media
account for registering any third-party application or any website reduces the risks of hacking or
cybersquatting for say hackers can hack twitter account of anyone for using twitter for getting
access to the Forbes counter app.

Figure 4: Users who do not trust that social network will protect their data and information
Source: (Smith, 2017)

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Hackers have become very much shrewd with the increase in people's thinking to protract their
Social Media. They through fake account make friendship to their targeted person and when this
person adds to them they started a conversation with that person and at one phase they sent some
like to their ID and told them to click on it which is actually Malware through which hackers attack
(Morgan, 2012). So, the user should become careful when clicking on a link to avoid security
and privacy problem.

Strong
password

Keeping Avoid
phone lock werid ID

Use
Careful
privacy
when
setting of
clicking a
Social
link
Media

Figure 5: Measures of security and privacy setting

Source: (Hardwick, 2016)

Every Social Media there must have a privacy setting everyone should go to this setting and
enables all the functions which increases the security and reduces concern about the problem of
privacy for say in Facebook there is a facility of two-factor authentication meaning that if user
account has been tried to open another device except personal device will get a message and
become cautious. Most of the people like to use Social Media on Mobile phone because with one
tap they enter into the Social Media but it is very risky when his mobile has become lost because
most of the people did not like to give any sort of password, pattern or figure print.
Uses of Social Media on Business
Social Media not only uses in making friends with one another or communicating with other people
but also Social Media uses in business for expanding his growth than ever before. There are a lot
of Social Media which is used in business for say Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter,
QZone, Skype, LINE etc. Among various Social Media below section will discuss on two Social
Media such as WeChat and Snap Chat.
WeChat: WeChat is a Social Media App which is used to chat with anyone, find new friends,
buy train or plane ticket. It uses not only limited to this range but also it uses to book hotels, donate

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money to the charity, Oder foods and many more tasks just like other apps. This app is
automatically installed on maximum Android and iOS. The Chinese are the main users of this app
but this app is used on U.S.A, UK, Indian and many other countries.

Figure 6: We Chat features

Source: (Morgan, 2012)

WeChat is very much user-friendly and its design is basic as a result people do not face any type
of difficulty using this. WeChat can be used to the business sector to expand or enhance the
business such as WeChat can be used as a platform for providing advertising for say Company
can give banner ads on the bottom of the Articles.Moments ads are possible on WeChat just like
Facebook and Instagram. WeChat store can be used by the company to increase the lead of their
goods and services.

Figure 7: Top media according to users

Source: (Bates and Ciment, 2013)

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The company can use WeChat mini-programs so as to offer special promotions, share games or
conduct the business activities, for example, we can say about Chinese bike-share company Mo
bike has a mini-program that allows people to rent a bike. WeChat can be used as a medium of the
customer will answer this service to the customers (Douglas and Loader, 2013). WeChat helps a
businessman to find out the right target audience by following the digital footprint for saying
one people is searching shoe on WeChat store and WeChat track is searching behaviour and sold
this information to the shoe company and then shoe company continuously sends a message to the
customer about different shoe offers, quality etc.
Snap Chat: Snap Chat is a Social Media app just like the WeChat. It has been launched in 2011.
It allows its users to send Videos and Pictures which are automatically disappeared after a few
seconds of a person viewing them (Kerr, 2016). As Snap Chat has to make disappeared to the
Photos or videos that one share with me then it is natural to raise that question that why people use
it? Because it is there POD (point of differences) than another app. Snap Chat is not only used to
send Videos and photo but also it is used to send a fun message to others. Here a person can capture
a photo or make video and then he can add any types of Caption or doddle or filter and then send
the finished creation called Snap to a friend.

Figure 8: Snap Chat key features

Source: (Mahoney and Tang, 2015)

He can add it into the story for 24 Hours. In a few years ago Snap Chat had crossed over Facebook
on the basis of per day users. The main target Audience of Snap Chat is teenagers. Snap Chat is
not only used to send photos and Videos or message but also it is used in business. But Before
using Snap Chat you need to consider whether your business is suitable for using Snap Chat. 70
percent user of Snap Chat is Under 34 years old (Mahoney and Tang, 2015). The company can use

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Snap stories so as to promote their products to the customers because teenager and youth people
are very much enthusiastic to see stories.

Figure 9: Global Users comparison

Source: (Vogiazou, 2014)

Making stories can increase the lead of the product. Snap Chat can be used for the advertisement
of the products. There are mainly three ways of this advertisement Snap Ads, Sponsored geofilters
and sponsored lenses (Ceruzzi and Aspray, 2012). Much big company like Coca-Cola, Vans, JP
Morgan use snapchat advertisement.
Effectiveness of Social Media as Medium of Communication
Social Media has brought a revolutionary change in our everyday life. Social Media now does not
use as a source of entertainment rather now a day it uses as a medium of communication. It works
as an effective medium of communication because it helps to reduce communication gap because
it is not possible to say everything on the mouth but through Social Media, one can give any status
to express what user wanted to say or can-do message (Asamen and Berry, 2017). Social Media is
less time consuming because the user can give a status on Social Media to inform people what
one wants to say them with a very few seconds it reaches to the people online.

Figure 10: Effectiveness of Social Media as a Medium of Communication

Source: (Deetz, 2014)

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Social Media is used as a crisis communication tool because it is very much impossible to inform
others on formal media when it is emergency because formal media consumes time and money but
user can post on Social Media if he/she needs any help from others with emergency basis from this
perspective Social Media is very much effective.
Conclusion
With the passage of time, people become very much busy than ever before. They do not get enough
time to communicate with their friends or relatives but with the help of Social Media, they always
remain connected to their relatives, friends and communicate with them. Social Media not only
uses in communicating friends and relatives but also uses in business. In this 21 century, the
competition of business is very high than ever before. Now the market is open to people all over
the world. Social Media is also for the people of all over the world as a result company used Social
Media to sell their products to the people of all over the world with a very low cost. While using
social media one must be very much responsible to others so that others do not suffer any types of
problem for them and must show ethical behaviour when using Social Media.

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References
Asamen, J. and Berry, G. (2017). Research Paradigms, Television, and Social Behaviour.
Bates, C. and Ciment, J. (2013). Security and privacy issues in Social Media services. Armonk,
NY: M.E. Sharpe.
Ceruzzi, P. and Aspray, W. (2012). The Internet and European Business. MIT Press.
Deetz, S. (2014). Effectiveness of Social Media as Medium of Communication. Beverly Hills,
Calif.: Sage.
Douglas, S. and Loader, B. (2013). Cybercrime. New York, N.Y.: Routledge.
Hardwick, L. (2016). Innovations in social work research. London: J. Kingsley.
Kerr, A. (2016). The Business and Culture of Digital Games.
Mahoney, L. and Tang, T. (2015). Strategic social media.
Morgan, J. (2012). Benefits of using Social Media. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Ramzan, N. (2013). Social media retrieval. London: Springer.
Smith, M. (2017). Challenges of using Social Media. New York: Nova Science Publishers.
Vogiazou, Y. (2014). Design for the social media business. Amsterdam: IOS Press.

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