How News May Affect Markets' Complex Structure: The Case of Cambridge Analytica

Examining the growth in willingness to pay for digital wellbeing services on social media: A comparative analysis

In recent years, there has been a growing need for social media platforms to offer services that preserve and promote users' digital wellbeing, including better protection of personal data and balanced technology usage. However, the current business model of social media is often seen as in conflict with users' digital wellbeing. In 2020, a study investigated users' willingness to pay monetary fees for social media digital wellbeing services. In the present work, we replicated this study in Q4 of 2022, aiming to explore any changes in interest and willingness to pay for these services. In addition, we extended the replication by conducting qualitative analysis on participants' comments to gain deeper insight and identify reasons for payment and reasons for rejecting to pay. Data were collected from 262 participants through an online questionnaire. The survey focused on four services: better data protection, less use of data for marketing, aiding users in controlling their prolonged usage, and reducing fake news and radicalisation on social media. The results showed that the willingness to pay for these services was significantly higher in 2022 compared to the results published in 2020. Participants expressed concerns about the feasibility and fairness of the alternative business model, which requires users to pay for safety and support. Our findings suggest a growing interest in digital wellbeing services, emphasizing the need for social media platforms to assess the feasibility of alternative business models, identify user segments, and take measures to enhance consumers' trust, accordingly.

A Model of Perception of Privacy, Trust, and Self-Disclosure on Online Social Networks

Online Social Networks are used widely, raising new issues in terms of privacy, trust, and self-disclosure. For a better understanding of these issues for Facebook users, a model was built that includes privacy value, privacy risk, trust, privacy control, privacy concerns, and self-disclosure. A total of 602 respondents participated in an online survey, and structural equation modeling was used to evaluate the model. The findings indicate significant relationships between the constructs in this study. The model from our study contributes new knowledge to privacy issues, trust and self-disclosure on Online Social Networks for other researchers or developers of online social networks.