The Impact of Media on Students' Perception of the Security Risks Associated With Internet Social Networking - A Case Study

From the viewpoint of cybercrime, young people represent a particularly vulnerable category of Internet users: children, adolescents and students. Young people are, undoubtedly, the most common and the most gullible users of social networks. Due to lack of education related to dangers they are exposed to on social networks, inexperienced users recklessly post information and multimedia contents on their profiles which can be misused by differently motivated Internet users. Apart from being exposed to the risk from the violation of personal privacy and misuse of personal data, young people are exposed to the risk from political or ideological manipulation. Various studies on social networks and secondary school students have been conducted in the Republic of Serbia. However, no study in this field which would look at university students has yet been conducted. The purpose of this study was to discover the extent to which students use social networking sites, but also the sources and ways students perceive online security risks associated with social networking. Study results show that the media has a dominant role in educating young people on the risks associated with social networking and that the impact of the media is greater than the impact of other educational factors such as family, school or university.