Measuring personal and academic differences in students' perceived social media credibility

Abstract

Purpose Social media is a popular source for information sharing in the contemporary world. Social media allow individuals to create, publish and diffuse contents directly. This openness has increased the risk of running into misinformation and raised questions about credibility of information shared. This study aims to examine the credibility of social media through the perceptions of university students. It also intends to see the difference in opinions based on their gender, academic disciplines and programs of study. Design/methodology/approach The study was based on a cross-sectional survey; a structured questionnaire was developed by consulting the relevant literature. Students were selected on convenient basis from all the programs of four universities of Faisalabad, Pakistan. Four hundred students were selected randomly from each university. Findings The findings indicated that students considered social media partially credible. Currency, community wellness, understandability and completeness of information were the highly rated facets, while factual and unbiased information was the low rated aspects. The perceived credibility of social media among the university students was the same across genders, programs of study and academic disciplines. Research limitations/implications The study may be helpful for social media service providers to address the concerns that students had in their perception regarding its credibility. Originality/value This study may likely benefit faculty members, researchers, librarians/information professionals and digital libraries to understand the students’ concerns about social media credibility from a developing country’s perspective. Such understanding will enable them to better address, educate and train university students at how to evaluate the quality of information on social media by offering information literacy programs. It is direly needed that university libraries should train the students to be proficient in assessing the quality of information by offering information or digital literacy programs. Moreover, the study may be helpful for social media service providers to address the concerns that students had in their perception regarding its credibility.