The student, the private and the professional role: Students' social media use

Pernilla Josefsson, Stefan Hrastinski, Daniel Pargman, Teresa C. Pargman
2015 Education and Information Technologies : Official Journal of the IFIP technical committee on Education  
This is the published version of a paper published in Education and Information Technologies: Official Journal of the IFIP technical committee on Education. Citation for the original published paper (version of record): Josefsson, P., Hrastinski, S. (2015) The student, the private and the professional role: Students' social media use. Education and Information Technologies: Official Journal of the IFIP technical committee on Education Abstract Research has shown that students perceive a
more » ... divide between educational and private use of social media. The present study explores this divide by focusing on master students' perception of roles when using social media in a higher education context. A qualitative method has been used, mainly comprising of analyses of home exams and interviews, which were conducted with students enrolled in the master's course BSocial media technologies^. Results support previous research stating that students perceived a distinct divide between educational and private use of social media, and furthermore provide a more detailed understanding of this divide. The results from the study also indicate that there is yet another type of use: social media as a tool for career-building purposes, or what is labeled as professional use. Implications of social media for use in higher education are described through the analysis of three roles as performed by the individual: the student role in educational settings, the professional role for career-building, and the private role. Research has suggested that there is a tension between the use of social media within and outside educational institutions (see e.g.
doi:10.1007/s10639-015-9403-7 fatcat:bufd3km6cffb7j7pnffzdgp5b4