Using Social Media Programs For Learning Purposes (Research Paper Sample)

Using social media programs for learning purposes
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How Saudi Students at CMU are using Social Media Programs for Learning Purposes.
Introduction.
The popularity of social media programs such as Facebook has increased rapidly in the 21st century. The social media sites have becoming a raging crave not only for students but also everyone around the world. Although the programs have become useful for students, business people and others across the globe, social media also comes with its curses. Students from different stages are using social media programs for exchanging information and sharing knowledge and hence are enhancing their academic achievement. Scientists have always been interested in enhancing our understanding of how students utilize social media to improve their academic level. The main issue in this study is that students have different purposes and different motivation for using social media programs as well as they accomplish different gratifications.
Literature review
The literature review will cover the following thematic areas: definition of social media, history of social media, kinds of social media, positive effects of social media, and the negative impact of social media programs for learning purposes. Social media is changing the way people communicate, the way people interact, the way business organizations advertise and market their products, and the way learning institutions and students share information. The rate of sharing information in the modern society is as fast as the strike of lightening, and social media platforms are playing a huge role in exchange of information.
Definition of social media
Simply defined, social media are applications and websites that enable uses create and share content, or participate in social networking. Hanna, Rohm, and Crittenden (2011) in the article ‘we’re all connected: The power of the social media ecosystem. Business horizons” defines social media as follows, “social media is the collective of online communications channels which are dedicated or focused to community-based input, collaboration, content-sharing, and interaction (Hanna, Rohm, & Crittenden, 2011). In the article, the author explains that customers of social media are adopting increasingly active roles in sharing content and networking for positive outcomes.
Another article, “Investigating instructional strategies for using social media in formal and informal learning. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning,” by Chen and Bryer (2012) explains the meaning of social media with respect to students and learning purposes. In the introductory part of the article, the authors explain that “social media are technologies used in facilitating social interaction in school settings, making possible collaboration and enabling deliberation across the different stakeholders, for this case students.” The author further explains that educators and students are currently using social media in making both informal and formal connections to improve learning experiences and outcomes (Chen, & Bryer, 2012).
History of social media.
According to Edosomwan, Prakasan, Kouame, Watson and Seymour (2011), the history of social media is such a long one and has been through lot of changes and transformations. The authors express that the roots of social media stretch far much deeper than people actually think or image. Although most people believe that social media is a new trend, something that just started a few years ago, sites like Facebook and Twitter are the natural results of several years of social media development (Leonardi, Huysman, & Steinfield, 2013). The process of social and computer networking can be traced back to the 1970s when the idea of computers being built first came up.
For instance, CompuServe started life in the 1970s. At the beginning of 70s, the authors explain that it was a “business-oriented machine mainframe computer communication solution.” It however expanded into the public use and domain in the 80s. Getting into the 1990s, the innovations and evolution of these systems and avenues for communication and networking. The first noticeable and agreeable social media site that everyone supports was called Six Degree website.
According to the journal “Enterprise social media: Definition, history, and prospects for the study of social technologies in organizations” Leonardi, Huysman, and Steinfield (2013), Six Degrees was named after the ‘six degrees of separation’ theory. The website lasted for about four years, between 1997 and 2001. Just like Facebook, the site allowed users to create their profiles and then friend other users on the platform (Leonardi, Huysman, & Steinfield, 2013). Six Degrees also allowed those who had not registered as users to confirm friendships and through this way, quite a few people were connected this way.
Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy and Silvestre (2011) in the article “Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media,” furthers that from the Six Degrees website, the internet transitioned into the era of instant messaging and blogging. Despite the fact that the idea of blogging does not seem to fall in the category of social media precisely, it fits the description of social media networking since people would communicate with a blog (Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, & Silvestre, 2011). The idea of “blog” was coined by Jorn Barger, from the phrase “Weblog.” From this period, ICQ came into the picture and most members of Generation X remember when ICQ was built.
The creation of America Online came shortly after ICQ, but the latter had an instant messenger component that would feature prominently in the social media line up. In the beginning of the 21st century (2000) around 100 million people were able to access the internet and hence online social engagement became easier. However, most people looked at the online social engagement as an odd engagement since it had not become popular. Still, even in the middle of the criticisms, many people started utilizing chat rooms as an avenue for making friends, discussing social topics and dating (Leonardi, Huysman, & Steinfield, 2013). However, the huge boom for social media was still to be seen.
Edosomwan, Prakasan, Kouame, Watson, and Seymour (2011) explain that the first social media surge came up in 2003. Although the millennial generation may not understand, especially those born during this time, MySpace website was the most popular place for people to set up their profiles and make friends in the early 2000s. MySpace is considered the original social media profile website, which would later inspire the creation of websites like Facebook. Despite the low usage and following of MySpace today compared to giants such as Facebook and Twitter, there are still musicians who use the platform in promoting their music.
LinkedIn is another website that was one of the beginning social media sites. LinkedIn is still being used today especially geared towards professional networking. According to Leonardi, Huysman, & Steinfield (2013), the launch of Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 completely changed the face of social media communication and networking. In 2004, Zuckerberg launched what soon became the social media giant setting the bar for all other social media sites and services. Today, Facebook is the number one social media website and currently boosting over a billion users globally.
When TheFacebook.com was launched in 2004, Zuckerberg only envisioned it being used by Harvard students. Later, the potential of the innovation was improved and released to the rest of the world. Two years later (2006), Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Noah Glass and Biz Stone were inspired by the popularity text messaging to create Twitter. Twitter was then developed as social media site that allows its users to send tweets or messages with a maximum of 140 characters. Today, Twitter has been widely shared and used by more than 500 million users. Going into 2005 and beyond several social media sites were created. Flickr was introduced as a platform for sharing photos and paved the way for Photo bucket and Instagram. Today there are several social media sites: Tumblr, Pinterest, Spotify, WordPress and many others.
Kinds of social media.
Ashley and Tuten (2015) explain that social media kinds broadly fall into the following: wikis, social curation, and social networking, microblogging, and forums platforms. According to Blommaert and Varis (2017) there are more than fifty different kinds of social media platforms today, but the most common and used ones are about ten. Top of the list is Facebook. By the end of 2016, Facebook reported more than 1.04 billion users globally. More than 60 percent of these users access the Facebook platform using their mobile devices. The presence of Facebook cannot be ignored, especially with the generation of fast spreading technology and high speed internet.
LinkedIn has become very useful for professionals and the business community. The objective of LinkedIn is to allow its users to create an online network of business people and professionals. Google+ is another social media site that has not been used widely at the global platform, but it has many unique features which differentiate it from the rest of the pack. Video sharing social media platforms include; YouTube, Vimeo, Live streaming, Periscope, and Blab. YouTube has more users than Facebook. Today, YouTube has more than 1.3 billion users watching almost 5 billion videos daily.
Another kind of social media is microblogging. According to Moreno-Munoz, Bellido-Outeirino, Siano and Gomez-Nieto (2016), microblogging social ...