Factors affecting direct and indirect benefit exchange in the social media–based learning experience

Abstract

Background: Social media platforms are thriving on the co-creation of content, usually socially orientated content about the social interests of participants. There is also a growing trend of social media application in the human resources and marketing for business purposes. This study investigates factors that have an impact on the sharing of knowledge on social media platforms, particularly students at an Open Distance Learning (ODL) institution.Objective: This study evaluates the difference between direct and indirect benefit exchange expected by students when sharing knowledge.Method: Random and theoretical sampling were used to select the sample in this study from the population. A literature-informed questionnaire was used as an instrument to collect data from a selected sample of 315 students from the School of Computing at the University of South Africa.Results: A test of association was conducted to evaluate correlations, which revealed that only reputation and social language correlate with direct and indirect benefit exchange. Results indicate that there is a significant mean difference between direct and indirect benefit exchange and that issues concerning social identity and trust should be taken into account when developing social media instructional design.Conclusion: In this study, a survey was used to test the hypothesis. The authors concluded that instructional designer can design teaching and learning experience in the social media platform by catering for both direct and indirect benefit knowledge exchange. The results of the study further confirmed that some students share knowledge with the expectation of direct exchange benefit and, meanwhile, expect indirect exchange benefit.

The Use of Social Media for Development Communication and Social Change: A Review

“…SIT was developed by Tajfel and Turner in 1985. This theory reveals that a person tends to categorize himself/herself according to religious affiliation, age, organizational membership, and gender [109]. SIT suggests that a person develops strategies to achieve and maintain a positive identity within a social group.…”

“…Research applying SIT has been conducted by [7,108,109]. Kim Lee [7] investigates the effect of online identity on Facebook on knowledge-sharing behavior.…”

“…Online identities constructed through social skills, friendship, and creativity lead to strong intentions to share knowledge. Mkhize [109] scrutinizes the contribution of social identity to both direct and indirect exchanges of knowledge.…”

“…The social network is important, both relating to the content exchanged on social media and the structure of content flow in social networks on social media. SNT seeks to explain about how are the offline and online relationships between a set of actors in knowledge-sharing activities, why these relationships occur, and how these relationships affect actors [101,109].…”

Effect of social trust on health information exchange in social network sites

“…According to Chu and Kim (2011) established. The information-sharing process could be in one direction or it could be reciprocated, where participants in the information transaction become equals, as information seekers also become information providers during the exchange (Mkhize & Nxumalo 2017). It is easier to establish and manage social trust where information givers' credentials are revealed, because that creates a perception that the information giver is trustworthy and credible.…”