Social media "mining" is a type of data mining, a technique of analyzing data to detect patterns. Social media mining is a process of representing, analyzing, and extracting actionable patterns from data collected from people's activities on social media. Google mines data in many ways including using an algorithm in Gmail to analyze information in emails. This use of the information will then affect the type of advertisements shown to the user when they use Gmail. Facebook has partnered with many data mining companies such as Datalogix and BlueKai to use customer information for targeted advertising.[59] Ethical questions of the extent to which a company should be able to utilize a user's information have been called "big data".[59] Users tend to click through Terms of Use agreements when signing up on social media platforms, and they do not know how their information will be used by companies. This leads to questions of privacy and surveillance when user data is recorded. Some social media outlets have added capture time and Geotagging that helps provide information about the context of the data as well as making their data more accurate.
Social media has a range of uses in political processes and activities. Social media have been championed as allowing anyone with an Internet connection to become a content creator[60] and empowering their users.[61] The role of social media in democratizing media participation, which proponents herald as ushering in a new era of participatory democracy, with all users able to contribute news and comments, may fall short of the ideals, given that many often follow like-minded individuals, as noted by Philip Pond and Jeff Lewis.[62] Online media audience members are largely passive consumers, while content creation is dominated by a small number of users who post comments and write new content.[63]:78
Younger generations are becoming more involved in politics due to the increase of political news posted on social media. Political campaigns are targeting Millennials online via social media posts in hope that they will increase their political engagement.[64] Social media was influential in the widespread attention given to the revolutionary outbreaks in the Middle East and North Africa during 2011.[65][66][67] During the Tunisian revolution in 2011, people used Facebook to organize meetings and protests.[60] However, there is debate about the extent to which social media facilitated this kind of political change.[68]
Social Media footprints of candidates have grown during the last decade and the 2016 United States Presidential election provides a good example. Dounoucos et al. noted that Twitter use by the candidates was unprecedented during that election cycle.[69] Most candidates in the United States have a Twitter account.[70] The public has also increased their reliance on social media sites for political information.[69] In the European Union, social media has amplified political messages.[71]
One challenge is that militant groups have begun to see social media as a major organizing and recruiting tool.[72] The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIL, ISIS, and Daesh, has used social media to promote its cause. In 2014, #AllEyesonISIS went viral on Arabic Twitter.[73] ISIS produces an online magazine named the Islamic State Report to recruit more fighters.[74] Social media platforms have been weaponized by state-sponsored cyber groups to attack governments in the United States, European Union, and Middle East. Although phishing attacks via email are the most commonly used tactic to breach government networks, phishing attacks on social media rose 500% in 2016.[75
Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Although the terms e-marketing and digital marketing are still dominant in academia, social media marketing is becoming more popular for both practitioners and researchers. Social media marketing has increased due to the growing active user rates on social media sites. For example, Facebook currently has 2.2 billion users, Twitter has 330 million active users and Instagram has 800 million users.[90] One of the main uses is to interact with audiences to create awareness of their brand or service, with the main idea of creating a two-way communication system where the audience and/or customers can interact back; providing feedback as just one example.[91] Social media can be used to advertise; placing an advert on Facebook's Newsfeed, for example, can allow a vast number of people to see it or targeting specific audiences from their usage to encourage awareness of the product or brand. Users of social media are then able to like, share and comment on the advert, becoming message senders as they can keep passing the advert's message on to their friends and onwards.[92] The use of new media put consumers on the position of spreading opinions, sharing experience, and has shift power from organization to consumers for it allows transparency and different opinions to be heard.[93] media marketing has to keep up with all the different platforms. They also have to keep up with the ongoing trends that are set by big influencers and draw many peoples attention. The type of audience a business is going for will determine the social media site they use.[3]
Social media personalities have been employed by marketers to promote products online. Research shows that digital endorsements seem to be successfully targeting social media users,[94] especially younger consumers who have grown up in the digital age.[95] In 2013, the United Kingdom Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) began to advise celebrities and sports stars to make it clear if they had been paid to tweet about a product or service by using the hashtag #spon or #ad within tweets containing endorsements. The practice of harnessing social media personalities to market or promote a product or service to their following is commonly referred to as Influencer Marketing. The Cambridge Dictionary defines an "influencer" as any person (personality, blogger, journalist, celebrity) who has the ability to affect the opinions, behaviors, or purchases of others through the use of social media.[96]
Companies such as fast food franchise Wendy's have used humor to advertise their products by poking fun at competitors such as McDonald's and Burger King.[97] Other companies such as Juul have used hashtags to promote themselves and their products.[98]
On social media, consumers are exposed to the purchasing practices of peers through messages from a peer's account, which may be peer-written. Such messages may be part of an interactive marketing strategy involving modeling, reinforcement, and social interaction mechanisms.[99] A 2011 study focusing on peer communication through social media described how communication between peers through social media can affect purchase intentions: a direct impact through conformity, and an indirect impact by stressing product engagement.[99] The study indicated that social media communication between peers about a product had a positive relationship with product engagement.[99]
Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information, sometimes across multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory.[1][2] AR can be defined as a system that fulfills three basic features: a combination of real and virtual worlds, real-time interaction, and accurate 3D registration of virtual and real objects.[3] The overlaid sensory information can be constructive (i.e. additive to the natural environment), or destructive (i.e. masking of the natural environment).[4] This experience is seamlessly interwoven with the physical world such that it is perceived as an immersive aspect of the real environment.[4] In this way, augmented reality alters one's ongoing perception of a real-world environment, whereas virtual reality completely replaces the user's real-world environment with a simulated one.[5][6] Augmented reality is related to two largely synonymous terms: mixed reality and computer-mediated reality.
The primary value of augmented reality is the manner in which components of the digital world blend into a person's perception of the real world, not as a simple display of data, but through the integration of immersive sensations, which are perceived as natural parts of an environment. The earliest functional AR systems that provided immersive mixed reality experiences for users were invented in the early 1990s, starting with the Virtual Fixtures system developed at the U.S. Air Force's Armstrong Laboratory in 1992.[4][7][8] Commercial augmented reality experiences were first introduced in entertainment and gaming businesses. Subsequently, augmented reality applications have spanned commercial industries such as education, communications, medicine, and entertainment. In education, content may be accessed by scanning or viewing an image with a mobile device or by using markerless AR techniques.[9][10]
Augmented reality is used to enhance natural environments or situations and offer perceptually enriched experiences. With the help of advanced AR technologies (e.g. adding computer vision, incorporating AR cameras into smartphone applications and object recognition) the information about the surrounding real world of the user becomes interactive and digitally manipulated. Information about the environment and its objects is overlaid on the real world. This information can be virtual[11][12][13][14] or real, e.g. seeing other real sensed or measured information such as electromagnetic radio waves overlaid in exact alignment with where they actually are in space.[15][16][17] Augmented reality also has a lot of potential in the gathering and sharing of tacit knowledge. Augmentation techniques are typically performed in real time and in semantic contexts with environmental elements. Immersive perceptual information is sometimes combined with supplemental information like scores over a live video feed of a sporting event. This combines the benefits of both augmented reality technology and heads up display technology (HUD).
In virtual reality (VR), the users' perception of reality is completely based on virtual information. In augmented reality (AR) the user is provided with additional computer generated information that enhances their perception of reality.[18][19] For example, in architecture, VR can be used to create a walk-through simulation of the inside of a new building; and AR can be used to show a building's structures and systems super-imposed on a real-life view. Another example is through the use of utility applications. Some AR applications, such as Augment, enable users to apply digital objects into real environments, allowing businesses to use augmented reality devices as a way to preview their products in the real world.[20] Similarly, it can also be used to demo what products may look like in an environment for customers, as demonstrated by companies such as Mountain Equipment Co-op or Lowe's who use augmented reality to allow customers to preview what their products might look like at home through the use of 3D models.[21]
Augmented reality (AR) differs from virtual reality (VR) in the sense that in AR part of the surrounding environment is actually 'real' and just adding layers of virtual objects to the real environment. On the other hand, in VR the surrounding environment is completely virtual. A demonstration of how AR layers objects onto the real world can be seen with augmented reality games. WallaMe is an augmented reality game application that allows users to hide messages in real environments, utilizing geolocation technology in order to enable users to hide messages wherever they may wish in the world.[22] Such applications have many uses in the world, including in activism and artistic expression.[23]
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