Assignment on Social Networking Tools in COVID’19

Q1)

Social networking tools have allowed people to find different means of staying connected and socializing through the use of blogs, video conferencing, online chatting and instant messaging, while staying at their homes. And not just youngsters, older people are also standing in this run of engaging with social apps to get latest updates about the on-going pandemic. The social nature of these tools connects people with digitalized modes and requires you to stay connected with people in order to engage or to participate or curate and communicate. Other than being effective for social engagement, these tools can prove to be powerful ways for student’s learning and their networking if we help them to show the knowledgeable and informative side of these tools. The most used apps especially during this period of quarantine are:

Instagram of Social Networking Tools in COVID’19:

It is a widely used app which is now owned by another most used networking tool i.e, Facebook. It allows people to engage more frequently and they can share their life updates and authentic and different modes of information by sharing pictures. It allows you to even post stories of your regular updates as well as the new feature of going live with other people has also enhanced the engagement on this networking tool. But still, instagram has to manage with its audience as it is still not the most used app globally and people make random accounts with random pictures that have no valid captions with it providing no useful information.

Facebook: It is considered to be the most used app by members belonging to any age group. It provides with beneficial information in its newsfeed about the current situations and the latest feature even asks you to allow authentic information about COVID’19 from WHO through facebook and also marks your safety concerns. The commentary on posts boosts the information to reach wider audience and people can get aware of their surroundings and about things getting cancelled or rescheduled.

WhatsApp: The most feasible networking tool is whatsapp that anyone can use privately without having the fear of their data being stolen. People have made different groups for staying connected all together and to keep up with the latest news discussions. WHO has also made a group on whatsapp where you can get yourself added and can get the latest news about the virus.

Twitter: Twitter holds the highest level of authenticity as twitter allows sharing views in a limited quota of words and you cannot go on with unnecessary information. All the renowned and leading personalities are considered to be using twitter and the audience there is also all mature and authentic. But not many people use twitter as compared to other networking tools so the audience is quite low on this app.

There are different challenges and opportunities that are facing in using of social media. Challenges are such as:

Ø  Due to heavy usage and load, there are privacy issues while using these tools. It is difficult to handle the big data in sudden time as people are more using these tools.

Ø  Quality of services must be improved by the applications as with the work load increase it could face some issues in the service of these tools.

Ø  The issue of fake news could not be handling in such situation and facebook still cannot overcome with false news and assumptions provides by unauthentic sources.

Ø  Maintenance of the apps is a critical task to do.

As there are some challenges in the pandemic, still there opportunities to deal with the social media apps, these are such as:

Ø  Increase revenue due to increase in the consumption of the apps.

Ø  It could increase the user list with the best opportunities.

Ø  Time to improve and introduce new features.

Ø  Better earning with existing resources

Q2): Faceboook, whatsapp as well as snapchat are the social networking tools that I use specially during this spread of virus as facobook highly supports the work of global public health community in order to keep people safe and to keep them informed of all the required details during the on-going crises of corona virus public health. Using all these apps allows an individual to get addressed with long term impacts of virus and also makes it easier for the public message to reach wider audience as the higher the engagement of a public post, the higher will be the reach to people and hence it helps communities in this time of crises. Following are the reasons why I use Facebook, whatsapp and snapchat:

·         It ensures that all of its users have an access to the accurate information without having them to come across misleading information and by removing the harmful content. These tools combat covd19 misinformation and takes actions against that by prohibiting the harmful ads that include exploitative schemes.

·         It also supports economic and especially health relief efforts by supporting donations for covid19 relief funds and has also donating a huge amount to healthcare workers that are working on the front-line. It regularly supports world health organization and runs their ads for free and also empowers those institutions that have got the realistic statistics and data.

·         Among all, facebook is keeping people connected in this social distanced time by making it easier for people to offer their help for their communities and by collaborating with pandemic handling workstations for free for people to reach emergency health organizations and whatsapp is being used to connect with the people when they can’t meet. It keeps sharing tips and reminders for user’s well-being while keeping this social networking tool safe and reliable for all.

Q3): With the emerging trend of using technological gadgets in our everyday lives, it has become viable for people to use social networking tools during this spread of virus while increasing the potential towards conducting online meetings and remote work facilities. There are many different tools to be used for such purposes like zoom, skype, webinar, conference call software and many such tools that help in keeping people connected for not just fun but also their work. There are complete lockdown in the countries but due to help of such apps like zoom and other video conferences, there is continuity in the office and education activities. These are helpful in connecting people to work and learn that could not be stop in any situation. These apps are not much costing and gives free of cost services to the user that make possible to widely used by the people to share the ideas and information. There may be some privacy or security issues but it could eb overcome by taki8ng strong measures by the users.

During this lockdown, the use of such social networking tools has rather increased and proving to be helpful for its users by providing positive modes of utilization such as promotions, sales, marketing, meetings and live streaming otherwise people used to take negative advantage of these tools. Governments should make sure that the online community should not spread negative propagandas or creating panic over the pandemic situation. These are helpful in online working, shopping as well as for learning purposes in the pandemic situation of lockdown.

In current crises and health emergency, safe and secure use of social networking tools is important especially for the sake of keeping social distancing in mind. The current situation has left no boundaries or regulations that either the employee is working from home or office as everybody is supposed to sit in-front of their screens to carry out their works. But the only difference is maintaining the security of cyber data. These social networking tools are same as internet technology as in this case, remote IT support is required to secure all data rather than having professionals who used to do that in offices and this is the reason why maintaining the same standards of cyber security and data management has become difficult to handle. And such situations makes the need of cyber security and cyber crime departments for digital world to keep the data secure and to keep it safe from hackers and spies who can ruin big companies in just seconds with their evil strategies and schemes. Governments should take protective measures especially during this lockdown where almost the whole world is going through same situation and everyone’s supposed to conduct their work from home so those users who aim at spreading panic and propagandas should be reached out and punished as people are already stressed about the on-going situation and making use of such networking tools is the only option left.