The Popularity of Social Networking - Term Paper Example

Contents Introduction: 2 Gang presence in Social Networks: 3 Hate Speeches: 6 Narcocultura: 6 Recreational Riots: 7 Spamming and Hacking: 8 Conclusion: 9 References: 9 Introduction: The popularity of social networking is increasing day by day with the increasing population. Facebook, for example, has daily users of 757 Millions on average for December 2013, an increase of 22% over the previous year (Facebook. 2014). Individual users started replying on them and average time spent by each person in these social networking sites also been increased dramatically. The social networking sites have become indispensable for today’s generation and this has increased young criminals targeting these sites to freely communicate about their future activities and there is a strong presence of criminal activities present in these sites. Online Social Networking: Social networking websites provide web based service that enables individuals to Create a public or semi public profile in a bounded network of different users. Search users of their choice with whom they can be connected. View and traverse the list of connections made by them and other profiles mutually connected within the system (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). The very basic, often considered as the pioneer, a text only social networking system was Six Degrees (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). Success of this free site did not go unnoticed and soon other enthusiastic companies came into play. MySpace was launched after this. In addition to the profile creation and connecting with different users of choice, myspace allowed users to change the layout of their profile as a direct reflection of their personality. Sharing and listening music was also added later. Myspace was one of the most popular websites ever launched though it has several problems like openness of profile to everyone in the network. The ease of finding other people in the network had influenced the stalker to harass the victims without minimal effort. Myspace’s problems pushed many users to visit a trendier and privacy concerned website, named Facebook. At the starting of the business, facebook was targeted to the young audience, but it is focused to a broader segment of users. Facebook tried to share more information about the people from their profile and they have changed their security settings numerous times. Continuous distraction of users by new messages, or any intimation has become an annoying factor. These drawbacks have shifted the site’s once loyal users to a different social networking environment. Twitter is the latest addition to this trend. Launched in 2006, twitter soon became successful because of their distraction free method of connecting with different users in the network just by posting the message. It is now integrated to many platforms, including mobile phones and different operating systems. Twitter is an instant success and the success of twitter inspired Google to launch their social networking website named Google+. The Company has registered more than 90 million users (Barnett, 2012) in a span of a few months and its contact management and pure design has generated very positive reviews. As with many new trends on the Internet, most users are early adopters and tech enthusiasts. Gang presence in Social Networks: As the popularity of social networking have increased continuously, the prospective victims became easier to find for the criminals. It has been found that criminal gangs use social networking sites more because of two reasons: The social networking sites provide direct or indirect exposure of different users. It can could the gang to more effectively engage in criminal activities or indirectly attract victims. It has become a center of “Convergence” for different gang members. For example, street gang members from different parts of the country can easily interact through this medium. (publicsafety, 2010) Organized crime has spread to a large extent by using social networking sites. Transmission of gang culture in Europe was partially due to the culture through the Internet. Social Network Presence: Gang members are planning crimes, recruit members in their gang or challenge/threaten rivals. Gang-affiliated rapper Joseph Coleman was shot and killed due in Chicago last fall due to a deadly online warfare. Gang members use internet as a medium of widespread promotion of their reputation. As of October 2013, almost 2500 to 3000 people of Kansas City were involved in online gang activities. At present, gang members are using the social media at a constant rate of 80%, which is consistent with the usage of these social networking sites by general public. According to a study, it is found that Gang members have a tendency to engage more in criminal behavior online than the common people. Apart from threatening and harassing, the gang members also engage in things such as illegal download of files, drug sales arrangement, selling of stolen materials etc. moreover, it is found that most of the big gangs have their own websites or blogs through which they can communicate easily. They can monitor police patrols whereabouts and the security pattern and perform the criminal activities accordingly. (Rizzo, 2013) Due to lack of infrastructure to locate and identify the specific gang member(s) engaged in criminal activities, it has now become almost impossible for the police to stop these activities. More recently, twitter has become the preferred the social media site for extremists. During the siege of a shopping mall in Kenya, extremist group al-Shabab live-tweeted, defending the mass killing initiated by them, and threatened more violence. Often it is seen that extremists have spread their propaganda over the internet, gangs spread their colours, signs, themes through social media. It has been found that extremists groups, both domestic and international, are proficient in using the internet and social media as their passive weapon. In order to achieve widespread violence, the gangs need to communicate and deliver their objectives and themes to more people. After the attack in Westgate shopping mall in Kenya, Al-Qaeda inspired Somali extremist group Al-Shahab’s five different accounts were found in twitter. They were used to interact, plan the terrorist attack and for spreading widespread rumors about their possible criminal activities. After the deadly terrorist attack, twitter closed all these accounts. But shockingly, whenever an account is closed, the terrorist group creates another one and communicates using that account. The terrorist group is spreading audio statements of their leader via social media. During the mall siege, group’s twitter account spread several hate speeches accusing the government for destroying the mall. Due to involvement in social media, the accounts became more visible and unpredicted than the preceding events. (Bello and Dibilasio, 2013) Hate Speeches: Digital hate speeches have become more prominent now-a- days. It is found that twitter has helped to spur dramatic growth in online hate forums and terrorism. Observed value showed that twitter is the most preferred website for digital hate spreading and twitter needs transparent policy to reduce it’s off limits and needs to enforce the policy vigorously. Although twitter is using automated and manual system to eliminate potential staffs violating the system, it is not full proof. Simply suspending the account or reporting abuse cannot solve all the problems in a blink of an eye. (Bello and Dibilasio, 2013) Narcocultura: Future research has found that gang members use deciphered codes to transmit their matters. Often their encrypted language seems meaningless, but it carries certain illegal information or hate speech. Social media is often used by gang members for online recruitment of members. The gangs spread violent message or any message that portrays ethnic oppression in a code easily understandable by other gang members of different locations. New evidence has shown that criminal organizations like Mexican Drug Cartels are using social networking sites to change and modify the social environment in which they thrive (Sullivan & Bunker, 2011). Popularly known as Narcocultura, its main objective is to gain social recognition and establish a social legitimacy of the cartels in the mindset of diversified population. Recreational Riots: Recreational riots are often used in case of the illegal digital activities carried out by Irish Gangs. In Ireland, recruiting new members to increase the gang size and bullying others is done prominently by twitter and MySpace (Kelley, 2009). Social networking sites are often used by gangs to trick their potential enemies. Videos of criminal activities are recorded and spread globally via video hosting websites, images of criminal activities are often put up on the blog to encourage other gang members and to frighten common people as well as enemies. Criminals use social media to convey a message of justice different from the procedural injustice followed by the society. A classic example is: a judge has increased the sentence of a woman convicted of killing someone driving. It is found that there was not single significant evidence that would suggest that the woman was intoxicated at the time of driving. It was because of the uploaded online pictures of that girl drinking excessively in a party has changed the perception of the judge and her image has influenced her increased sentence (Weatherford. 2011). The reduced level of privacy in Facebook has become a goldmine for the extremist group to search, find and attack soft targets. Private information is often shared publicly without the knowledge of the user’s consent, and this serves as a serious disadvantage. The number of followers in twitter is very high and continuous monitoring of all these followers is a tough task to deal with. Thus information broadcasting became easier and twitter is the most used social networking site by every terrorist groups. Spamming and Hacking: Another criminal activity is the online spamming. Spam is illegitimate link posted by hackers or crackers to access the system used by a potential target. Hackers and criminal groups have started to post different spam links in the social sites. Once the user gets influenced by the links and opens it out of curiosity, it automatically redirects to some other websites prepared by hackers for spreading malwares, and once the malware gets loaded in the victim’s computer, hackers can easily access their details and do any kind of damage. For example, Chinese hackers have hacked certain American websites and micro blogging sites recently. Tightening up internet securities does not have significant influence on these activities. The FBI has started necessary investigations, and it is found that most of the hackers have direct influence from Chinese Government and their military. The small growing sectors and industries are the worst affected of this attack. This was an approach to bring down the image of the intellectual properties owned by the American Government. For example, in the year 2010, a California based clinical care unit had experienced sudden irregularities in their daily operations. They thought that the system may be encountering an unknown problem. The clinic’s website crashed almost daily, deleting all patient data and disrupting the whole healthcare operation. Later it was found that it was part of a hacking attack conducted by a hacker group from foreign countries and the whole operation was planned long before in a social networking site. It became difficult for the clinic to overcome from the sudden attack, and it has taken a lot of time to reset back to its previous status (Smith, 2013). Latest data shows that spammers posting links on Facebook fan pages to redirect the users in a spam website containing malicious staff has resulted in earning $200 million a year. The URL of the spam sites are hidden by using legitimate link shortening service sites and it enables the spammers to track the number of clicks performed by the users on the spam link (Arthur. 2013) Conclusion: There is no doubt that illegal activities performed by gangs in social networks are increasing significantly due to the increase in graphic and violent content in these sites. The generic profile used by users is often false in nature, and it can be smartly used by the extremist group to infiltrate into the secured system of the potential victim. Some gangs want to share their information as a part of their plan, inspite of considering it as a complex process. To stop these ever increasing activities, automated monitoring system must be provided to collect data that can identify a possible trend of future criminal incidents. References: Facebook. (2014). “Investor Relations”. from : http://www.copyscape.com/prosearch.php Boyd, D., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship.” Journal of Computer Mediated Communication. 13. Barnett, E. (2012). “Google+ Hits 90 Million Users”. from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/9027429/Google-hits-90-millionusers.html Publicsafety. (2010). “Organized Crime Research Brief no. 13 Gangs and Social Networking”. from: http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/rgnzd-crm-brf-13/rgnzd-crm-brf-13-eng.pdf Bello. M and Dibilasio. N. (2013). “Twitter: The new face of crime”. USA Today. From: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/29/twitter-crime-dark-side/2875745/ Rizzo. T. (2013). “Most Gang Members Use Social Media, Study Finds”. Government Technology. From: http://www.govtech.com/public-safety/Most-Gang-Members-Use-Social-Media-Study-Finds.html Sullivan, J. P., & Bunker R. J. (2011). “Rethinking Insurgency: Criminality, Spirituality, and Societal Warfare in the Americas.” Small Wars & Insurgencies. 22(5), p.742-763. Kelley. M. (2009). “Gangs and Social Networks”. From: http://news.change.org/stories/gangs-and-social-networks.html Weatherford. C. R. (2011). “Judicial Sentencing Discretion Post-Booker: Are Judges Getting a Distorted View Through the Lens of Social Networking Sites?” Georgia State University Law Review. 27(3): Article 5. Arthur. C. (2013). “Facebook spammers make $200m just posting links, researchers say”. The guardian. From: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/28/facebook-spam-202-million-italian-research Smith. G. (2013). “Chinese Cyberspies Are Hacking Into America's Small Businesses, But Not For The Reason You'd Think”. From: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/05/chinese-hacking-small-businesses_n_3868981.html Read More