Social media free essay sample

Social Media is the relationships that exist between networks of people (Walter Riviera, 2004). There are many social media sites continue to grow in popularity it is our belief that technology is an important part of today’s success formula for students, faculties and other professionals. Social media are technologies that facilitate social interaction, collaboration and enable deliberation across various communities. This paper presents a review of research on the effective usage of social media as a knowledge management among faculties and students order to gain knowledge and improve their performance. Many research studies show that social media is used for different purpose for different sector in order to attain growth in their respective sector. The primary objective of this study is to know about the effective usage of social media as a knowledge management among faculties and students. The recent survey says that the social media has become popularity among students for personal use, however, a low percentage of students use them for academic purpose (Lenhart, et al, 2010 Erzurum, 2010). This paper present about the usage of social media and its impact in the knowledge management among engineering faculty and students. Through this study we can able to analyze the effective usage of social media and its impact in the knowledge management system to improve their performance. So based on the present study, the future scope of the research should continue to analysis the students attitude and strengthen their social media activities to develop research and innovation in the society. It needs more systematic and broad research on the topics to better understand the usage of social media for positive aspects, so every individual will have positive attitude towards the social media in order to develop their knowledge abilities which will benefit the entire society for better growth. Keywords: Social media, Knowledge, Social networking, Knowledge management and Knowledge sharing. 1. INTRODUCTION: Social media has recently emerged as a promising technology for knowledge management (KM) (Levy, 2009; Yates Paquette, 2011). It is defined as â€Å"a group of internet-based application that builds on technological foundations which allows the creation and exchange of user generated content† (Kaplan Haenlein, 2010). General public, practitioners and researchers are attracted by social media with different features through proactive participation, social connectivity and user collaboration (Eyrich, Padman, Sweetser, 2008; Scanfeld, Scanfeld, Larson, 2010), and has increasingly been recognized as an important tool in knowledge management (Levy, 2009). Blogging and Facebook are the two of the most commonly used social media technologies (AlAamri, 2009) and it’s probably facilitate knowledge management by capturing the narrative experiences and disseminating information and knowledge (Stiler Philleo, 2003). This paper presents a review of research on the effective usage of social media as a knowledge management among faculties and students order to gain knowledge and improve their performance. In this paper, the impact of using blogs and Facebook in facilitating faculties and students’ knowledge management activities. Recently, numerous commentators have suggested that social media technologies—blogs, wikis, social networking sites (SNS), micro blogs, or social tagging tools—may facilitate communication practices in organizations that differ from those associated with traditional computer mediated communication (CMC) technologies like e-mail, teleconferencing, intranets, decision-support systems, and instant messaging (Grudin, 2006;McAfee, 2006; Steinhuser, Smolnik, Hoppe, 2011). The use of social media technologies such as blogs, wikis, social networking sites, social tagging, and microblogging is prolife rating at an incredible pace. 2. LITERATURE REVIEW: Knowledge management has become a heated research topic in the past decades. As one of the earliest scholars dedicated in the study of KM, Wiig (1997) proposed that the objectives of KM is â€Å"to maximize an enterprise’s knowledge-related effectiveness and returns from knowledge assets† through â€Å"systematic, explicit and deliberate building, renewal and application of knowledge† (p. 2). Taking up a more process-oriented approach, Rastogi (2000) suggested that KM is â€Å"a systematic and integrative process of coordinating organization-wide activities of acquiring, creating, storing, sharing, diffusing, developing, and deploying knowledge by individuals and groups in pursuit of major organizational goals†. Graphically, the processes of KM can be represented with KM cycles (e. g. , Bukowitz and Williams (2000), McElroy (1999), Wiig (1993)). An integrated KM cycle (see Figure 1) comprising of three major stages of KM, organizational culture and KM technologies was put together by Dalkir (2011). The three stages of KM include: 1) knowledge capture and/or creation; 2) knowledge sharing and dissemination and 3) knowledge acquisition and application. The three stages of KM supported by technologies are facilitated by a favorable organizational culture that promotes information and knowledge sharing. Ruggles (1997) classified KM technologies as tools that intervene in the three knowledge processing phases mentioned by Dalkir (2011). Recently, social media, with their distinctive features that allow proactive participation, social connectivity and user collaboration, have become important tools in facilitating knowledge management processes in business and education institutions (Dames, 2004; Lee, 2003). Blogging and knowledge management: McDermott (2000) defined knowledge as an output from active social construction. Owing to its powerfulness in disseminating information, soliciting comments and links, and classifying and archiving entries, blogs have gained vast recognition as a KM tool, especially in business organizations (Ojala, 2005). Ferdig and Trammell (2004) perceived blogs as a relatively more advanced platform for effective information and knowledge sharing when compared to the more traditional technologies such as emails and discussion forums. Research have found blogs to be effective in organizing, articulating, developing, and sharing ideas (Mortensen Walker, 2002), as well as in developing and maintaining community relationships (Fiedler, 2003). Chu, Kwan and Warning (2012) reported that the participating university students have found blogs useful in helping them manage and share knowledge gained from their professional experiences. Facebook and knowledge management: Although Facebook is one of the most commonly used social media tools nowadays, there has been very few studies concerning the use of Facebook as a KM technology. A recent study conducted by Chu Du (2013) examined the use of Facebook by academic and public libraries in English-speaking countries a tool for knowledge sharing, information dissemination and knowledge gathering. The large volume of postings related to knowledge sharing and information dissemination appears to suggest Facebook as a potential KM tool. Other research examined Facebook through the lens of community of practice (e. g. , Wong, Kwan Leung, 2011). Communities of Practice (CoP) are groups of people who share a common concern and seek to construct and share knowledge with others within the group (Lave Wenger, 1991). CoP is a fundamental concept related to organizational culture as it encourages â€Å"collaboration and sharing resourses in knowledge domain on the Web† (Wong, Kwan Leung, 2011, p. 319). The same study has found that Facebook, which emphasizes interaction, sharing and collaboration, is a motivating tool that fosters social learning. 3. IMPORTANCE: This study explains how social media impact the practice and experience of online knowledge management (Levy, 2009; Razmerita, Kirchner, Sudzina, 2009) and a case study design (Matschke, Moskaliuk, Cress, 2012; Sotirios Alya, 2009) in investigating the role of social media in knowledge management, qualitative content analysis in this study provided a way to illustrate the kind of knowledge management processes that the individuals were involved in through the use of social media. Another contribution of this study is the development knowledge sharing among faculties and students from different region. In this study, Facebook was found to be a more productive platform for knowledge capture and knowledge sharing compared with blogs. Specifically, Facebook users showed a high degree of engagement in reflecting knowledge, capturing daily or professional experience and providing feedbacks that support knowledge transfer. Last but not least, this study also suggested that the choice of social media has a predominant influence on the social-emotional interaction between the users, which in turn may affect their active engagement in knowledge management. According to the students’ comments, the more interactive and collaborative features of Facebook allow them form tighter social bonds within the network, help cultivate a favorable culture for online knowledge management, hence increase their motivation in participating in sharing knowledge using the tool. 4. IMPLICATIONS: Usage of Social Media across various faculties and students has certain implication in their activities. Some of them are: High degree of visibility. Editability. Association. Flexibility among users. Effective communication. Socialization, information sharing and power relations. Explicit or Implicit. 5. CONCLUSION: Social Media are important consequences to faculties and student’s knowledge processes precisely because they afford new types of activities that were previously difficult or impossible to achieve before these new technologies are emerged. Our review of existing studies of social media as a knowledge management by these new technologies: visibility, persistence, editability, and association. Blogging and Facebook have gained increasing recognition as tools to support online information sharing and management among faculties and students. This study examined that the blogs and Facebook are consolidate student users’ knowledge capture, sharing and application. A mixed-methods design was employed to investigate users’ practices and perceptions of blogs and Facebook in online information management. The study found that users generally hold positive perception on using blogs and Facebook for online knowledge management. In particular, Facebook appears to be a more facilitating platform for users to reflect upon prior knowledge, capture new experiences and provide feedback that is constructive to cultivating knowledge sharing environment. It was found that Facebook support the expression of social support among users, thereby reinforcing their motivation in participating in knowledge management processes. REFERENCE: 1. Randolph Chun Ho, Samuel Kal Wah, Celina Wing, Bob Kim To, Chun Kit, University of Hong Kong, â€Å"Knowledge Management using Social Media: A Comparative study between Blogs and Facebook†, ASIST Conference 2013. 2. 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