Role of social media in information-seeking behaviour of international students

Abstract

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to investigate the information-seeking behaviour of international students in terms of their information needs and to highlight the role of social media. Design/methodology/approach-In this paper, a systematic literature survey was conducted in order to investigate information-seeking trends among international students while using social media. As a result, an exhaustive systematic literature review (SLR) was carried out in order to investigate social media as a source for the observation of the behaviours of international students. For this purpose, 71 articles were selected from various well-known sources after an intensive SLR process of searching, filtering and enforcing the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Findings-As an outcome of this study, the information-seeking behaviour of international students was highlighted with respect to social media as a source of information. In addition, this research identifies the information needs of the international students and categorizes them by the roles played by the social media in fulfilling the information needs. Practical implications-A comparative study that highlighted the dearth of studies which merge the social media and information-seeking behaviour of international students as well as identify the future direction for the researchers and for benefits of international students. Originality/value-A detail SLR which highlights the need of shifting the information seeking behaviour from libraries to social media in regard to the new environment for international students.

Motives influencing Facebook usage as a social networking site: An empirical study using international students

“…Baris Horzum 2016; Chao & Keung 2017;García-domingom et al 2017) that established a positive and significant relationship between Facebook usage and information search. Also, the existing literature on students' use of SNSs shows that students use SNSs like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to search for information which enables them to adapt to new environments (Hamid et al 2016;Manjunatha 2013).…”

“…Tse, Bridges and Srinivasan (2015) found that individuals use SNS to make inquiries about their health concerns. Similarly, a study carried out by Hamid et al (2016) revealed that international students use SNS to search for information which enables them to adapt to new environments. Students also use SNS to search for information related to their academic studies (Manjunatha 2013).…”

The Effect of Social Media Marketing Activities on Brand Awareness, Brand Image and Brand Loyalty

“…In this respect, with providing entertaining shares, businesses should encourage liking and sharing of large number of individuals and be able to turn it into advantage (Schivinski and Dabrowski, 2015). Social media is becoming the newest and up-to-date source of information for customers (Hamid et al, 2016) because information is simultaneously shared in real time on the social media. Unlike traditional mass communication channels, social media facilitate the interaction, content…”

Determining factors of perceived elf-efficacy in information seeking practices through Facebook

“…Social media is presently being used as an information seeking medium despite its fundamental purpose that was essentially to support communication and social activities (Head and Eisenberg 2010;Head and Eisenberg 2011;Lenhart et al 2007;Noorhidawati et al 2015). This was evident by a few studies reported on the usage of social media as an information seeking tool such as by Abidin, Kiran and Abrizah (2013), Bilgihan, Peng and Kandampully (2014), Hamid et al (2016), Knight et al (2015), .…”