Social media and data privacy in education: an international comparative study of perceptions among pre-service teachers

Abstract

Social media platforms offer many educational possibilities, but they also create challenges associated with their business models. One increasingly relevant challenge, especially in the context of teacher education and schools, is personal data privacy. When considering social media and data privacy in education, taking into account culture-specific aspects in different countries, such as legal frameworks, user attitudes, and cultural values, is uncommon. This cross-sectional study explores the perceptions of pre-service teachers (N = 225) from universities in four countries (Germany, New Zealand, Spain, and the USA) concerning educational and professional social media use, as well as data privacy awareness and practices. Data were collected via a survey and analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistics. Results indicate that along with common belief in social media’s educational potential, data privacy concerns were present, knowledge related to data privacy was lacking, and differences existed between participants from the different universities. We discuss these results in relation to legal frameworks, user attitudes, and cultural values concerning social media data privacy, and consider implications for research, practice, and policy.

Youtube e Instagram en educación superior: competencias mediáticas del docente universitario

“…No existen diferencias significativas entre los países en cuanto a los dominios de conocimientos, habilidades y actitudes en competencia mediática de YouTube e Instagram, lo que sugiere que, a pesar de las variaciones en los sistemas educativos y culturales de cada país, los profesores universitarios desarrollan la competencia mediática en un nivel similar, situación que resulta relevante en un contexto globalizado donde la tecnología y los medios de comunicación como las plataformas sociales, tienen un impacto transversal en la educación. Esto pese a que algunos autores (Marin et al, 2023), consideran que los valores culturales infieren los niveles de competencia mediática.…”

No way back: From naive social media practices to committed approaches

“…For example, that pedagogical design may consider different social media forms and practices in education that incorporate a balance of personal and institutional data control, use and sharing (e.g., decentralised, institutionally-owned, etc.) (Anderson, 2019;Ivanova et al, 2019;Marín et al, 2021Marín et al, , 2022. However, this is still an under-researched topic and requires further exploration.…”