Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism

INFLUENCES ON SOCIAL MEDIA BEHAVIORS
Online behaviors and the perception of what is acceptable to post or not are influ-
enced by a number of factors most prominently user characteristics such as gender, 
personality and national culture, attitudes toward the service or people approaching 
them online as well as the technological setup of social media services themselves.
User characteristics
. Early studies of internet usage suggested that intro-
verted people used the internet more heavily than their more outgoing counterparts 
(
Amichai-Hamburger et al., 2002
). This is no longer the case, with social media now 
attracting people with a high level of extraversion and openness for new experiences 

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CHAPTER 15
Social media and its role for LEAs: Review and applications
(
Ross et al., 2009; Zywica and Danowski, 2008
). Especially among younger users 
there is a strong link between extraversion and heavy social media use (
Correa et al., 
2010
). In addition, heavier social media use is also linked with a higher degree of 
emotional instability, albeit only for men (
Correa et al., 2010
). Emotional (in)stabil-
ity also plays a role in the number of times and the length of time spent on social 
networking sites. Individuals who are less stable emotionally tend to spend longer 
on the sites, while more emotionally stable and more introverted users frequent sites 
more often (
Moore and McElroy, 2012
). Emotional instability further impacts the 
type of information posted. Users with a lower level of emotional stability are more 
likely to post problematic content such as substance abuse or sexual content on their 
profile, as are compulsive internet users (
Karl et al., 2010
).
Gender
impacts social media use in that women tend to use social networking 
sites for longer periods and post more photos and more comments about themselves 
than men. On the other hand, men tend to use the sites more frequently than women 
(
Moore and McElroy, 2012
).