FIRST-YEAR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ ATTITUDE ON COMMUNICATION IN UNIVERSITY’S INTRANET

Virtual social networks have changed significantly since they emerged in the last decades of the 20th century, especially due to the impact of Web2.0 technologies. These technologies were profoundly more user friendly, even for novice users. Improvements brought by Web2.0 prompted even those that were sceptical to join the communities. Web2.0 tools enable spontaneous, horizontal, in many cases uncontrollable information creation and sharing. However, it was understood that this almost uncontrollable process still has to be controlled to a certain point, and the EU General Data Protection Regulation was applied since 25 May 2018. This is the result of the personal data protection law reform in the EU. The EU General Data Protection Regulation defines the protection of data and the legal responsibility, by emphasizing the responsibility of the holder of first-line data; at the same time, the reliance and trust in data-holder is increased. On the one hand, the EU General Data Protection Regulation reflects influence of ever developing technologies on the communication. On the other hand, the document poses certain requirements for the users themselves.

First-year students come from a dominant culture of social networks, and at the university they within the university intranet as a subculture. Intranets were introduced later than internet, as a result of internet segmentation as a suggested solution to security problems. Therefore, first-year university students find themselves in an unknown environment, different from social networks they are used to, and, consequently, have to learn new communication rules. In intranet they face the absence of anonymous users, and have to learn many new functions.

The aim is to expose the attitude of the first-year university students to the communication in the university intranet and in the virtual social networks.

The objectives:
1) Discuss and provide the terms (working concepts) of the social networks and the university intranet;
2) Present the results of critical literature analysis on users' attitude to communication in virtual social networks;
3) Expose the attitude of first-year university students to the university intranet and social networks.

Methodology:
For the development of this paper the methods of critical scientific literature analysis and empiric two-phase quantitative and qualitative study (2017-2018) were employed.
Respondents: first-year students of an X university in Lithuania.

Conclusions:
• Virtual social networks are web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. Personal data is any data that can be used to identify a person’s identity. Intranet is a result of internet segmentation as a suggested solution to security problems.
• Representatives of Z generation have a unique attitude to the safety of personal data in social networks.
• Students observe similarities and differences between virtual social networks and intranet. For first-year students, communication in intranet seems less attractive than in virtual social networks.

Hypothesis:
Inability to identify possible threats in virtual environments (virtual social networks) may be a reason why for first-year students university intranet is less attractive than other social networks.