How Do Educational Researchers Utilize from Social Media?

Abstract

Social media is very popular on the Internet and individuals utilize from social media in different ways. This exploratory research investigated the educational researchers' social media uses and their opinions about using social media as a research, teaching and learning environment for educational purposes within a sample of Turkish educational researchers. A total of 207 researchers participated in this study. The results showed that 62% of the researchers utilized from social media for their previous educational studies and 90% of them planned to utilize from social media for their educational studies in the near future. Most of the educational researchers think positive about the usage of social media within educational studies, but they have complained about the insufficiency of literature. It has been seen that the researchers' study at the Department of Computer and Instruction Technologies Education use social media more effective and younger researchers utilize from social media more and think to utilize more in faculties of education. At the same time, researchers who use social media more effectively in their daily lives, benefit more from social media in their educational studies. Some seminars can be organized to overcome the technical knowledge deficiencies of educational researchers. Education researchers can be encouraged to adopt and use social media elements.