Role Social Media Platforms in Enhancing Interaction and Communication among University Students

Abstract

The present study was conducted to explore the role of social media platforms in promoting the interaction between learners, educators, and peers keeping with the following objectives. (a) To identify the reasons of using social media by university students (b) to identify he type of content used by learners on social media platforms and (c) to find-out the security concerns of the learners in using social media platforms. The study was delimited to two public universities of the Southern Punjab, Pakistan i.e. The Islamia University of Bahawalpur (IUB) and The Government Sadiq College Women University (GSCWU) Bahawalpur. It was a descriptive study which collected data from the 250 university students through a questionnaire. The study concludes that university students were using different social media platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook networks/ Groups, Twitter, LinkedIn and alike enhancing and / or maintaining their interactions and communications with their fellows and instructors. The university students get exposure and connectivity to the diverse perspective of educational landscape of the world by using the social media platforms particularly, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook networking, and YouTube.  They post and access different materials and content on the social media platforms. They access educational videos created by experts and learners, infographics and web-blog and/ or posts on the social media platforms for their learning purpose. The university students were providing and receiving feedback on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram YouTube channels. However, they were concerned about the privacy their data leaks and hacking, cyberbullying and unauthorized software/ spyware which cause spying and disturb their privacy.

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