A Social Network Analysis (SNA) Study On Data Breach Concerns Over Social Media

Abstract

In the current era of digital devices, the concerns over data privacy and security breaches are rampant. Understanding these concerns by analyzing the messages posted on the social media from linguistic perspective has been a challenge that is increasing in complexity as the number of social media sites increase and the volume of data increases. We investigate the diffusion characteristics of the information attributed to data breach messages, first based on the literary aspects of the message and second, we build a social network of the users who are directly involved in spreading the messages. We found that the messages that involve the technicalities, threat and severity related security characteristics spread fast. Contrary to conventional news channels related posts on social media that capture wide attention, breach information diffusion follows a different pattern. The messages are widely shared across the tech-savvy groups and people involved in security-related studies. Analyzing the messages in both linguistic and visual perspective through social networks, researchers can extract grounded insights into these research questions.