“How to use it more?” Self-efficacy and its sources in the use of social media for knowledge sharing

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate sources of self-efficacy for researchers and the sources’ impact on the researchers’ use of social media for knowledge sharing. It is a continuation of a larger study (Alshahrani and Rasmussen Pennington, 2018). Design/methodology/approach The authors distributed an online questionnaire to researchers at the University of Strathclyde (n=144) and analysed the responses using descriptive statistics. Findings Participants relied on personal mastery experience, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion and emotional arousal for social media use. These elements of self-efficacy mostly led them to use it effectively, with a few exceptions. Research limitations/implications The convenience sample utilised for this study, which included academic staff, researchers and PhD students at one university, is small and may not be entirely representative of the larger population. Practical implications This study contributes to the existing literature on social media and knowledge sharing. It can help researchers understand how they can develop their self-efficacy and its sources in order to enhance their online professional presence. Additionally, academic institutions can use these results to inform how they can best encourage and support their researchers in improving their professional social media use. Originality/value Researchers do rely on their self-efficacy and its sources to use social media for knowledge sharing. These results can help researchers and their institutions eliminate barriers and improve online engagement with colleagues, students, the public and other relevant research stakeholders.

The Factors Influencing the Use of Password Managers

“…An online questionnaire is considered the most effective approach with which to gather data from a large number of people and from one or more locations [11,2]. Therefore, this method was chosen to collect data for the present study.…”

A study on intention to use social media in higher education: the mediating effect of peer influence

“…Olaleye et al (2020), Chu (2020), Thomas et al (2020), Aldahdouh et al (2020), Stathopoulou et al (2019), Guraya et al (2019), Prestridge (2019), Kumar and Nanda (2019) are some of the latest research works that explore the different aspects of use of social media in higher education. Alshahrani and Pennington (2018, 2019) uses techniques such as semi-structured interviews/online questionnaires to explore the sources of self-efficacy that researchers depend upon while disseminating knowledge via social media platforms. Verbal persuasion, personal mastery experience, emotional arousal and vicarious experience are some of the sources identified by these studies.…”

Understanding social media discontinuance from social cognitive perspective: Evidence from Facebook users

“…In extant IS literature, most studies on IS continuance have assumed that IS continuance and discontinuance are opposite extremes on a continuum [6,13,14]. However, recent studies on IS discontinuance postulate that it should not be viewed merely as the opposite of IS continuance, though they might be correlated [3,4,15].…”

“…Despite the existence of abundant adverse effects, studies on social media fatigue are in their early stages, with current research mainly focusing on social media fatigue antecedents, such as overload [11,15], privacy concerns [14,37], and fear of missing out [34,38]. Few have studied social media fatigue’s impacts on users’ behavioural changes, such as different IS usage behaviour, for example, reduced-usage and abandoned-usage behaviours.…”