Facebook usage in promoting the academia expertise

Abstract

This paper means to contemplate online social media usage on knowledge sharing among academia. In the past, numerous researches have been done to investigate how people in general make utilization of this innovation. However there are still restricted studies on how this technological advancement affects the scholarly world. Moreover, in Malaysia most research done in studying the effect of social media is focused on students rather than from academia perspective. For this study, Facebook is chosen as one of online social networking tool for knowledge sharing. Firstly, this study is begun with the exploration of factors that motivate the academia to share their insight through online networking. From the literature review analysis, ability to communicate with colleagues is the most cited reason showing the adoption of social media tools by academia. To understand more on how the Malaysian academia utilizes Facebook as a medium of knowledge sharing, a content analysis on a Facebook page is done. Content analysis is used to study the frequency of post as well as topics discussed among the academia. The findings reveal that there are four main topics regularly shared by the academia which are are information and current news, motivational quote, personal advice from life experience and program promoted.