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Social media is a conglomerate of both traditional and non-traditional media. Fig.1 represents the classification of social media into traditional media and non-traditional media.
Figure 1. Classification of social media
Traditional media has further been classified into newspaper, radio and television whereas non-traditional media has been classified into frequently used web-based applications such as twitter, facebook and youtube. The growing popularity of non-traditional social media is a well-established story due to its easy access to share the contents. Web-based social media in mobile phones are the most popular technologies in recent times. One of the most prevailing factors for the phenomenal growth of e-society is due to the proliferation of internet technologies and inexpensive cost of telecom services. This may also be interpreted as follows:
*Assistant Professor, Amity University Patna
Figure 2. Linkage of internet and telecom network
Technological advancement in mobile telephony from 1G to 5G has been a very axiomatic fact and letting the users use internet services through their mobile phones and vice-versa. Fig.2 shows the inter-link between the internet and the telecom network through a gateway. This gateway integrates both the internet and telecom network in such a way that every service is now available on both the networks. Gateway technology is a major cause of the popularity of social media. Social networks also reveal information about its users which can be used to comprehend the activities of potential users. This can further be utilized in decision making for the betterment of society. Social media is very popular among students where they can share course notes, quiz answers to peers and hence, it can be a tool for social e-learning. This has led an exponential growth in the number of users using social media and creating a vast amount of content every day. The option of being anonymous through multiple fake accounts facilitates them to re-share the content for the increase in the reachability of posts. Consequently, it is also being misused to intimidate the people by exploiting the trust factor inherent within a social network. There are several incidents such as sudden flee of northeast migrants from Bangalore, Pune and Chennai (Times of India, 2012), a rumor about the earthquake in Andhra Pradesh (India Today, 2008) and ubiquity of porn. Who can say that rumors of the earthquake in Andhra Pradesh are not intentional? We can never be sure about the reasons behind the sudden flee of northeast people from south India. Wrong interpretation and manipulation of information may create chaos in society and it can be one of the reasons for social riots or political dis-balance. A socio-technical attack (STA) is a misuse of technology by malicious intent people to disrupt the social structure based on trust. They try to breach trust within the social network through social engineering, phishing or Sybil accounts. Users rarely read the privacy policy. They are unaware to react in different situations. Therefore, psychological tricks and cultural ploys are used by attackers to carry out these sophisticated STAs. These attacks are multidimensional and almost undetectable until the information is not being checked for its virality.
Characteristics of the message may be a reason for the message to be viral but it is also the structure of network which has a great impact on the message to be viral. The social network is being the most preferred platform to accelerate these kinds of attacks. Comments expressed by one user initiate other users to react causing a message to spread mouth to mouth and finally, becomes viral. Awful advertisement over social media may create unnecessary hypes, distrust and intimidation among people which leads to a serious problem like the de-stability of social structure through the spreading of fake messages.