Social Network Use in Government, Business, and Higher Education
Recent Research, Current Practice, and Considerations for Use
Sally Byrd
George Mason University
May 11, 2010
Abstract
Educational use of social media tools is exploding. Due to recent developments in technology and expansions of more traditional computer mediated communication tools, social networks have seen a great rise in use in training and educational settings in the past three years. While some research has been conducted in the area of social network use in education, many practitioners have moved to adoption based on anecdotal or subjective bases. After defining social networks and placing them within the larger framework of social media, this paper will review recent research on social network use in educational settings. It will also summarize recent social network use in government, business, and higher education and explore reasons for its recent surge in popularity. The paper concludes with a discussion of social networks advantages and disadvantages as a learning tool and provides suggestions for best practice.
Introduction
Social networks are one of many tools that have been developed in the field of social media. What is social media? Finding an authoritative definition is an arduous task. Social media is a component of Web 2.0, which is a conglomeration of concepts that, given the evolving nature of the technology, is ever changing. Web 2.0 can be defined according to the concepts and practices included in its scope. Major concepts of Web 2.0 include social software, micro-content, openness, and group-determined folksonomies. Practices include social bookmarking, collaborative writing, blogging, and microblogging (Alexander, 2006). Because of the evolving emergent nature of these tools, the classification of Web 2.0 technologies and particularly social media is difficult (Dabbagh & Reo, 2010).
In the 2009 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report, Johnson, Levine, and Smith classify social media as "The Personal Web." The Personal Web is the creation of "customized, personal web-based environments" that support "social, professional, and learning activities” (p. 19). Key factors in this classification are flexibility and uniqueness of online environments that are tailored to the individual user. Another aspect of the Personal Web is that many different tools work together seamlessly, providing the user with the ability to tailor their personal web environment to their needs.
Overall, social media tools are ideal for research and learning. Tagging, a core attribute of social media, allows users to publish, categorize, and search for information online using tags or descriptors that often results in group determined taxonomies or classification of things known as folksonomies (Warr, 2008). Social media also provides opportunities for online publishing (blogging and microblogging), research and collaborative information sharing (social bookmarking such as Delicious, or reference tools such as Zotero), and collaborative writing (writeboard, GoogleDocs) (Alexander, 2006). Social media technologies are a compilation of communications tools, experience and resource sharing tools, and social networking tools (Warr, 2008). Social network sites are but one of many social software tools that have been developed and widely adopted in recent years. This paper focuses on recent research on the use of social network sites in educational and training settings and their current use in government, business, and higher education.
What is a social network site?
There are numerous definitions of online social networks. Ofcom (2008) defines social network sites as services that allow users to set up profiles or homepages from which the user’s network can access information ranging from gender, religion, marital status, politics and employer, to their favorite music, books television shows and activities. Users can modify the appearance of their page and add text and media content. Crucial to the social network is the list of “friends” that users can make visible to others. The definition of “friend” on social networking sites is slightly different than the definition in the offline world. A friend in a social network site is anyone a user is connected to in their social network and this connection may have been made offline or through a series of connections online (Ofcom, 2008).
There are several aspects of social network sites that make them quite different from other social media such as blogs or wikis. Social network sites are based on connections between people rather than on shared interests. Social networks are not task-based; they are an end in themselves (Ofcom, 2008). boyd and Ellison (2007) state that there are three aspects to social network site. social network sites are web-based services that allow users to create profiles, make connections, and view other users’ profiles. “What makes social network sites unique is not that they allow individuals to meet strangers, but rather that they enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks” (boyd & Ellison, 2007, para. 6). Lankshear and Knobel (2008) further define social networks as requiring specialized interfaces that afford personal information generation, connections with others, and diverse personal interactions, such as photo, video, and text sharing and tagging and interactive games, quizzes and other applications.
Common Craft (2007) sums up the difference between offline and online social networks quite succinctly as follows: “The problem with social networks in the real world is that most of the connections between people are hidden. Social networking sites help you see connections that are hidden in the real world.”
Background. Online communities have been a part of the internet since its inception. Early online communities, such as newsgroups, message boards, and listservs, were populated by early internet adopters and required a degree of technical competence that is no longer required today (Siemens & Tittenberger, 2009). While the first social network site - sixdegrees.com - was launched in 1997, social networking did not gain prominence until the early 2000’s with the launch of Friendster (launched 2002), MySpace (launched 2003), and Facebook (launched early 2004) (boyd & Ellison, 2007). These three key social network sites, with their ease of use and ability to help users connect, helped move social networking into the mainstream.
Due to user friendly interfaces and strong privacy controls, social network sites have enjoyed recent phenomenal growth. In a January 2010 special report on social networking, The Economist reported that in October 2009, social network sites received over 800 million visitors. “Social networks have been transformed into vast public spaces where millions of people now feel comfortable using their real identities online” (Giles, 2010, p. 1).
Social network users. A recent Pew report on social media and young adults reports that since 2006 use of social networking sites by both teens and adults has risen dramatically. Of all young adults (age 18-29) currently online, 72% use social network sites while 39% of users over age 30 use social network sites. Not only has social network site use risen, the number of multiple social network sites that users have profiles on has risen as well. “As of September 2009, the percentage of profile owners with only one profile had fallen by nine percentage points to 45%, while the percentage with two profiles had grown from 29% to 36% of profile owners” (Lenhart, Purcell, Smith, & Zickuhr, 2010, p. 35).
Ofcom (2008) classifies users into five groups based on their social network site use and attitudes. Alpha socializers are social network site users who use the sites to be entertained and to meet people. Attention seekers use social network sites to gain attention and comments. Followers join social network sites because their peers have. Faithfuls use social network sites to reconnect with old friends. Functionals use social network sites for a specific purpose, such as around a topic or activity. Ofcom also classified non-users into three groups as to why they do not participate in social network sites: concerned about safety (these people are concerned about sharing personal details online), technically inexperienced (lack skill or confidence in using computers and the internet), and intellectual rejectors (see social network sites as a waste of time and have no interest).
Recent Research
There is an ever-growing research base on social network sites and their use in educational and training settings. This can be attributed to the prevalent place social network sites are increasingly taking in learners’ lives and the wish to find a way to leverage this powerful tool for learning. Minocha (2009) argues that social software suits modern ideas about learning, particularly focusing on constructivist views of learning that stress learner generated study and research. More specifically, Minocha suggests that social software tools encourage independence in learning and afford a wide array of expressive capability as well as an “authentic audience” (p. 356). Collaboration, problem solving, and independent research are all facilitated with social software tools. Minocha defines this process of social networking as the “virtuous cycle” of content generation which is then consumed by a larger network which then adds additional value to the content (p. 355).
Social media researchers tend to group learners along computer and information literacy lines. Prensky (2001) dubbed two groups as digital natives and digital immigrants. Digital natives are those learners who grew up with computers, television, video games, and other multimedia. Digital immigrants are those who were not born into a digital world and did not grow up with such technology. Prensky argues that the pervasiveness of technology in the digital native’s life has caused them to process information differently than do digital immigrants. This is supported by Trinder, Guiller, Margaryan, Littlejohn, and Nicol (2008) in their study of the ways in which digital natives use social software tools to collaborate and communicate. They found that the students, or digital natives, used a wide array of tools, from photo sharing services to online social networks while their instructors, or digital immigrants, were found to be less familiar with technologies. They stressed the need for skills development among teaching staff.
Mejias (2006) looked at the use of social networks to facilitate collaborative research and concluded that the “power of many” afforded a much wider array of research sources and ideas to the individual. Mejias describes a course he taught on social software with social software and concluded that social software can be used to create effective distributed research communities.
Lankshear and Knobel (2008) define digital literacy as the use of digital technologies to “generate, communicate and negotiate meanings in socially recognizable ways” (p. 258). They argue that social networks such as Facebook afford unprecedented opportunities to develop digital literacy. Facebook “facilitates intriguing layers of communicative purposes that can be realized simultaneously, with an ease that encourages experimentation, creative innovation and playfulness, and in ways that make “bottom lines” out of what might well have been considered “luxuries” and self-absorbed excess barely a decade ago” (p. 258).
Online social networking tools can affect offline social networks. Tomsic and Suthers (2006) studied the social network structure among booking officers at the Honolulu Police Department and found that offline social networks changed after introduction of an online discussion board. Findings indicate that overall knowledge of the officers was improved with use of the discussion board and there was an increase in collaboration between districts.
Chen, Chen, and Kinshuk (2009) examined learners’ attitudes and knowledge sharing behaviors in a virtual learning environment. They found that social network ties are good predictors of knowledge sharing intention and that intention is positively related to behavior. This suggests that fostering social network ties will increase not just knowledge sharing intention, but also knowledge sharing.
In a longitudinal study of users’ intention to continue to participate in virtual communities, Chen (2007) found that the antecedents of community members’ intention to continue sharing knowledge included social network ties. Chen also found that technological factors, including system and content quality, influence members’ involvement in virtual communities. She advises virtual community managers to take an active role in monitoring sites for deceptive communications and create positive and active knowledge-based content.
Greenhow and Robelia (2009) studied the use of social networks by high school students and found that social network sites facilitated relationship maintenance, helped fulfill social learning functions and afforded engagement in an array of communicative tasks. They found that the use of social networking sites helped students develop crucial 21st century skills, such as editing and customizing content and creating and sharing original work. Students also demonstrated responsible use of information and technology (University of Minnesota, 2008).
This brief overview of recent research suggests rich opportunities for the study of and use of social networks in educational settings. The research in this area is rapidly increasing and evolving. The remainder of this paper will look at current use of social network sites in government, business, and higher education and explore some of the reasons for its recent phenomenal growth.
Social Network Use in Government
Many people think of Facebook or MySpace when thinking of social networking and consider this type of network as exclusively social. However, social networks can encompass much more specialized needs. According to Gartner analyst Andrea Di Maio (2008), government entities are increasingly present online and using social networks to collaborate internally as well as communicate with the public. The current financial climate makes government adoption of social networks particularly appealing. A 2008 Gartner press release states that "Technology-budget cuts make tapping into societal resources, such as voluntary groups, philanthropists, associations and social network groups essential to complement weaker government action in some critical areas.” Social networks are used by governments to foster sharing of information and establish collaboration across organizational boundaries (Gartner, 2008).
Two recent events have fueled government interest in social networking. On December 8, 2008, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget issued the Open Government Directive, which established deadlines for federal agencies to meet President Obama’s three goals of open government – transparency, participation, and collaboration. Federal agencies are required to create open government plans which address these three concerns (Orszag, 2009).
By February 2010, all federal agencies had met the first deadline of the plan and had their open government sites online. Many of these web sites actively pursue public participation and ask the public to submit ideas on how government can be more open (Hoover, 2010). The Obama administration’s focus on open government, requiring agencies to not only make information more readily available to constituents but to actively pursue collaboration with the public provides strong impetus for social network use.
Facilitating this is the 2009 agreement the General Services Administration (GSA) reached with Facebook, resolving terms of service issues that hampered government agency use of the service (Beizer, 2009). GSA reached similar agreements with the photo sharing site Flickr and the video sharing site YouTube. There are many examples of social networks being used by local, state, and federal government agencies. The Environmental Protection Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and USA.gov all have Facebook pages. Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center use Facebook internally. AIDS.gov is on Facebook and MySpace. Arlington National Cemetery, the White House, and the Centers for Disease Control are also on Facebook pages. The White House Facebook page has 489,472 fans as of March 8, 2010. The Department of State is also on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/usdos) and is using live multimedia web chats, posts press releases and recent videos and photos, links to US embassies around the world, and engages with the public through synchronous and asynchronous online discussions.
However, it’s not all about using Facebook. Many agencies are creating their own social networks using either commercially available or internally created social network software. A good example of a social network being used to help people connect in the workspace is GovLoop.com, an online community forum created by a government worker to connect government workers. Steve Ressler, creator of GovLoop writes (2008) “I wanted an online forum to connect all my various groups and to connect with government employees across agencies. I wanted an informal place where people could gather, share their ideas, and ask other questions. A place that could serve as a repository for both current and future government employees as they start and grow in their career.” GovLoop was created with Ning, a platform offering social network services where people can create social networks tailored to their needs.
NASA has developed their own internal social network to help NASA employees connect. Spacebook, launched June 8, 2009, was designed as a tool to help new employees at NASA make connections and to improve collaboration and information sharing throughout the organization (Spacebook, n.d.).
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) launched their internal social network, IdeaFactory, on April 25, 2007 with the intention of “harnessing the collective wisdom” of the 43,000 frontline employees of TSA. IdeaFactory is a secure intranet site that allows employees to submit ideas and comments about improving TSA (Hanna, 2008). In two years, IdeaFactory has generated over 9,000 ideas which have resulted in over 40 initiatives (Cariola, 2009). IdeaFactory has been so successful that in November 2009, the Department of Homeland Security announced the agency’s plan to expand IdeaFactory across the entire department (Ballenstedt, 2009).
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) created the social network IdeaLab to enable employees of the CDC to share information and collaborate online. Similar to the TSA’s IdeaFactory, IdeaLab allows employees to make suggestions and requests regarding CDC and its goals. Posts are categorized and open for comment and are archived (Idealab, n.d.)
A Gartner report (DiMaio, 2009) advises that agencies looking to establish social networks should create a social media policy that is rooted in existing codes of conduct. This policy must be communicated to all employees. Social media policies need to take into account accessibility and records management issues. Employees should also be made aware of privacy and confidentiality risks when using external social networks. Gartner provides a six-pronged framework for government agencies to use when considering interacting with external social networks. They advise agencies first identify relevant agencies with which to interact and then familiarize themselves with the social network. Agencies should next actively participate in the network and use content generated by the network. Finally, agencies are advised to consider their degree of engagement as well as any risks associated with their interaction with the social network and then use the network within its own assets (DiMaio, 2008).
Social Network Use in Business
Social networking is fast becoming a fact of business life. The use of social networks by businesses for sales and promotions has recently exploded. Business use of Facebook alone grew by 192% between June and November 2009 (Gaudin, 2009). Proponents of social networks tout the numerous business benefits, from reaching out to customers to generating new ideas. However, issues of privacy and confidentiality continue to be of concern. Why the huge explosion? Some attribute this dramatic increase in use to the “network effect,” which states that “the value of a communications network to its users rises exponentially with the number of people connected to it” (Giles, 2010, p. 3). This effect, coupled with dramatic falls in hardware costs and numerous open source options, has allowed businesses to build systems more quickly and easily than ever before.
Facebook is the frontrunner in public social network sites, garnering 430.2 million unique visitors each day. In October 2009, Americans spent an average of 6 hours on social networking sites overall (Giles, 2010). Obviously, this is a captive audience. However, concerns about privacy, confidentiality, and proper use of employees’ time has kept many companies out of the public social network world. Instead, businesses are creating their own internal social networks, using software such as Chatter, a social network service developed by salesforce.com. Efforts to bring social media into the workplace has been coined “Enterprise 2.0” where networks can be tailor-made for the workplace and information is kept behind firewalls (Giles, 2010). These types of internal social networks can pull information from HR systems and can be integrated into other tools workers already use.
Deloitte has recently created an internal social network using Microsoft’s Office Sharepoint Server for their 45,000 financial advisory employees (Drakos, 2009). The network, called D Street, provides a forum for idea generation and knowledge sharing and is used in attracting and retaining talent. The Gartner case study made some important key findings – social networks have a positive impact on productivity and knowledge preservation. Deloitte created a social media policy based on the employee code of conduct and actively moderated the network which mitigated risks associated with social networks. And user profiles were a combination of user-generated and HR system content (Drakos, 2009).
T-Mobile also created an internal social network to improve knowledge sharing and exchange of best practices (Drakos & Rozwell, 2009). This network, for T-Mobile’s 700 frontline sales staff, was created with Jive Social Business Software and is hosted externally. T-Mobile has found that in five months after launch, customer responsiveness has improved and sales knowledge is more easily diffused. Key findings from this case study include improved performance of sales staff attributable to faster decision making processes and continuous learning opportunities afforded by the network. Externally hosted networks such as the one developed in this case also take less time to develop than internally hosted solutions (Drakos & Rozwell, 2009).
Social Network Use in Higher Education
From its earliest days, online social networks have been prevalent among students in higher education. In fact, Facebook was created with this audience in mind. Facebook was designed to support college networks, and the first Facebook social network was at Harvard in 2004 (boyd & Ellison, 2007). So it’s no surprise that social network sites are used extensively in higher education. Seventy-two percent of online young adults use social network sites and 57% of these users maintain a profile on more than one social network site. Again, Facebook is the leader here, with 71% of online young adults using the service as of September 2009 (Lenhart, Purcell, Smith, & Zickuhr, 2010).
A 2008 study conducted at Arizona State University on first-year students’ social network suggests that institutions of higher education can use public social network sites to engage with students to increase recruitment and retention by creating social networks around residence halls or using social networks to facilitate group work. Sixty-eight percent of respondents in the study had joined a Facebook group for their residence hall and use of social networks for class group work was also prevalent (Guess, 2008b).
Universities are looking for ways to leverage social networks in their online classes. Blackboard, a learning management system used by many universities, released a Facebook application in 2008. This app replicates the functionality of university’s Blackboard sites on Facebook, so that students can do all the things they would normally do on Blackboard, such as upload assignment and reply to message boards through Facebook (Guess, 2008a).
In late 2009, Howard Community College in Columbia, MD began implementation of a social network widget that works with Blackboard. The QuickConnect Widget for Blackboard, created by ConnectYard, will allow students to interact with classmates and faculty through texting or through their preferred social networking site (Schaffhauser, 2009).
Purdue University recently launched an application called Hotseat which allows students to use social networking services such as Facebook and MySpace to comment on classes. Faculty and other students can view comments and post responses. This application was created by a team of developers at Purdue with the intention of helping facilitate more interaction between faculty and students in large lecture classes (McCrea, 2009).
Another example of a social network for a course is EdTech Leaders. EdTech Leaders was created with the social network provider Ning for teachers who participated in a course provided by the Massachusetts Department of Education. The network was an adjunct to an online workshop and provided a way to share resources and connect with other participants in the course. Jim Walker, creator of EdTech Leaders, intended for the site to be used indefinitely. “My hope is that we can use this Ning site to create a learning community of educators that can stay connected after the workshop is completed (Walker, 2009). Discussion forums, resource sharing, and collaborative writing are all available on this social network.
A recent Gartner report presented findings about social network use in higher education. Social media tools have become widespread among students and are used without university involvement. There is great use among faculty of social network use to supplement instruction. Alumni organizations are increasingly using social networks for communication (Harris & Lowendahl, 2008). Gartner also found that social media in conjunction with e-learning increases student retention at universities and fosters student collaboration (Rust, Harris, & Lowendahl, 2009).
Implications for Practice
Social networking tools afford a wealth of functionality to the user. Discussion forums, file sharing, blogging, and microblogging are all aspects of social networks. Users make connections with friends, colleagues, and acquaintances and share information about interests with them. The table below provides a summary overview of the advantages and disadvantages of social networks.
Advantages |
Disadvantages |
|
|
Lessons learned from social network use in government, business, and higher education include:
- Secure stakeholder support early and often.
- Launch employee social networks on a small scale at first, just large enough to benefit from the network effect. Evaluate, modify, then grow the network in stages (Drakos, 2009).
- Educate on codes of conduct then trust that users will behave appropriately (Drakos & Roswell, 2009).
- Create criteria and objectives to measure success of social networks.
- Monitor and manage user behavior (Weiss & Leigh, 2009).
- Include social media in HR strategies to improve recruitment (Otter, 2009).
- Community managers should take an active role in monitoring content (Chen, 2007).
Conclusion
In recent years, social network use has been on the rise. Recent advances in social network technology and rising personal use of social network sites has increased interest in leveraging this powerful tool for training and educational purposes. Research has shown that social networks are ideal for collaborative activities and knowledge sharing tasks as well as community and network building, both on and offline. As one of many burgeoning social media tools, social networks are sure to become more prevalent for training in government, business, and higher education.
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