Social Media Risks and Regulations in the Global Business Environment

This report delves into the risks associated with social media within the business environment, highlighting potential challenges such as strategic, business, regulatory, legal, and market risks. It emphasizes the impact of these risks, including fraud, intellectual property loss, and privacy violations, and discusses the difficulty in quantifying them. The report further explores government regulations, particularly in the UK, focusing on data protection, penalties for harmful content, and the establishment of regulatory bodies. The aim is to ensure the reliability of shared information, protect users, and prevent misuse, ultimately safeguarding both social media firms and their users. The report references Hamilton and Webster's work on the international business environment and Uchihira, Ishimatsu, and Inoue's research on IoT service business ecosystems in a global environment.

Global Business Environment

Table of Contents
ESSAY.............................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5
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ESSAY
Today, social media firms are playing a major role in influencing peoples lives. Everyone
wants to get associated with social media . The number of social media users have increased
from 1.47 billion in 2012 to 1.73 billion in 2013. Among fortune 500 firms, 77% have active
twitter4 accounts ,70 % have Facebook pages . Over 90% US companies now are preferring
social media for recruiting (Hamilton and Webster, 2018). Social media are nowadays helping in
branding, marketing, advertising, servicing, grievance handling and corporate communications.
Social media platforms seem attractive but there are many types of risks associated with it such
as strategic risk, business risk, regulatory risk, legal risk and market risk. These risks can lead to
serious negative consequences including fraud, intellectual property loss, financial loss, privacy
violations and failure to comply with laws and regulations. Risks in social media are difficult to
be quantified. Regulation are now being imposed by the government. Authorities has made it
important to ensure greater transparency for the themselves as well for the users of such social
media platforms by such companies. There are chances that Facebook at the scal;e where it is
present today may make some form of pollution. For this government is making norms to levy
penalties on such companies.
United Kingdom's government has also been taking initiatives for protecting people's data
such as they recently made Data protection act, in the year 2018 which actually gives the users of
such social media websites more control over the data they are sharing and posses control over
these social media firms regarding the usage of data of their users. The government there is
willing to set up an industry to make their initiative successful on a long term basis. If such
social media firms are unable to remove any kind of violent content then it may lead to heavy
penalties being paid by such companies . Also new set of regulations have been made which
include fines , blocking down of sites and senior management getting affected if these companies
fail to protect the people who are using such sites. The main aim of the Government is to make
such companies more concerned about any kind of harmful content being shared on their
platforms. Attempts are being made by the UK government to create a new regulatory body in
order to ensure that these firms are complying to such rules and regulations being formulated by
the government.
These attempts on the part of government play a very important role in protecting the
users of such social media platforms. Every information being shared by such users because of

the presence of such rules and regulations can't be misused. Also government protects spreading
of any kind of rumours . It is being ensured that whatever data is shared on such sites are relevant
and reliable (Uchihira, Ishimatsu and Inoue, 2016). Any kinds of photos, audio's or videos may
posses problem for the firm as well as the individual sharing it. Presence of such Governmental
rules and regulations protects these social media firms as well as its users.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Hamilton, L. and Webster, P., 2018. The international business environment. Oxford University
Press.
Uchihira, N., Ishimatsu, H. and Inoue, K., 2016, September. IoT service business ecosystem
design in a global, competitive, and collaborative environment. In 2016 Portland
International Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology
(PICMET) (pp. 1195-1201). IEEE.

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