Opinions and behavior of students in social aspects of Internet use in Serbia and Slovenia

Rapid involvement of Internet infrastructure and services brought a lot of new products based on information and communication technologies. In the focus of world’s social interest at this time are social networks and WikiLeaks and their abuse. In this paper authors analyze opinions and behaviour of students at Novi Sad Business School, Serbia, and Faculty of Organizational Sciences in Kranj, Slovenia. This research focuses on different kinds of abuse of social networks and WikiLeaks. Results are presented and analyzed according to the place where examinees study. Conclusions about the differencies found between the above-mentioned two groups are compared to the social states and events in these 2 countries which oficially separated 25 years ago.

"Results of this research depend on the social and political environment of the country where examined students live. The phenomenon of SN usage (especially Facebook) is stronger in Serbia... Students in Slovenia prefer only surfing on SN or just the communication with well-known persons. The attitudes of students in Slovenia are generally more liberal in comparison with their colleagues in Serbia. Deeper economic and social crisis in Serbia pushed younger generations to look for their place in alternative spaces without thinking about consequences, while students in Slovenia developed their opinion according to their position in the EU, well organized and ruled territory. Some controls of contents are better recognized in Slovenia, while lack of controls from everyday life is reflected on opinions in Serbia. When we speak about WikiLeaks, we have found that students in Slovenia have more information about that. They also have better opinion about their actions, but students in Serbia are more willing to supply WikiLeaks with new information, what we connect with the years of Serbian isolation, the war years and information blockade. On the other hand, Serbian students, with the conservative tradition, are much more ready to accept the idea about forbidding WikiLeaks work. We can conclude that we have found, in the whole research, much more extreme and traditional opinions among the students in Serbia, and more liberal and pragmatic opinions in Slovenia, through the whole research. (Jošanov, Pucihar, & Jošanov–Vrgović, 2014, p. 31).