Annotated bibliography: research sources and scholarly references

Social Media -- Annotated Bibliography

Adams, J. "Banks Use Twitter If Email's in Doubt." American

Banker, June 3, 2011: 9.

American Banker is a print periodical that was first published in 1835. It has also been published online since 1996. In 2007, the American Banker launched AmericanBanker.com as a comprehensive informational resource platform for the same public audience as targeted by its sister hard-copy publications U.S. Banker and Bank Technology News.

This article details the manner in which modern business and banking institutions have begun transitioning toward the use of social media platforms such as Twitter as a communications alternative to email communications between businesses and their customers. This shift was inspired by the increasing use of email communications by malicious entities to dupe bank customers into downloading malicious computer codes disguised as official communications from their banks. The new social media platforms allow banking institutions and other legitimate businesses a way of contacting their customers in real time to alert them to fraudulent Internet scams, especially those exploiting phishing and other techniques whereby the scammers impersonate the real email accounts of the banking institutions.

However, the article also warns of the trend toward exploitation of the very same media by malicious entities. In one case detailed by the author, hackers have already impersonated the Twitter accounts of a bank to contact customers with fraudulent messages. The implication of the article is that computer security issues will evolve to include the newer forms of social media and that they will soon be equally vulnerable to hackers as email messaging.

"The Revolution Will Be Shared: Social Media and Innovation."

Research Technology Management, Vol. 54, No. 1; (2011): 64-

66.

Research Technology Management is a professional journal intended for consumption by managers of research, development, and technology implementation. This article details the manner in which social media portals such as Twitter, FaceBook, and LinkedIn have emerged as much more than purely "social" media. Today, those communications media have become widely used by professionals in various different capacities and by professional organizations in ways that are much broader than ever imagined initially.