Cybersecurity Challenges in Social Media Erdal Ozkaya

7.4
 
Future Research Directions 
This research tried to extensively cover the existing privacy and security threats in 
social media. It went on to look at other existing works of literature on the topic and tried to 
add more knowledge to the topic. This had been outlined by the previous researchers in their 
works. The research would, therefore, like to lay out some areas that future researchers can 
dig deeper into and probably bring a ton of more knowledge to the topic. One of the things 
that future researchers should look at are the legislations that governments should lay out to 

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protect user data and how they can cooperate as unions to ensure that there is privacy. 
Secondly, future researchers should examine the specific third-party apps that are extensively 
collecting user data. The researchers should look at the exact ways these apps collect, store, 
and use the data that they collect and how they can be limited in terms of what they can 
access. Thirdly, future researches should look at how social media platforms and 
governments can collaborate to curb social media crimes. These crimes are on the rise and 
someone ought to research on how they can be ended. Lastly, future researchers should aim 
at exploring different world regions when it comes to collecting primary data. The data that 
was sampled cannot be said to depict the opinions of all the types of users as it was collected 
from a rather limited demography. 
7.5
 
Limitations of this research 
The greatest limitation to this research was the data used. This research utilized data 
from both primary and secondary sources. First of all, from the questionnaires sent to 
respondents, it is worrying that some respondents may have given untrue data. This is 
because the questionnaire was online, was long, and there was no type of monetary 
compensation given to the respondents. From the secondary data used, it is also feared that 
some of the data may have been biased or modified by the original researcher to suit his/her 
intentions. 
The second limitation was the budget and time constraints. The research was done 
within a fixed budget and schedule, and there were some delays experienced especially in 
receiving feedback from the respondents. The questionnaire was online and the users had the 
freedom to fill them at their comfort in terms of time. There was also the challenge of having 
to do many other things apart from research and as such balancing between school work and 
another occupation. Therefore, the time to do this research was considerably little but the 

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most was made out of the opportunities available. Secondly, due to monetary constraints, the 
data analysis was not done using premium tools, and thus some substantial findings and 
patterns may not have been identified. The primary data collection tool was an online 
questionnaire to make the costs even less for conducting the research.
The third limitation to this research was the sample selected. It was actually hard to 
find respondents who were willing to take this 20-30 minute questionnaire online. Only 
volunteers were given the link to fill the questions. Also, not all the volunteers filled and 
submitted back their responses to the questionnaires. However, even with all this, a 
significant number of responses were received and they were just enough for meaningful 
findings and patterns to be drawn from them.
The last limitation encountered by this research was self-reporting. It is rather hard for 
one to present the arguments about a certain problem objectively. It might seem an easy thing 
to do but the mind slowly starts becoming more biased as more and more information is 
available and new discoveries are made. Therefore, it was quite a challenge even though 
biasedness was avoided for the major part of the research. 

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