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RUSSIAN LAW JOURNAL Volume XI (2023) Issue 12s
PHENOMENOLOGY OF USERS' DYSFUNCTIONAL BEHAVIOR IN SOCIAL
MEDIA
AMIRHOSSEIN ZARANDOUZ1, ZAHRA ALIPOUR DARVISHI2* ZOHREH DEHDASHTI SHAHROKH3
MOHAMMAD HAGHIGHI4
1 PhD candidate in marketing management, Tehran North branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran. [email protected]
2 Associate Professor, department of business management, Tehran North branch, Islamic Azad
University, Tehran, Iran. [email protected]
3 Full Professor, department of Business management, Allameh Tabatabei University, Tehran North branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran. [email protected] 4Associate Professor, department of business management, Tehran-North Branch Islamic Azad
University, Tehran, Iran. [email protected]
Abstract
The increasing popularity of social media over the past decade has caused the population of these media users to be defined as the size of a large continent. Given the communicative nature of social media, these communications sometimes occur positively and correctly with favorable and desirable outcomes. However, these communications sometimes occur negatively and abnormally, referred to as online dysfunctional behavior. The present study explains the meaning of dysfunctional behavior in the context of social media and what and how these behaviors are. Smith's interpretive phenomenological method was used to achieve this goal. The sample size was determined at 11 people based on theoretical sampling among social media celebrities who had public reputations. The data were collected using a semi-structured interview method. The interview analysis resulted in the identification of 3 primary themes (actions and reactions without proactive and retrospective awareness, aggressive behavior with impersonation, and acting out of accumulated mental disorders) and 6 sub-themes (lack of media and technological literacy, cultural poverty, anonymity, online anger, intolerance of success of others, and inferiority complexes). Online dysfunctional behavior has a semantic affinity with activism without awareness, aggressive behavior with impersonation, and acting out of disorders.
Keywords: Dysfunctional behavior, Social media, Abnormality, User behavior, Virtual social action
1-INTRODUCTION
Social interactions are considered the core of society. Hence, people in society strive to achieve their goals by increasing their social connections. In other words, people seek to speed up their interactions through social connections. These social interactions are discussed at the macro level. However, studying smaller communities under the title of "network society" has gained increasing importance in recent years as this communication network forms people's informal relationships. One of these network communities is virtual social media, which is nowadays used as simply as the concept of real communities. This concept was proposed by Reingold in 1993 for the first time. According to him, virtual communities are the same social groups on the Internet that form an informal network by sending and receiving messages. The use of new communication technologies, especially social media, has brought human life into a new era over the last decade. Social media is one of the most demanding new technologies that have affected all aspects of the personal and social life of users (Karimian, Afshani, Parsamehr, 2016). Nowadays, social media has become a base where people freely share their opinions, interests, and thoughts. In other words, these media are a place for meeting several billion users who exchange information regardless of borders, language, gender, and culture (Memar, Alipour, Khaksar, 2012).
Based on the official statistics until the end of 2022, the Internet penetration rate in Iran is 113% (134 million subscribers) (IRNA, 2022). The number of Iranian Instagram users increased
significantly to 48 million people in 2022, while this statistic was 24 million people in 2017. It means that their number has increased by two times in 4 years. More detailed examinations indicate that the follower of top users, including celebrities and Instagram influencers, has increased significantly compared to ordinary users of this program. Based on the reports, the number of followers of celebrities has reached 5 to 10 times during the last two to three years. Out of 48 million users, some Instagram pages have more than 3 million followers. The users of this social network produce more than one billion pieces of content annually, which is a significant figure compared to Telegram and Twitter. The level of influential users is a point that should be considered regarding the Instagram program. Investigations suggest that there are more than 7 thousand Iranian accounts with more than 500 thousand followers. Regarding other social networks, the number of influencers is significant on Twitter or Telegram.
In addition to Instagram, there are popular social networks like Telegram, WhatsApp, and Twitter. However, Instagram is particularly popular owing to the presence of celebrities. However, these media have also been used by users after the adoption of new media policies to support internal messengers and social networks. The most popular of them are Rubika, Bale, and Eitaa (Beta Research Center, 2022). Owing to the extensive use of smartphones in recent years, it has become possible to install and use various social media applications in the shortest possible time. This issue has caused small media to become the life center of the networked world (Rasmussen, 2014). Additionally, thanks to the ease, attractiveness, and availability of these media in the world and Iran, they have been used addictively. In this regard, Sheldon (2015) believes that it is impossible almost for all people to completely stop using social media due to the type of society we live in. The cornerstones of social media are user-generated activities, such as sharing content, commenting, messaging, befriending, and collaborating with users. This behavioral activity implicitly reveals users' preferences, interests, and relationships. For example, the process of "liking" or "disliking" on YouTube indicates these implicit preferences, or reposting a tweet on Twitter means sharing interests. In other words, social media service providers can improve their system's personalization module to improve user experience by understanding users' behavior in these media. Digital marketers can use user preferences and interaction patterns to spread their content quickly and extensively (Beneveoto et al. 2001). Also, learning traffic patterns by Internet service providers on social media websites can guide traffic optimization in their infrastructures (Jin et al., 2013). User interaction in social media has numerous advantages and disadvantages. Regardless of the communication issues, one of the advantages of these media is the socialization of users, which provides the conditions to create and deepen relationships, express feelings, and become familiar with new people. However, in addition to the disadvantages of these media such as the addiction in use, the possibility of creating a wrong image in interactions, and misunderstanding of messages, we can refer to the dysfunctional behavior of users. With the presence of celebrities and influential people in social media, the interest of users to work in these media has increased exponentially. People can communicate with any person and with any degree of fame directly and without distance. This issue may seem desirable at first glance. However, based on the network communities in social media, the behaviors will not be just normal and correct behaviors and people can attack the owners of user accounts explicitly with different intentions and motivations (Perry, 2015).
The increasing use of social networks has caused a large number of users, especially famous people, to be exposed to violence, harassment, aggression, and dysfunctional behavior of some users (Patton et al., 2014). The users' freedom of expression and dissemination of information in social media has been significantly improved and we have not experienced such quantitative and qualitative growth before (Seidman, 2013). However, many social media platforms are also the primary platforms for the dysfunctional behaviors of users (Suler, 2004). These dysfunctional behaviors lead to a high level of conflicts in social media such as attacks on user accounts (Hu et al., 2013; Lee et al., 2010), cheating (Gupta, 2013; Ghash, 2012), and rumors (Friggeri et al., 2014; Zhao et al., 2015), which may result in several harms to user experience and even society. For example, group attacks on different brands on Instagram cause irreparable damage to brands (Lee
et al., 2010; Brown et al., 2008; Jagatik et al., 2007). Fake accounts on Twitter or Instagram intentionally post deceptive comments to mislead potential customers for profit or reputation (Fei et al., 2013; Mukherjee, 2013). It has been observed that offensive behavior on Twitter significantly affects the outcome of political campaigns (Ratkiewics, 2011; Ferrara, 2016; Pfattheicher and Snyder, 2016). The rumors spread deliberately during extensive emergencies and disasters (for example, rumors that are heard during an earthquake or an explosion in one part of the country), can cause anxiety, panic, and insecurity for the entire society (Gupta et al., 2013; Friggeri et al., 2014; Imran et al., 2014). Both real and virtual dysfunctional behaviors are associated with deep harm. However, owing to the often anonymous nature of people with dysfunctional behavior on social media, the type of harm caused by dysfunctional behavior in the virtual space has deeper impacts. Since it is possible to access social media via mobile phones more easily, the level of involvement of users with these media is addictive. For most users, certain types of actions and activities become obsessive-compulsive disorders after using social networks for a while. These temptations consider all kinds of dysfunctional behavior as normal and a significant part of the active user community ignores the behaviors that are considered abnormal, after a while. The consequence of this group's dysfunctional behavior is closely associated with the concept of social contagion. It means that dysfunctional behavior spreads to a significant part of this network by the network effect.
The dysfunctional behavior in social media, given the extent of its use and significance, may cause a crisis for users and at a higher level for the country. The spread of such behaviors may cause the loss of trust and confidence of other users in the social media environment. The loss of trust and confidence will have deep financial and sociological consequences. Thus, it is necessary to identify the roots of online dysfunctional behavior so operational solutions can be prepared to control and manage this phenomenon. Accordingly, online dysfunctional behavior is considered a part of the research problem. It can be stated that dysfunctional behavior in social media is a new topic and has great appropriateness with the context of Iran's virtual space users. Thus, the lack of research literature and not addressing this phenomenon by management researchers indicate a knowledge and insight gap regarding online dysfunctional behavior. Thus, the present study explores the meaning of the dysfunctional behavior of users in the social media environment.
2. THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS 2.1. ONLINE DYSFUNCTIONAL BEHAVIOR
Some online behaviors may not be highly effective from the behavior viewpoint. However, if this slight deviation occurs in a group can cause an epidemic of inappropriate behaviors. Thus, we focus on behaviors that are not serious criminal acts but are incompatible with the norms accepted by the public people in making a distinction between the two concepts of online crimes and online dysfunctional behavior. The majority of the early studies on dysfunctional behavior were conducted in offline and "real-life" environments. For example, Fullerton and Punje (1997) define inappropriate consumer behavior as "behavior that violates accepted norms in shopping situations" and includes activities such as not observing queues to verbal harassment of salespeople. Also, Vardi and Wiener (1996) define dysfunctional behavior as "any intentional action that violates the basic norms of the organization and society."
A coherent literature has not yet been created about committing dysfunctional behavior in the online environment. However, different terms and concepts have been generated by academic experts in new media. Generally, online dysfunctional behavior is defined as dishonest, destructive, or deviant online activities and actions. Regarding more serious examples of cybercrime, Freeston, and Mitchell (2004) highlighted a range of online "abnormal behaviors" and "violations". Palesh ' Saltzma and Koopman (2004) talked about the "illegal use of the Internet". Dowland, Furnell, Illingworth; Reynolds (1999), and Reynolds (2006) referred to a range of Internet-based "suspicious performances". Similarly, there is an emerging interest in industrial and organizational psychology regarding "deviant computer use" and "unproductive computer use" in the workplace (Mastrangelom, Everton, Jolton, 2003).
In other words, any behavior outside the boundaries of normal behavior will be considered dysfunctional behavior. Several terms have been mentioned for such behaviors. The most important of them are behavioral deviance, unproductive behaviors, and antisocial behaviors (Appelbaum et al., 2007). In other words, dysfunctional behavior has three primary characteristics: 1) They are intentional and 2) They ignore and violate the customs, rules, and norms accepted by the society 3) they impose significant obvious and hidden costs on the society (Robinson and Bennett, 1995). However, any behavior that violates the norms is not dysfunctional, and the criterion is a social threat. For example, a person who shares a lot of photos of himself in his user account does not harm society and is not considered dysfunctional behavior (Salmani and Radmand, 2009) (Yousaf M, et al., 2021). Managing the dysfunctional behavior of users in social media has nowadays become one of the primary concerns of administrators of virtual space since such behaviors can endanger the mental and social health of a society. These behaviors, ranging from sexual harassment to vandalism, group attacks on pages, and spreading rumors, are abnormal behaviors that will have negative impacts in the online environment and, consequently, in the real or offline environment.
3-METHODOLOGY
The present study is based on qualitative methodology. It was conducted by the interpretive phenomenology method. Phenomenological research is inherently qualitative and includes a set of interpretative methods that seek to decode and discover experiences. Phenomenological research is inductive and theories are obtained by interpreting the experiences of the studied people. The study aims at providing an in-depth interpretation to understand the nature of an experience. An interpretative theory is developed by asking questions about the mental perceptions of the study participants instead of trying to prove or disprove a theory (Moradi, Sadeghi, 2014). The most common method to collect data in the interpretive approach is a semi-structured interview. This interview model allows the researcher to pose the primary issues in a real and flexible environment and the researcher can ask different questions (Petkovich and Smith, 2012). This method was used to collect data in this study. Since the present study aims at exploring the lived experience of different interpretations of the dysfunctional behavior of users in social media, the issues related to gender, age, and education level did not play a role in the selection of the people. For this reason, the questions asked in the interview sessions were:
- What is dysfunctional behavior in social media?
- Explain how dysfunctional behavior occurs in social media?
To conduct this study, since the subject of online dysfunctional behavior is considered an emerging phenomenon, we should look for people who have experience in dealing with a wide range of abnormal and dysfunctional behaviors. For this reason, we performed interviews with celebrities on the social networks. We considered two criteria. First, they should be famous in society and the users of their accounts can easily recognize these people. Second, they should have the experience of dealing with users with dysfunctional behavior. Finally, among the people who could potentially be interviewed, 11 celebrities were interviewed. In other words, the statistical population of this study included celebrities on social media. Table 1 shows the general characteristics of the interviewees. To protect the privacy of the respondents, pseudonyms were selected for them.
Row Name Celebrity characteristics Number of followers
1 Reza Sadeghi Singer 4.2 million
2 Ehsan Alikhani TV presenter 3.8 million
3 Ali Zia TV presenter 2 million
4 Sogol Mashayekhi psychologist 528
thousand
5 Ali Zandvakili Singer 1.6 million
6 Hamidreza Mohtashmipour Instructor 200 thousand
7 Ehsan Karami Actor 1 million
8 Reza Sadeghpour football manager 100 thousand
9 Resalat Bouzari TV presenter 100 thousand
10 Bijan Abdul Karimi University professor 150 thousand
11 Mohammad Reza Zaeri Clergy 250 thousand
As shown in the table above, 11 people, including 10 men and 1 woman, participated in this study. The criterion of their selection is the number of their followers, which the minimum follower was considered to be 100000 followers. Smith and Osborn's (2007) interpretive analysis method was used for data analysis. Its goal is a clear interpretation of people's perceptions, feelings, and experiences about the subject of study. According to Smith et al., interpretative phenomenology includes 6 steps as follows:
• Reading the interview texts
• Initial noting
• Development of emergent themes
• Examining connections between themes
• Analysis of cases
• looking for the pattern
Thus, in this article and based on the requirements of the interview, the six steps for the analysis of interpretive phenomenology can be summarized in the following three steps, which can be described as follows:
The first step: a detailed study of the interviews and primary titling of approaches based on themes The second step: examining the relationships between the approaches and their integration based on the conceptual affinity of the concepts
The third step: Selecting the title of approaches based on scientific frameworks. Guba and Lincoln's (1994) evaluation method was used to ensure validity and reliability in qualitative research. For this purpose and based on this method, four criteria of credibility, transferability, consistency, and confirmability are considered for evaluation. To increase credibility, the researcher took the following measures:
1-Reviewing by the members of the research team: the components and concepts were considered by the members of the team and the final opinions were extracted.
2- Checking by experts: in this step, the opinions of experts in the field of sociology of social media and marketing about categories and concepts were received.
Also, two university experts who did not participate in the study were consulted to obtain the transferability of the extracted categories and components. In all steps, to create confidence, research details and notes were recorded. Using these recorded files after each interview, the interview questions were checked and the gaps that may be filled with smaller questions were revealed to the researcher. The results were used in the next interview, which increased the reliability of the measurement tool.
4-RESULTS
This section presents a thematic analysis of respondents' opinions. Here, the primary themes obtained from the analysis and the categorizations of the interviews are presented and parts of the
text of the interviewees in this study are reported according to them. If needed, additional explanations were provided about them.
Primary themes Sub-themes
action and reaction without proactive and retrospective awareness Lack of media and technological knowledge cultural poverty
Aggressive behavior with the impersonation Anonymity online anger
Acting out of accumulated mental disorders Intolerance of the success of others Inferiority complex
In the first section, we describe the theme of lack of awareness. 4-1- Action and reaction without proactive and retrospective awareness
Many of our behaviors are unconscious and, more correctly, involuntary, and forced. However, since man has intelligence, his or her behavior should also have awareness and insight. Such awareness is especially necessary to prevent the occurrence of abnormal and dysfunctional behaviors. Having awareness and insight regarding one's and others' behaviors overshadows forced and involuntary behavior and increases human control over actions, and creates a better meaning of will and choice in the mind of a person. By increasing one's awareness of the causes of self and others' behavior, he or she will avoid more forced behaviors.
4-1-1- Lack of media and technological knowledge
The development of technology in recent years, without having media and technological literacy, has turned the virtual space into a colorful world, but full of harm. There are thousands of threats in this virtual world. The use of virtual space and social networks regardless of age, type of use, rate of use, and type of use has made many people easily access content and products that are not appropriate to their personality and age. In this regard, one of the respondents stated: "A person finds a social network and installs it easily but has not yet learned to work with it, and does not know where to use any social network" (Reza, No. 1).
Media literacy is another issue that has become increasingly significant in social media. Many dysfunctional behaviors are due to the lack of mastery over media concepts. People come across an issue in social networks and start committing dysfunctional behavior online without looking for the root of the particular message. This type of behavior is due to a lack of media literacy. In this regard, one of the respondents stated:
"One of the users disrespected me on Direct and I replied politely. Then, he said that if you were a good person, you would not have divorced your wife. I realized that this person have believed a rumor and wanted to say just what was on his mind" (Ehsan, No. 7)".
Owing to the rapid development of technology, many people have fallen behind the people of the previous generation. As the generation that has been responsible for educating the latest generation, they are unable to convey concepts due to the occurrence of a significant gap. Hence, most families are unable to monitor and educate their children. Virtual space education is nowadays in reverse and it is from the new generation to the old generation. In this regard, one of the respondents stated:
"Nowadays, when a parent depends on a child to install a VPN, can they monitor the child's behavior on Instagram?" (Ali, No. 3)"
Another significant issue in the occurrence of dysfunctional behavior is the lack of recognition of people's privacy. Due to the changes created because of the development of new communication technologies for the exchange of information between individuals and groups, the internal challenge of humans to preserve privacy on the one hand and the desire to communicate with society and others are always in conflict. In this regard, one of the respondents stated:
"Sometimes I share a photo with my wife on social networks and the feeling of that photo, but people ask questions in the comments that completely violate my privacy and I regret what I did" (Reza, No. 1)"
4-1-2- Cultural poverty
Culture is the foundation of a society. As a society's culture becomes richer, the conditions for progress in that society will be more provided. Thus, cultural poverty as an inhibiting factor can direct a society toward decline and regression, and prevent it from achieving evolutionary goals. Cultural poverty in social media is discussed from another angle since a person's experiences and cultural memory in the real world are different from experiences and cultural memory in the virtual world owing to the differences in these spaces.
Thus, different behavioral feedbacks are created in terms of both perceptual and emotional dimensions, and new communication technologies will weaken the national culture against the foreign culture. For this reason, cultural components play a significant role in the semantic system of dysfunctional behavior. One of these cases is the lifestyle in social media and more emphasis on "individualism", which causes the family to break up. This problem can cause identity challenges for the person. In this regard, one of the respondents stated:
"There are people who have not been culturally educated well. You cannot expect a person who grew up in a family with problems to show very respectful behavior" (Ehsan, No. 2). Another significant issue in the realm of culture is ethnicities and related subcultures. Ethnic gatherings, both in the virtual and real world, lead to ethnic solidarity and create a collective spirit among network members. However, if ethnic biases increase in the form of virtual space and social networks, it will weaken the national identity and affect the ethnic identity. Sometimes ethnic society can cause ethnic conflicts and a gap in ethnicities in support of a particular ethnicity. In this regard, one of the interviewees stated:
"Limiting successes or failures to a specific ethnicity causes the guard in the society. Although all ethnicities are respected in the society, creating these boundaries causes anomalies in the society" (Reza, No. 8).
One of the cultural manifestations is the subject of literature and the way of speaking of people in that society. Since we sometimes face vulgar literature in the real environment, this literature has also penetrated social media. The use of some accepted words in informal groups, rude words, the reputation of people with unfamiliar literature, and obscenity as a sign of intimacy are signs of promoting a kind of abnormal literature in social media. In this regard, one of the respondents stated:
"Sometimes I come across some words and curses in the comments that I don't know the meaning of them. I see that a young person has said those words, and there is the name of a certain singer on his ID. "(Resalat, No. 9)"
4-2- Aggressive behavior along with impersonation
Some people use social media as a place to release or discharge their emotions. People may be suppressed or ignored in real environments, therefore. For this reason, they use social media to express their feelings and emotions in different ways. Sometimes these emotions and feelings are expressed positively and do not cause any problems. However, sometimes these emotions and feelings are expressed negatively and cause problems. Emotional discharge was identified as one of the primary themes. Impersonation and identity concealment and online anger were its sub-themes.
4-2-1- Anonymity
New communication technologies results in the formation of new identities. The identity of people in virtual communities is "digital identity" and the land, native language, country, national culture,
and race do not determine the identity of people in virtual communities. People in social networks can have a completely desired identity and expand their virtual communication with others according to that desired identity and expand their communication with others in virtual space based on that identity. The appearance of these networks is collectivist. However, it causes extreme individualism in people. In the real world, living conditions and socio-cultural bases form people's identities. However, in the online environment, it can be formed in two ways: virtual or real identity. The most significant characteristic of virtual identity is that it provides the possibility of being unanimous and unknown to people. It makes a person hide or manipulate a part of his or her real identity and take advantage of its results for abuse. Anonymity can be considered as a marginal effect of the modern world and new communities, such as the presence of one person among a group of people, or examine anonymity in large social organizations where the social bases of people are scattered.
This anonymity affects one's social relations, as it reduces the level of accountability and responsibility of people. The scope of anonymity of people increases in the online environment, and people with more virtual identities live in this environment. Nowadays, many people use anonymous and fake identities on social media to reduce the cost of dysfunctional behavior. In other words, a person shows online dysfunctional behavior easily since he or she knows that he or she will not leave a trace and the possibility of following up is very expensive for the victim. Thus, most people with dysfunctional behavior have unknown or distorted profiles. In this regard, one of the interviewers stated:
"When I say something that some people don't like, I face a lot of insults in the comments. The interesting point is that when you read a person's ID, you see that the ID itself is meaningless and a combination of letters and numbers" (Ali, No. 5).
Identity concealment is one of the significant factors for people who want to show dysfunctional behavior in social and virtual media since they sometimes consider the identity of others to be superior to their own. For example, some users do not upload their photos in the user profile due to a lack of self-esteem or other possible problems. This issue has become a factor in their uncontrollability in social media, which is very dangerous. However, it should be stated that changing one's identity in the virtual space not only causes emotional discharge but also makes people's souls tired and weak, and sometimes depressed. People who face adversities in their lives such as economic problems use social media to express their feelings. In other words, they use social media as a refuge to heal their suffering. In this regard, one of the respondents stated: "Many people send me messages saying aggressively that why don't you ask them to pay our arrears and I told them that am I responsible? However, he was sending messages with a profile named... and I realized that economic hardship has forced him to do it" (Sogol, No. 4) 4-2-2- Online anger
Anger is considered a determining emotion in the 21st century. Everyone who has a smartphone can also use the power of bullying, abuse others, and humiliate them. Nowadays, social media is more violent than face-to-face groups since they are larger groups with more information sources. Moreover, in these large groups, the probability of facing radical people is higher. A third reason for the radicalization of social networks is that opponents can be ignored or dismissed in a face-to-face group, and it is necessary to tolerate many unpleasant moments on this path. However, in social networks, you can prevent many people from being in a group by just touching a button. Thus, dysfunctional behavior in social media has been mixed with anger. People act aggressively to display their behavior and this model of behavior is better seen due to the nature of social media. In this regard, one of the interviewees stated:
"Dysfunctional behavior is seen nowadays in our society, and we see that someone turns in front of someone while driving, and a fight starts quickly. Well, this anger has penetrated social networks as well and I get angry if anything is not in line with my mentality" (Ehsan, No. 7). When more people are exposed to a large volume of social media content, it will be easier for them to ignore the messages. In other words, to be seen on social media in its negative aspect, we need to attract attention so that more people can see us. This is where another dimension of
dysfunctional behavior appears. In this regard, one of the interviewees stated:
"One of the followers cursed me, I told him, why are you cursing, my dear?! He said I knew that you
would come and answer if I curse you" (Reza, No. 1)
4-3-Acting out of accumulated mental disorders
One of the functions of social media is sharing special moments and evoking positive or negative emotions in social media. It can affect other users in both cases. The appearance and outer layer of many people can greatly increase the level of jealousy and disappointment in users. Feeling unsatisfied with life, even if a person knows that the images published on social media have been manipulated, can still make users feel insecure and disappointed about their appearance and living conditions.
For example, most people know that influencers share most of the positive points and events of their lives on social networks with others and rarely share their negative points and unpleasant feelings in this space. However, looking at the pleasant aspects of other people's lives in this space may create a feeling of envy or regret in people and endanger their mental health. Mental illness defines dysfunctional behavior with two sub-themes. One is jealousy and another is an inferiority complex, which is explained here. 4-3-1-Inolerance of the success of others
When users do challenging work, they tend to share this positive feeling with others and seek to present a positive image of themselves. However, the shared information might not reflect the reality of people's lives. When users see this information, they unconsciously compare their status with the shared content, which might cause jealousy in users. Jealousy can affect the users' behavior and after these comparisons, people cannot tolerate the gap between their situation and that of another person. It can be the beginning of dysfunctional behavior on social media. In other words, social comparison is a common behavior between people. All people compare themselves with others in society and judge themselves based on these comparisons. However, these comparisons are not simple. In some cases, they may cause stress and fear in the person in society and prevent a person from making a correct judgment about self and others. One of the aspects of jealousy that can be related to dysfunctional behavior is that people do not have skills or art in certain areas. Hence, when they see someone who has the same skill or art, they do not tolerate it and behave inappropriately with the person who has the skill and art. In this regard, one of the interviewees stated:
"One of the reasons for jealousy is that the person has no art. If he has his own business, he has his success, he has nothing to do with anyone's life, but since he is constantly making comparisons, he cannot tolerate the success of others"(Sogol, No. 4) (Domatskiy V. N, & Sivkova E. I, 2022). Sometimes the jealousy of a person is so high that he or she believes that if I am not successful, the other person should not be successful either. In other words, he or she cannot tolerate that another person is more successful than himself. For this reason, when a person achieves relative success and shares this success on social media, some people attack him or her in various ways. These attacks can include trivializing achievements, cheating, humiliating, and accusing the person of not having skills. In this regard, one of the respondents stated:
"Some people don't make any effort and cannot tolerate the success of others. Well if you try, you will probably succeed and there is no need to insult" (Ali, No. 3) 4-3-2- Inferiority complex
The feeling of inferiority is inherent in all humans. However, in some situations, a person feels inferior. Thus, this is a common situation for all of us. Thus, it is not a sign of weakness since this feeling can act as a motivating force and become a source of more effort and compensation for our shortcomings. What is dangerous is that our feelings of inferiority become an inferiority complex. People who cannot compensate for their feelings of inferiority will suffer from an inferiority complex. These people usually have an unfavorable view of themselves. They are always in conflict with themselves and never cope with the necessities of life. Inferiority complex can play a destructive role in people suffering from this feeling and cause undesirable and unusual behaviors,
RUSSIAN LAW JOURNAL Volume XI (2023) Issue 12s
such as showing off, hypocrisy, violence, seeking superiority, adventurism, destruction of others, and character assassination. These behaviors are accompanied by lies and sarcasm. This issue has taken a different form in social media where people do not tend to show their real image. "They have different accounts and use them to solve their inferiority complex problems, which are rooted in their lack of self-esteem" (Bijan, No. 10).
5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Social media are very popular among Iranian users owing to their attractiveness and functions. Thus, people tend to be active in all kinds of social media. One of the examples of activity in these media is user comments. Users seek to share opinions to meet their sense of social participation needs. Their comment can be on the user page of a commercial brand or the user page of a celebrity. However, the behavior of all users is not based on the existing and accepted norms, and some users show dysfunctional behavior.
The nature of dysfunctional behaviors at the level of social media was defined in three dimensions "actions and reactions without proactive and retrospective awareness", "aggressive behavior with impersonation" and "acting out of accumulated mental disorders". The primary theme of the first primary theme (action and reaction without proactive and retrospective awareness) refers to the lack of knowledge and its role in the formation of our behaviors and cultural poverty. Given the developments and advances in communication technologies, many of our behaviors are formed in the online space, especially in social media. For this reason, if we are not aware of the outcomes of our behavior in the online environment, we will show dysfunctional behavior. The rules determining these outcomes and consequences are the nature of communication technologies and new media. Social media rules, such as the methods of commenting, disallowing the inclusion of appropriate words, etc., are among these rules. Many dysfunctional behaviors are due to the lack of knowledge of modern media components. In this regard, Rezaeian Fard and Chulaki (2015) showed that a lack of technological and media knowledge promotes lies and dysfunctional behaviors. Also, many of these behaviors occur due to a lack of proper culture. When vandalism behaviors occur in the face of many brands and people in the real environment of society, it is a sign of the weakness of the culture in facing issues that we do not like. In a study by Dobson and Knezevic (2017) (Almohammed A, et al., 2023), poverty and low level of culture were reported as a factor for attacks of destructive behavior against brands.
The second primary theme (aggressive behavior with impersonation) indicates the tendency of dysfunctional behavior users to impersonate. People who are dissatisfied with their real identity seek to hide their identity and impersonate others. A person who falsifies another's identity or hides his or her identity is afraid of being identified in the event of dysfunctional behavior and an adverse consequence awaits him or her. Suspicion is a reason for the occurrence of online dysfunctional behavior, and users distance themselves from the real environment and seek refuge in the virtual space. Nowadays, in all countries worldwide, people in the virtual space are engaged in activities by verifying and expressing their real identities. Some virtual space users create a fake identity by providing information beyond their original identity. People without identity in virtual space are free to say whatever they want and do whatever they like since they consider it as safe and secure for themselves. Zhang and Kisleck (2014) argue that anonymity in the online space makes it easier for dysfunctional behaviors such as verbal violence, gang attacks, fraud, and sexual abuse. Another sub-theme in this regard is "online violence" which has also brought consequences and harms with the development of social media.
Thanks to new communication features, social media has removed the possibility of face-to-face communication, so people talk to each other more boldly. Additionally, the other side of violence is aggression. Those who hate themselves consider themselves worthy of anger and provide the conditions for violent behavior. Thus, we should identify the philosophy of violence in societies and use interpersonal relationships to reduce it. Regarding the difference between virtual violence from other types of violence, it can be stated in this type of violence, there are no observable physical effects. However, it causes unstable mental or emotional conditions. Thus, this type of violence
due to causing psychological and mental effects is no different from physical violence. In other words, the difference between virtual violence and other types of violence is in the ease of committing it, so a person can easily collect information from another person who has committed this type of violence. It will have an extensive negative impact. Johnson, Cooper, and Chin (2008) examined the relationship between online violent behavior and dysfunctional behaviors. They stated that online violent behavior can include a wave of fiery behavior and behavioral abnormalities in user accounts, and it will cause the spread of these relationships in a group form. The third theme is "acting out accumulated mental disorders" which has two sub-themes including "intolerance of success of others" and "inferiority complex". In the dimension of "intolerance of the success of others", people get jealous, which is a form of dysfunctional behavior. Jealousy becomes dangerous when it leads to destructive action. It means that a person who does not have the patience and tolerance for the success of others tries to harm them as much as possible and cause them to fail in doing what they are doing. Jealousy may be the result of a kind of reaction to shortcomings, deprivations, and inabilities. When a jealous person compares himself or herself with another and sees his or her shortcomings, an inner feeling says why? And this feeling does not say because he or she.... He or she focuses all his or her attention on what others have. Such a person is always suffering and anxious. In most cases, without causing any harm to others, he or she causes harm for himself or herself more than others with inappropriate thoughts.
David and Robert (2021) examined the relationship between jealousy and anxiety on Instagram social media. They found that people who are followers of fake and show-off images of people feel jealous and then experience anxiety as a result of comparing themselves with others. Tandon and Mantimaki (2021) reported that jealousy is the dark side of social media and promotes behavioral abnormalities. Regarding the dimension of "inferiority complexes", events such as feelings of inferiority and inadequacy sometimes lead to greater success and effort. However, if the feeling of inferiority is high, people will suffer from an inferiority complex. Hence, sometimes this feeling brings progress and sometimes leads to failure. Those who suffer from inferiority complexes have chronically low self-esteem and have self-deprecating views about themselves. Adler defines the inferiority complex as a basic feeling of inadequacy and insecurity, caused by a real or imagined physical or psychological shortcoming and imperfection.
An inferiority complex is in contrast to a "superiority complex," in which a person has an exaggerated view of their abilities and achievements. An inferiority complex has many impacts on a person's life. The feeling of inferiority in social media is more sensitively examined ever since online behaviors have become significant. People who have different social media complexes do not consider their hard work, abilities, and achievements. These people turn these shortcomings into abnormal behaviors and attribute all their failures to successful people and events. Torkashvand et al. (2017) explained the role of the mental complexes of users in the formation of dysfunctional behavior. Disrespect for others, gullibility, isolation and lack of accepting and tolerating critics are among the factors that cause dysfunctional behavior. Ismail, Du, and Hu (2019) stated that the personality weakness and mental disorders of some users and acting out these shortcomings and deficiencies on social media have a lower cost.
The present study results can be used to manage dysfunctional behavior in social media. They can also expand behavioral studies in the context of social media and provide appropriate conditions for researchers interested in this field. Given the novelty of the issue of the dysfunctional behavior of users in social media, this study tried to explain the meaning of online dysfunctional behavior. In this regard, it is recommended for future studies examine the dysfunctional behavior of Iranian users from the perspective of international users. One of the limitations of this study is that there is little research in the literature and the lack of similar studies given the novelty of the research topic. Additionally, since it was conducted using the interpretive phenomenology method, its results can be analyzed in the research context, and its generalizability depends on the time and place of the research.
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