Social media for environmental sustainability awareness in higher education

Abstract

Purpose The explosion of social media use such as Facebook among higher education students is deemed to have great potential in widely disseminating environmental sustainability awareness. The paper aims to capture, summarise, synthesise and comment on the role of social media to garner interest of students and staff on environmental sustainability issues. Design/methodology/approach Systematic literature review technique is adopted, and three selected online databases were searched for relevant papers for review. Specific data were extracted from each paper, and the discussion section was based on the developed research questions. Findings Higher education needs to fully leverage the ubiquity of social media to extend how environmental sustainability is viewed by the students and staff. Sustainability practices conducted at the university level such as recycling, reduction of electricity and water consumptions and paper reduction in classroom and used to engage students on environmental matters. For staff, social media can be leveraged as to convey the university policy and assist in their quest to become full-fledged green universities. Research limitations/implications Some of the limitations of this research include the lack of keyword search using synonyms or related terms equivalent to the term “awareness”, lack of forward and backward searches, and the papers were searched until end of 2013 only. Future research needs to take advantage of the current limitations to investigate this topic and be empirically supported by theories using quantitative, qualitative or mixed-method-based research. Future studies could also develop relevant frameworks to propose an effective use of social media for creating environmental sustainability awareness in higher education. Practical implications Propagations of environmental sustainability awareness in higher education would be more effective with the use of social media. Social implications In principle, the increase of environmental awareness level would increase the students’ good behavioural conduct on environmental sustainability. Originality/value While the broad topic of environmental sustainability in higher education is widely discussed, the role of social media in shaping environmental sustainability awareness is still under researched. This situation provides a significant potential for exploration by sustainability researchers to craft their investigation on the effective role of social media in creating environmental awareness in higher education.

Effect of Usage of Social Media on Motivation of Teens (Survey on high school students and students Budi Luhur Karang Tengah)

“…Social media has been used very effectively for social change issue ranged from corruption, human rights, the environment, education, infrastructure and health [5]. In the development of social media is developing a social network that previously known.…”

“…In this study, the use of social media will be restricted ie social media Facebook and Instagram social media that is currently in Gandrungi by teenagers as a means of friendship media and media gather information and media entertainment. Indicator used in this research According Papacharissi and Rubin in the use of the internet, namely: (1) Purpose for interpersonal (2) Purpose for Charge time (3) utilities to search for information (4) Purpose for Ease of convenience (5) Purpose for Entertainment [4].…”

Social Networks, Awareness and Behavioral Modification to Reduce Air Pollution and Carbon Footprints: The Claircity Project in the Liguria Region of Italy

“…The Citizen Delphi Engagement used three rounds: 6 SOCIAL MEDIA AND CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT In recent years, many works have analysed the relationships between social media and citizen engagement [5], [6], also related to environmental issues [7]- [9]. Special attention was devoted to specific social group such as students [10] and more generally young people [11] and to the role of influential individuals [12]. Also, the relationships between self-reported and objective measures of pro-environmental behaviour were investigated [13], [14].…”

Productive, Structural and Dynamic Study of the Concept of Sustainability in the Educational Field

“…As for the work on sustainability in the educational field, one study [1], in which the authors surveyed more than a hundred instructors of management and sustainability, shows that the most used teaching resources for this type of training activity are documents, cases and videos and-to a lesser extent-electronic resources such as databases, simulations or applications [15]. On the other hand, another study [16] shows that working on sustainability in class in a punctual and transversal way in any subject is more effective than attending specific courses.…”

“…Other authors [14] add that pedagogical practices should serve to foster students' capacity for critical and reflective thinking. At the same time, it is recommended to take advantage of the potential of social networks or other digital resources that students consider motivating for the work of sustainability, as they tend to give better results [15].…”