Disadvantages of Social Media
In addition to the advantages of social media for people,
it still brings with it a number of disadvantages for companies and firms. Some
of these are listed below (www.theresearchpedia.com, 2015):
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The one potential risk of social networking
cited most often is that of hacking. Incidents of profiles and accounts being
hacked into are commonplace. While this could be restricted to simply playing a
practical joke on a friend, it sometimes leads to the more serious misdemeanour
of identity theft. This requires a low level of technical skill and is referred
to as social engineering. This technique banks upon the psychological aspect of
a ‘friend’ connection: the hacker uses common interests, background and
professional information (all of which are posted on profiles) to extract
sensitive information, like passwords and other details from the targeted
individual and use them to create an alternate identity. Just using simple data
like date of birth, name and location allows hackers to create fake social
security cards, driver’s licenses and ID cards. Almost 15 million Americans are
victims, either directly or indirectly, of identity theft. The surprising part
is that even though people are adequately aware of the risks, only 40% of them
manage their privacy settings (according to a survey conducted by PCWorld).
Thus investing some time on securing your account against fraudsters and
unknown individuals would prove to be beneficial in the long run.
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While social media can
help people / companies create good image, it can also be used to tarnish an
image with false claims. A viral social media post talking how a product can
cause problems can lead to huge losses to a firm. Till the time the company
realises most of the damage is done.
While social media can
help people / companies create good image, it can also be used to tarnish an
image with false claims. A viral social media post talking how a product can
cause problems can lead to huge losses to a firm. Till the time the company
realises most of the damage is done.
-
Social networking at workplace can also cause
confidentiality issues. An angry employee can use these sites to leak sensitive
information. Sensitive information may also be leaked unintentionally to public
causing financial and credibility loss for a company.
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Another potential disadvantage of social
networking at workplace is that it can easily be cause strain between
employees. For example employees of one group may comment about low level work
of another group leading to tensions between them. Employees can also show
dissent against their bosses or management on a public forum of social media
which tarnishes image of the company. Immature employees can actually get into
"social-media" fight which can spoil whole environment of a company.
-
Company’s image may also get compromised if
employees post bad comments about the company. Today prospective employees to
prospective clients everyone is on one or another social media. A negative
image (even if false) can hurt business prospects.
Social networking websites have, at times, been used for
the purpose of furthering political agendas. This has proved to be significant
disadvantage of social networking at many places. China’s blocking of Twitter
and YouTube a few months before the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square
massacre, or the use of Facebook as a medium for instigating and spreading the
message that led to riots in London, have been questioned. However these are
subjective in nature and could be interpreted in a positive light as well.
2.5. Social Media in Turkey
Recently internet particularly social media has become one
of the most indispensable means of modern social life thanks to the rapid
development of knowledge and technologies and its introduction into all walks of
life.
2.5.1. The Use of Internet in
Turkey
From a historical point of view, internet
originated with ARPA (Advanced Research
Projects Agency) army
project by America after the launch of Sputnik Satellite by Soviet Russia in
1958 (Deniz, 2001: 1). People have started to rapidly access any knowledge and
information they need thanks to the internet which offers an interactive
communication (Balcı and Ayhan, 2007: 175). Internet also offers a free, rapid
and relatively effortless access to information and knowledge can provide
service anywhere in the world (Erturhan, 2010: 1). Therefore it is inevitable
that since its introduction into our life it has been used more and more not
only in Turkey but also in the world (Cengiz and Şekerkaya, 2010: 33).
Turkey ranks the fifth as one of the
top five European countries with its 35 million users of internet. There is an
increase in the number of users of computers and internet. Three-fifth of the
population connect the internet and the percentage of the households that have
internet access is 41.6 % (Atadil, 2011: 51).
Table 3: Use of
Internet in Turkey
|
|
Population
|
Number of internet
users based on recent data
|
Penetration
(% population)
|
Increase
rate in users 20002011
|
|
|
78,785,548
|
35.000.000
|
%44.4
|
%1,650.0
|
Source:
Eröz and Doğdubay 2012: 139.
According to February report
published by IAB Turkey, the number of internet users increased 1.3 million and
is now 26.6 million in the country. The report highlights the increase in this
number and changing habits of internet use. The number of people who access
internet every day is 56.7 percent, whereas the percentage of those who use
internet once in a month dropped by 67.7 %. The demographic information of
people shows that the gender distribution of those who use internet in the last
year is male (56 %) and female 44%. This new group contains 628.000 primary
school graduates or lower level of schooling. A striking finding is that the
most noticeable increase was among the people over 55 with 20 % amounting to
1.2 million people in total. The percentage of access to internet by 12 + has
increased by 4% and become 44.3 by February 2012 (www.eticaretmag.com, 2013).
2.5.2 The Use of Social Networking Platforms in Turkey
Social media sites such as Facebook and twitter have a
large number of users in Turkey who actively use it for a variety of purposes.
The country has become one of those which use it most actively in its
neighbourhood. What follows is some descriptive statistics for use of social
media from 2014 (Kaytmaz, 2014):
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Between June 2013 and December 2013, the number
of users increased by 3% - from 33 million to 34 million.
-
Between June 2013 and December 2013, the number
of daily users increased by 5% - from 20 million to 21 million.
-
Between June 2013 and December 2013 the number
of active users in mobile phones rose from 21 million 23 million with an
increase of %9.
Between June 2013 and December 2013 the number of active
daily users in mobile phones rose from 9.5 million 12 million with an increase
of %26.
-
The 94% of the online population of Turkey use
Facebook.
Figure 6 shows that more than 11
millions of users are between 18 and 24 years old, whereas the number of users
above 55 is quite low.
Figure 7. Distribution of Facebook Users by Gender Turkey Source:
Atadil, 2011: 49.
Figure 7 shows that a majority of Facebook
users are males. More specifically, out of more than 30 millions of users in
the country 21.5 million are males and 10.5 are females.
The
most used
social media is Facebook (%94)
and Twitter
(%72)
(www.dijitalajanslar.com , 2014). What follows is the descriptive
statistics of Twitter published by SOMERA by the end of 2014: (www.digitalage.com.tr , 2014):
-
The total number of Twitter users is 11, 5
millions, whereas active number of users is 5, 6 million.
-
The number of posted tweets per second is
152.
-
The most active days on twitter are weekends (31
% of all tweets). Daily posted tweet average is 13, 1 million.
On the other hand, some
social media platforms are used and loved by many people, they are confronted
with some legal issues. For example, video sharing site, YouTube, has
officially been denied access five times (Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia, 2015).
2.6. The Relationship between Social Media and Tourism
Tourism sector is influenced by two
major factors which continuously change and increase in significance: human and
technology (Uygur, 2007: 411). Internet used in tourism today serve travellers,
potential consumers, and providers of products and service as an alternative
communication and distribution channel (Law, et al., 2004:
100).
As is known, there is not only national but also
international competition in tourism. As a result of global competition, as firms and customers travel overseas to
buy, sell or to do other types of commerce, the boundaries of markets
disappear. New global vision foresees that so that firms will have to work
worldwide rather than nationwide they need to use their core knowledge and
skills efficiently (Demirci and Aydemir, 2008: 9). Social media appears to
become one of the significant means particularly for tourism firms in the
active and efficient use of information (Eröz and Doğdubay, 2012: 138).
Social media is a concept which is in a considerably rapid
development. For this reason when creating a marketing strategy it is
inconceivable to not consider the use of social media. Social media tools facilitate
the communication with the target audience. Especially in the tourism industry,
social media forms a considerable influence at the point where potential
tourists begin on location research (Doğan, 2013: 16)
Buying behaviours among tourism
customers show that people utilize internet and social media in particular when
they deal with information research, evolution of alternatives,
selection/buying and post-buying behaviours. Regarding which products or services
are most sold online, Mediascope Europe reports, in an online shopping research
in Europe with the participation of 7008 people, that the most popular product
is flight tickets as ticked by 54% of the total research participants. This is
followed by holiday (42%). When the participants also reported that they could
change the brand of the electrical devices (%59) and holiday services (43%)
after online information research (Odabaşı and Odabaşı, 2010: 38).
Research over the last ten years shows that there has been
a skyrocketing increase in travel and tourism sector (Sigala, et al., 2012: 2).
During this period, tourism customers have become more active and have
seriously considered comments, pictures, and videos shared in social media when
they are making some buying decisions, which also shortened the process of
decision making (Bayram and Şahbaz, 2012: 354). It is now clear that the
comments made in social media influence tourists’ perceptions to a significant
extent (Lopez, et al., 2011: 642).
The increasing number of tourism
customers who use internet adds to the popularity of internet. Tourists share
the experiences, the comments, photographs, and videos with their families,
friends, tourism firms and others in social media platforms (cited in Xiang and Gretzel, 2010 by
Atadil, 2011: 32).
Thanks to social media and interaction through internet,
tourism firms reduces their communication expenses to a minimum (Williams and
Hobson, 1995: 424). In this sense, internet and social media have become a platform
where they sell and market their services and products anytime and anywhere
(Llach, et al., 2013: 23).
Milano et.al. (2011: 4) indicate that the formation of
travel experiences of tourism customers in social platforms are composed of
three stages:
-
Previous experiences: includes others’ travel
stories and offers information to the customers before they make travel
decisions.
-
Experience during travel and stay: parallel to
the developments in the information and communication experiences, tourism customers
share their real time experiences in the social media using mobile
applications.
-
Experience after travel and stay: this includes
the comments and expressed feelings after he holiday experience in social media
platforms.
Today this is no different in
Turkey. Before buying holiday services, tourism customers make use of social
media, ask questions about the destinations they will stay and visit, read and
consider the previous customers’ comments and understand the online life of the
tourism company. %93 of those who made holiday decisions go online and read
through evaluations of the destinations in Facebook and twitter pages (Hos,
2015). 
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