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Why social media context awareness represents a future crucial concept
in digital wellbeing
Dana Rad1, Sonia Ignat2
1Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad, Faculty of Educational Sciences, Psychology and Social
Sciences, Arad, Romania, dana@xhouse.ro
2Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad, Faculty of Educational Sciences, Psychology and Social
Sciences, Arad, Romania, soniabudean@yahoo.com
Abstract: In order to exchange knowledge and make links, billions of people around the
world use social media. Social networking helps users to engage with friends and family on a
personal basis, learn new knowledge, grow new passions, and be amused. One may use social
media at a personal level to extend experience in a specific area and develop their professional
network by interacting with other professionals. One's digital presence will make or break
anyone in today's information age; it can be the determining factor as to whether or not one
meets one's life-long aspirations. Unethical activity and social media posts may have far-
reaching effects, both professionally and personally. Posting on the Internet means the "never
forgetting," so it is important to use this medium responsibly. The social media context
awareness competence refers to a new emerging skill regarding the trust load we give to a
specific digital context we come in contact with when surfing the internet. Since it is an
emerging competence, it cannot be understood as standalone. If the digital context would not be
available, we would not develop such a competence. Being a competence, it must be defined by
three core elements: knowledge, skills, and attitudes, just as we operationalized the competence
of social media context awareness in terms of: Social media literacy, social media
communication process understanding, social media content impact awareness, and social media
confidence. The key finding of this analysis is that awareness of the context of social media is an
evolving digital skill that can be empirically evaluated and then taught to individuals for a
sustainable understanding of the socio-digital world who have not acquired this critical skill.
Keywords: social media context awareness, digital wellbeing
1. Introduction
Most of us trust our social connectivity and well-being on common social media sites. In
linking us to our families, family, and acquaintances, these networks do a wonderful job. The
level of access they have is simply so high that all of us unknowingly reach a level of hyper-
connectivity that keeps us from connecting with someone else who is not even on our social
network. People exchange similar encounters with us in our local surroundings. Users have more
in common, and even more opportunities to communicate, with those in their near proximity.
Unfortunately, most of these persons are not already on the social network, so there are
typically missing chances to connect with them. To become context-aware, social media
platform must evolve.
The value of context-aware social media sites is quickly understood by all consumers,
and this pattern is projected to expand rapidly in the future.
The information/digital era of today provides widespread social media use. Social media
use is omnipresent and ranges through all age groups, social backgrounds and communities. The
expanded use of such media, however, is followed by privacy challenges and ethical issues. This
privacy challenges may have professional, personal and security consequences that are far-
reaching. Ultimate protection is very complicated in the social media domain since these media
are meant for knowledge sharing. Social network engagement allows individuals to ignore some
personal privacy restrictions, resulting in certain insecurity. In this environment, lax individual
privacy protections have resulted in unethical and unacceptable activities resulting in violations
of privacy and security, notably for the most vulnerable community of users.
One's digital presence will make or break anyone in today's information age; it can be the
determining factor as to whether or not one meets one's life-long aspirations. Unethical activity
and social media posts may have far-reaching effects, both professionally and personally. Posting
on the Internet means the "never forgetting," so it is important to use this medium responsibly.
The unethical use of social media has privacy consequences that can both literally and
virtually lead to security breaches. As certain users are required to provide information that they
would not reveal otherwise, the use of social media will also result in the lack of privacy. The
use of social media can expose information that, if not adequately handled by consumers, can
result in privacy infringement. Therefore, to warn users about the hazards and pitfalls of sensitive
information disclosure in this space, and encouraging awareness in the protection of individual
privacy represents an important asset in future social media. This could lead to a decline in the
dishonest and reckless use of the media and encourage a healthy societal climate. Regardless of
race, culture, religious affiliation and social class, the use of social media should be regulated by
moral and ethical values that can be applied equally and result in harmonious relationships.
Review of the literature and the results of this study indicate that it is very difficult in a
networked environment to obtain appropriate standards of privacy and would take a lot of
commitment on the part of individuals. The main social media user groups remain ignorant of the
mechanisms needed to reduce the risk level of their personal data. Therefore, the social duty of
these social networking sites is to inform people about the possibility of engaging in social
media. Adapting universally ethical practices will mitigate the increase in the amount of social
networking space privacy breaches. If adhered to by social media users and operators of these
sites, this concept will increase visibility among unsuspecting users, minimize unethical
connections and unintended events that could have a detrimental effect on privacy and expand
protection in this domain.
In order to be continuously exposed to social content, such as microblogging alerts,
ambient awareness refers to the awareness of social media users of their online network. While
each individual bit of information can sound like random noise, it may accumulate a cohesive
reflection of social others with their incessant receipt. Ambient knowledge of public social media
has not been empirically analyzed considering its increasing prevalence and major consequences
for social media research (Levordashka, A., & Utz, S., 2016).
2. Social media context awareness scale
The digital world and its mechanics are a vast one and our focus in this article, from the
entire digital context, will be the social media part and how users interact with it. Social media is
represented by the use of technologies (i.e., personal computers, smart phones, tablets) that
facilitate the production or sharing of content (Benkler, Y., 2006) Common features that can be
found through social media platforms are represented by: Content created and shared by users
(i.e., comments, ideas, photos, and videos) and by social networking (Fuchs, C., 2014)
In this paper, we will concentrate on social media context awarenwss: the ability to
access social media information, awareness of the production and distribution of social media
content, awareness of third-party social media apps, and the ability and desire to create and
distribute social media content.
The ability to access information on social media can be important and practical for an
individual if he or she is looking for a job or career (Kane, G.C. et al., 2011). For example, a
social media platform such as LinkedIn can offer various processes (i.e., keyword searches or
information feeds) to obtain information regarding career opportunities (Kane, G.C. et al., 2011).
Another practical implication for the ability to access information on social media that can be
important for an individual is if he or she is looking for travel opportunities. For example, social
media platforms that focus on traveling and tourism can offer significant information (i.e., cost
comparisons, user reviews, housing services, locations, shared photos, and videos) to users
regarding traveling opportunities (Parra-López, E. et al., 2012).
The social media context awareness competence refers to a new emerging skill regarding
the trust load we give to a specific digital context we come in contact with when surfing the
internet. Since it is an emerging competence, it cannot be understood as standalone. If the digital
context would not be available, we would not develop such a competence. Being a competence,
it must be defined by three core elements: Knowledge, skills, and attitudes, just as we
operationalized the competence of social media context awareness in terms of: Social media
literacy, social media communication process understanding, social media content impact
awareness, and social media confidence (Rad, D. et al, 2020).
Based on previous research (Rad, D. et al, 2020), we define social media context
awareness as an emerging digital skill referring to the understanding of the social media
environment in which a specific event takes place, acknowledging the impact that the perceived
social media context has over the observer, rationalizing the social media informational
undergoing process, and owning confidence for social media acting.
Consequently, authors have operationalized the competence of social media context
awareness in terms of digital literacy, digital communication process understanding, digital
content impact awareness, and digital confidence. This study begins to fill this research gap by
designing and validating a short version of the social media context awareness scale that can be
used for general assessment (Rad, D. et al, 2020).
The emergence of the four constructs of digital literacy, digital communication process
understanding, digital content impact awareness, and digital confidence creates a need for
explicit measures of social media context awareness, with regards to the principle of consistency
in digital behavior; some researchers consider acting to be consistent across social media
(Preeshl, A., 2019) If behavioral consistency refers to people’s tendency to behave in a manner
that matches their past decisions or behaviors (Albarracín, D., Wyer, R.S., Jr., 2000) the digital
behavioral consistency refers to the same tendencies, but in the digital environment.
With the purpose of designing and validating a new scale of social media context
awareness (SMCA), authors have operationalized the emerging digital skill as a confluence
between four key components: Social media literacy, social media communication process
understanding, social media content impact awareness, and social media confidence, in a
preliminary attempt to uncover concepts association as a valid and reliable four factors scale.
The following four research items were used:
For social media literacy assessment, the research used Item 1. On a one to five scale
where 1 stands for strongly disagree, 2 for disagree, 3 for neither agree nor disagree, 4 for agree,
5 for strongly agree, please rate how much you agree with the following sentence: I’m able to
access the information and content I want on social media.
For social media communication process understanding assessment, the research used
Item 2. On a one to five scale where 1 stands for strongly disagree, 2 for disagree, 3 for neither
agree nor disagree, 4 for agree, 5 for strongly agree, please rate how much you agree with the
following sentence: I understand how people create and spread messages on social media.
For social media content impact awareness assessment, the research used Item 3. On a
one to five scale where 1 stands for strongly disagree, 2 for disagree, 3 for neither agree nor
disagree, 4 for agree, 5 for strongly agree, please rate how much you agree with the following
sentence: I understand the role social media websites/apps play in shaping the information and
content I see.
For social media confidence (m = 3.45, SD = 1) assessment, this research used Item 4.
On a one to five scale where 1 stands for strongly disagree, 2 for disagree, 3 for neither agree nor
disagree, 4 for agree, 5 for strongly agree, please rate how much you agree with the following
sentence: I’m confident creating and sharing my own social media messages.
A reliability analysis was carried out (N = 206) on the social media context awareness
scale comprising four items referring to social media literacy “I’m able to access the information
and content I want on social media” (m = 3.79, SD = 1), social media communication process
understanding “I understand how people create and spread messages on social media” (m = 3.77,
SD = 0.9), social media content impact awareness ”I understand the role social media
websites/apps play in shaping the information and content I see” (m = 3.88, SD = 1), and social
media confidence “I’m confident creating and sharing my own social media messages” (m =
3.45, SD = 1). Cronbach’s alpha coefficient proves that the questionnaire achieves reasonable
precision, α = 0.87. Our rotated component matrix showed that the first component is measured
by Item 4, therefore, we interpret component 1 as “social media confidence”. After interpreting
all components in a similar fashion, we arrived at the following descriptions: Component 1—
social media confidence; Component 2—social media communication process understanding;
Component 3—social media literacy; Component 4—social media content impact awareness. In
conclusion, results obtained support the statistical robustness of our SMCA scale (Rad, D., et al,
2020).
3. Conclusions and implications
The key finding of this analysis is that awareness of the context of social media is an
evolving digital skill that can be empirically evaluated and then taught to individuals for a
sustainable understanding of the socio-digital world who have not acquired this critical skill.
It is clear that no one in this new environment can control the flow of information while
effectively managing the flow of information. The freedom of user access to news is one of the
characteristics that distinguishes social media from the media, in which social media users select
whatever content and information they want in this scenario.
Similar to conventional media, a culture needs to absorb the news transmitted by a tv
network, for instance, TV news. Meanwhile, users of internet accounts can opt to read the
content they want on social media, and they can also choose which details to post. It's not easy
though, as it relates to the personal experience of a social network user.
Of course, the exchange of information will operate very easily with easy access to social
media (Daneels, R. et al, 2017). It is possible to quickly disseminate and share any data online.
Preventive intervention on the basis of this knowledge is needed. Nevertheless, we must then
find out whether or not the material just mentioned is right, whether or not the chain of events
coincides with reality, or whether or not the meaning of the material has recently been gained.
More importantly, media literacy will commence at a local level, similar to other major
initiatives, where parents, educators, and educated individuals came to understand that if media
were to play a vital role as a child mentor, children would still need to find a way to filter
knowledge such that wise choices would be made in accordance with relevant cultural norms.
Formal education is a means of helping young people question their options and begin to
criticize the values represented by the media, not merely repression or influence.
While globalization has helped international culture, for the sake of young people's
minds, security against the dissemination of information on social media is still needed, as young
people, especially students, are highly interested in new content on social media. There will be
no concern, since all the disseminated material is relevant for young people. However, given that
world news also discusses issues such as terrorism, hedonistic behaviors and, thus, a certain
climate of diplomatic force projection that can easily disrupt young people's views, a certain
effort must be made to ensure that all materials and awareness available to young people is
protected. There is no mechanism to ensure that further effort is done without encouraging the
young people themselves. The awareness of social media will be a significant answer to this, as it
will allow young people to be aware of the impact of social networking and the new information
created by globalization. In order to prevent the deterioration of our young people's views by bad
content, we should intentionally regulate the flow of information and efficiently participate in the
creation of regulations on the use of emerging technology. It is also very important to ensure that
by developing their social media awareness skills, the young generation is fully capable of
processing and organizing the information given to them. Furthermore, how will this desiderate
be accomplished if the extent of social media context knowledge of the persons is not measured
first?
People are now able to express sufficient social media awareness with the technical and
socio-cultural characteristics of modern media (Lin, T.-B., et al., 2013; Chen, D.-T., et al, 2011).
Centered on Chen et al. (2011)'s two-continuous (consuming-prosuming and functional-critical)
structure, we proposed four fine-grained indexes to reflect the definition of knowledge of the
meaning of social media. Alternate methods of examining the building factor of social media
context understanding may be sought for more study. The goal of a digital context awareness
scale is therefore important to self-rate the level of digital literacy.
We expect the principle of understanding of the social media context to be a major
mediator in partnerships involving the use of emerging technologies and its effect on individuals
and societies' general well-being indexes.
Only for the last 10 to 15 years has the study of social network psychology existed, which
correlates specifically with the emergence of social media. As a consequence, the study being
carried out is only in its early stages. Researchers pointed to the shortcomings of their own
approaches in virtually all the academic papers used in this guide so that subsequent research
could better examine them.
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