Is social the new smart?: Factors influencing students on their decision to use social media for academic purposes

Sammanfattning: The versatility and pervasiveness of social media websites in human life have created an opportunity to employ them in several contexts other than the merely social ones. In particular, social media have been being used by students as an additional tool to help with their studies, even when academic institutions usually provide them with educational systems (also known as learning management systems). The prime goal of this paper is to investigate the factors influencing students on their decision to use social media for academic purposes, an inquiry about which insufficient research has been performed to date. In this investigation, an initial framework was proposed, refined and extended in agreement with the qualitative data collected from the interviewee group, which was composed of students from Lund University. The results of the conducted interviews not only confirmed most of our tentative factors but also provided us with unexpected elements that students take into account when deciding whether to use or not to use social media with academic intentions. The final outcome is a simple framework which explains the phenomenon within its context and which, as a side effect, provides some insights into what aspects to consider when developing educational systems targeting students.