Research Paper on Unlock Social Media's Power: Engaging Communities to Share Ideas & Opinions

Introduction

Social media is a source of data for many companies, people and even businesses; social media is used for marketing and fun. The platform of social media creates a pleasant and conducive environment for communities to engage online. These people are attracted to each other and connect in large numbers with people who have the same preferences to theirs or even some celebrities and through this, they share the information on their ideas, opinions, and interests over specific issues also their worries and dislikes (Sue, Valerie M., and Lois A. Ritter 2012). These online platforms include Facebook, LinkedIn, pin interest, Foursquare and also twitter. This paper will address the surveys that are online and which age groups are targeted or the genders, the outcomes of these surveys.it will also address the issue of data broker, how it operates together with its effects.

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Example of a survey on social media can be conducted through the use of SurveyMonkey to identify the platforms that are preferred by your audience and community question. The studies were done on social media; the researcher will be able to get the necessary information that he or she requires concerning a particular product, person or company. Surveys that are conducted in social media aids in the strengthening of the business relationship with other businesses or people with others.

Social media surveys may be conducted by a firm to measure the satisfaction of the clients they are serving. Through social media, different clients reveal the opinions that they have concerning a given service or product that is delivered by an individual company. This opinions provided by the client's o social media are bias-free. The clients may praise the brand or even critic it. Example, the Tesla Company, may conduct an online survey to know how its clients perceive their automobile company.

Surveys that are conducted on social media can be undertaken through engaging the social media users' community this is through the use of questioning and reviews as a way of adding pleasure to the conversation (Salganik, Matthew and Levy). Most social media users love surveys that are conducted entertainingly; this is mainly for the youths, teenagers and adolescents. The surveyor can make use of elements such as love and dating survey to increase their interest in your review and will help give the right feedback you require from them.

Social media surveys are used in the identification of the customer's age and gender who are being provided with goods and services. Demographic information is collected are useful as it saves the company money time and troubles since it will be able to identify the type of people it is dealing with in terms of their age hence it will be able to put products in their platform while knowing the people being served.

Market research surveys are conducted on social media by business people for identification of prospective clients, level of competition also their expectation they have with your business .some of the survey questions used in market research survey include, how often do you use Facebook? Or how long do you use your mobile phone among others?

Survey on social media can be conducted by issuing out of questionnaires to online users such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The quizzes are used to collect data by asking questions such as how long in how a day do you use social media? How regularly do you use social media? How do you access social media? And at what time do you access social media?. With this data, a company or an individual can be capable of knowing when he or she should provide the goods he has or even get relevant information for research purposes.

These surveys that are conducted on social media at times may be harmful because it may be used by people who are pretending to be legal officers of specific organizations and sometimes impersonated people who get information from people especially the confidential data and they end up stealing properties from people (Kapelner, Adam, and Dana Chandler 2010) . For example, an individual survey can be conducted which require the people being involved in the study to give their confidential information such as passwords and pin to their personal or joint accounts.

A data broker is also referred to an information broker who is responsible for the collection of data of people from records found in the public platforms ,sites in social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram also lets chat, activities on the web browsers, reports from media and even sources that are private which include changing of records of addresses, lists of wanted people, history of the goods bought by the customers, census and the material that a user contributes to the social media platforms.

The data collected by the information broker is used in making different profiles which contains a lot of information which include the age, sex, origin, religion of a person, political stand, the investments that a person has among other relevant data which have been acquired without the knowledge of the owner. The profiles after they have been made to completion by the data broker they usually sell them to institutions that make use of them with a target of advertisement and creation of market to a specific cohort also the profile is also used by institutions to verify a person if he or she has been found in detecting fraud.

For instance, when an individual has applied for a loan, scholarship or support of any kind and the firm want to verify if the data they have been given is real they will consult the data brokers to aid in determining if the given information is reasonable hence a reduction in providing the requested service to an impostor. Similarly, these profiles created can be sold to the government departments such as CID which offers room for enforcing law assistance to outwit rules that protect concealment.

Acxiom, Equifax, or CoreLogic are some of the data brokers that are popular in the collection of individual's data without their consent. Some information brokers may purchase the information from retailers or collect it themselves through formulating interesting questions and asking them to online users who give the response immediately to the asked questions hence giving feedback and data to the information brokers (Anthes, Gary 29). Great records are accumulated despite the method used in gathering this information from innocent social media users. The information brokers do not have any link with the owners of the details they have collected; hence the majority of the people do not know that their information is being gathered.

Data brokers are very dangerous since they pose a lot of threats to individuals whom their data have been collected. The data collected from people which includes personal and financial matters which in turn can be used in ways that are wicked such as a person may use the data and do impersonation for loan acquisition or do a change in the precise details of a person and fill in false credentials (Martin, Kirsten E 14).The information collected from users may have the issue of safekeeping openings if it is given to individuals who are not authorized. Another threat could be, for instance, the data broker has a conflict with the person he or she has been asked to gather data for he or she may give false information concerning the person which can result in wrong decisions and judgment of an individual.

Conclusion

Surveys that are conducted on social media and the information brokers have a close relationship since both platforms are used in the acquisition of data from the users of social media both with their consent and at times without the knowledge of these individuals. Information gathered entails the personal data and credentials of a person. The data collected may be given to other people which in turn may be problematic because some untruthful individuals can impersonate themselves and use the information gathered in committing criminal acts.

Surveys on social media and data brokers are useful since they provide organizations and individuals with information that are useful in investigating certain people who may request for particular services or have been found committing crimes thus saving the process of investigating the person.

Works Cited

Anthes, Gary. "Data brokers are watching you." Commun. ACM 58.1 (2015): 28-30.

Kapelner, Adam, and Dana Chandler. "Preventing satisficing in online surveys." Proceedings of CrowdConf (2010).

Martin, Kirsten E. "Ethical issues in the big data industry." MIS Quarterly Executive 14 (2015): 2.

Salganik, Matthew J., and Karen EC Levy. "Wiki surveys: Open and quantifiable social data collection." PloS one 10.5 (2015): e0123483.

Sue, Valerie M., and Lois A. Ritter. Conducting online surveys. Sage, 2012.