It seems that a healthy percentage of Journalism and Mass Communication students use social media — not a big surprise — but I wonder to what extent students in other academic departments are using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. Are concrete engineering majors using social media in the same numbers as communication design majors, for example?
We’ve discussed extensively (in this class and several others) how social media are infiltrating every aspect of human existence, so it would be interesting to see if there is any variance in use between students in different academic departments at Texas State, and assuming ample time and resources to conduct such a study, at other universities as well.
The proposed research question: How does social media use vary between university students of different academic disciplines?
Such a study would be best conducted via survey, and operationalization of “social media use” would proceed according to the following basic questions/prompts:
- Do you have accounts with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare, Gowalla, or any similar services?
- List all such accounts, and provide the following information for each:
- Approximately how many hours per week do you use
- How often do you post information (status updates, multimedia, Tweets, Check In, etc.) to accounts?
- Are you more of a passive consumer or active user or is it about even?
A Likert scale, with the following statements, would be valuable:
- Social media are important to my everyday life
- The first thing I do in the morning is check SM accounts
- The last thing I do before bed is check SM accounts
- I use SM for fun and for serious matters
- I use SM to get news
- I use SM for school assignments/projects
- I use SM to enhance my offline socialization
- I encourage others to use SM
These are basic steps toward the operationalization of “social media use.” Obviously, much more detail would go into an actual study, but I think this is a good start.
It would say a lot if agriculture students were using SM just as prolifically as mass comm students; it would be further evidence that these tools are becoming ubiquitous beyond just the halls and devices of media and tech geeks.
