Abstract
Social Networking (SN) and its associated applications have their opportunities and risks; however, if the implementation of this tool is appropriately planned and is adopted in higher education, students will obtain the necessary benefits to enhance their personal and professional skills. In this chapter, the author employed an online survey with 153 respondents from Australia to examine students’ attitudes and behaviors towards Social Networking usage. The survey results produced four new opportunities and three risks associated with students’ use of Social Networking in Australia. Further research will be carried out in future to examine more varied groups of students to reinforce the research findings.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Benson V, Morgan S, Filippaios F (2014) Social career management: social media and employability skills gap. Comput Hum Behav 30:519–525. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2013.06.015
Bright LF, Kleiser SB, Grau SL (2015) Too much Facebook? An exploratory examination of social media fatigue. Comput Hum Behav 44:148–155. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2014.11.048
Burns R, Burns R (2008) Business research methods and statistics using SPSS. SAGE, New York
Carr N (2008) Is Google making us stupid? The Atlantic Monthly
Carr N (2010) The Shallows: how the internet is changing the way we think, read and remember. Atlantic Books USA
Carr N (2011) The Shallows: what the internet is doing to our brains. W. W. Norton USA
Chen R (2013) Member use of social networking sites—an empirical examination. Decis Support Syst 54(3):1219–1227. doi:10.1016/j.dss.2012.10.028
Cho Y, Park J, Han SK, S (2011) Development of a web-based survey system for evaluating affective satisfaction. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 41:247–254
Choi J, Lee JK (2015) Investigating the effects of news sharing and political interest on social media network heterogeneity. Comput Hum Behav 44:258–266. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2014.11.029
Connelly LM (2011) Cronbach’s Alpha. Medsurg Nursing 20(1):44–45
Costello A, Osborne J (2005) Best Practices in exploratory factor analysis: four recommendations for getting the most from your analysis. Pract Assess Res Eval 10(7):1–9
de Winter JCF, Dodou D, Wieringa PA (2009) Exploratory factor analysis with small sample sizes. Multivar Behav Res 44(2):147–181. doi:10.1080/00273170902794206
Dillman D (2007) Mail and internet surveys “The Tailored Design Method”, 2nd edn. Wiley, USA
Dillman D, Glenn P, Tortora R, Swift K, Kohrell J, Berck J, Messer B (2009) Response rate and measurement differences in mixed-mode surveys using mail, telephone, interactive voice reponse (IVR) and the Internet. Soc Sci Res 38:1–18
Dillman D, Reipus U, Matzat U (2010) Advice in Surveying the general public over the Internet. Int J Internet Sci 5(1):1–4
Din N, Yahya S, Suzan R, Kassim R (2012) Online Social networking for quality of life. Procedia—Soc Behav Sci 35:713–718. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.02.141
Dziuban CD, Shirkey EC (1974) When is a correlation matrix appropriate for factor analysis? Some decision rules. Psychol Bull 81(6):358
Fan W, Yan Z (2010) Factors affecting response rates of the web survey: a systematic review. Comput Hum Behav 26(2):132–139
Fink A (2010) Survey research methods. Educ Res Methodol: Quant Methods Res:152–160
Fox J, Moreland JJ (2015) The dark side of social networking sites: An exploration of the relational and psychological stressors associated with Facebook use and affordances. Comput Hum Behav 45:168–176. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2014.11.083
Frison E, Eggermont S (2015) The impact of daily stress on adolescents’ depressed mood: The role of social support seeking through Facebook. Comput Hum Behav 44:315–325. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2014.11.070
Gliem J, Gliem R (2003) Calculating, interpreting, and reporting Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient for likert-type scales. Paper presented at the 2003 Midwest research to practice conference in adult, continuing and community education
Gordon J, McNew R (2008) Developing the Online Survey. Nurs Clin N Am 43(4):605–619
Hill BD (2012) The sequential Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin procedure as an alternative for determining the number of factors in common-factor analysis: a Monte Carlo simulation proquest. Umi Dissertation Publishing USA
Isaias P, Issa T (2013) E-learning and sustainability in higher education: an international case study. Int J Learn High Educ 20(4):77–90
Isaias P, Issa T (2014) Promoting communication skills for information systems students in Australian and Portuguese higher education: action research study. Educ Inf Technol 19(4):841–861
Issa T (2013) Online survey: best practice. In: information systems research and exploring social artifacts: approaches and methodologies. IGI Global, pp 1–19. doi:10.4018/978-1-4666-2491-7.ch001
Issa T, Isaias P, Issa T (2014) Does MP3 audio feedback enhance student’s learning skills? Int J Learn 19:15–28
Issa T, Issa T, Chang V (2011) Would teaching sustainable development business strategies shift students’ mindsets: an Australian perspective. Int J Environ Cult Econ Social Sustain 7(5):258–272
Issa T, Issa T, Chang V (2014) Sustainability and Green IT education practice for incorporating into the Australian Higher Education curriculum. Int J Sustain Educ 9(2):21–30
Issa T, Issa T, Kommers P (2014) Feedback and learning support that fosters students’ independent learning: an Australian case study. Int J Learn 19:29–39
Issa T, Kommers P (2013) Social networking for web-based communities. Int J Web Based Commun 9(1):5–24
Kemp S (2015) Digital, social and mobile worldwide in 2015. http://wearesocial.net/tag/sdmw/. Accessed 22 Jan 2015
Kocher M (2015) Recipes and research: a survey of cookbook collection users. J Agric Food Inf 16(1):53–59
Lalonde M, Castro JC (2015) Amplifying youth cultural practices by engaging and developing professional identity through social media. Youth practices in digital arts and new media: learning in formal and informal settings, p 40
Mathew B (2014) Using a social networking tool for blended learning in staff training: Sharing experience from practice. J Neonatal Nurs 20(3):90–94. doi:10.1016/j.jnn.2014.03.005
McCarroll N, Curran K (2013) Social networking in education. IGI Global. doi:10.4018/jide.2013010101
Mulligan N (2013) The WorldWide state of social networks http://wearesocial.net/blog/2013/06/worldwide-state-social-networks/. Accessed 24 July 2013 2013
Pan Y, Xu Y, Wang X, Zhang C, Ling H, Lin J (2015) Integrating social networking support for dyadic knowledge exchange: a study in a virtual community of practice. Inf Manag 52(1):61–70. doi:10.1016/j.im.2014.10.001
Peer E, Paolacci G, Chandler J, Mueller P (2012) Selectively recruiting participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk using qualtrics. SSRN 2100631
Jvd Peijl, Klein J, Grass C, Freudenthal A (2012) Design for risk control: The role of usability engineering in the management of use-related risks. J Biomed Inform 45(4):785–812. doi:10.1016/j.jbi.2012.03.006
Picazo-Vela S, Gutierrez-Martinez I, Luna-Reyes LF (2012) Understanding risks, benefits, and strategic alternatives of social media applications in the public sector. Gov Inf Q 29(4):504–511
Porter S (2004) Pros and cons of paper and electronic surveys new directions for institutional resaerch, vol 2004. Wiley Periodicals, Inc
Prahalad CK, Rangaswami MR (2009) Why sustainability is now the key driver of innovation Harvard Bus Rev 56–64
Prasad A, Saha S, Misra P, Hooli B, Murakami M (2010) Back to green. J Green Eng 89–110
Rennie F, Morrison T (2013) e-Learning and social networking handbook resources for higher education. Routledge
Roman LA (2014) Using social media to enhance career development opportunities for health promotion professionals. Health Promotion Pract 15(4):471–475. doi:10.1177/1524839914535213
Schaefer HS, Larson CL, Davidson RJ, Coan JA (2014) Brain, body, and cognition: Neural, physiological and self-report correlates of phobic and normative fear. Biol Psychol 98:59–69
Sekaran U (2003) Research methods for business “A Skill Building Approach”, 4th edn. Wiley, New York
Smyth J, Dillman D, Christian L, O’Neill A (2010) Using the internet to survey small towns and communities: Limitations and Possibilities in the early 21st Century. Am Behav Sci 53:1423–1448
Stevens J (1992) Applied multivariate statistics for the social sciences. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ
Swensrud K (2011) Best practices for enterprise social networking. http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/04/18/best-practices-for-enterprise-social-networking/ Accessed 16 Nov 2011
Tavakol M, Dennick R (2011) Making sense of Cronbach’s alpha. Int J Med Educ 2:53
Tobias S, Carlson JE (1969) Brief report: Bartlett’s test of sphericity and chance findings in factor analysis. Multivar Behav Res 4(3):375–377
UNCP (2013) The Brief history of social media. http://www.uncp.edu/home/acurtis/NewMedia/SocialMedia/SocialMediaHistory.html. Accessed 24 July 2013
Velasquez A, Graham C, McCollum K (2009) Online social networking used to enhance face to face and online pre-servicve teacher education courses. In: Society for information technology and teacher education international conference USA, 2009 pp 560–566
Wang Y-C (2014) Using wikis to facilitate interaction and collaboration among EFL learners: a social constructivist approach to language teaching. System 42:383–390. doi:10.1016/j.system.2014.01.007
WIlliams B, Onsman A, Brown T (2010) Exploratory factor analysis: A five-step guide for novices. J Emer Primary Health Care (JEPHC) 8(3):1–13
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Issa, T. (2016). Social Networking in Australia: Opportunities and Risks. In: Issa, T., Isaias, P., Kommers, P. (eds) Social Networking and Education. Lecture Notes in Social Networks. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17716-8_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17716-8_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-17715-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-17716-8
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)