The state of social media engagement in Saudi universities
Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education
ISSN: 2050-7003
Article publication date: 10 April 2017
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the way that Saudi universities are engaging their audience via social media platforms by means of the five meaningful themes: visibility, branding, authenticity, commitment, and engagement. The study will answer the questions: how do Saudi universities exploit social media platforms to engage their target audience? What are the recommendations for Saudi universities toward maximizing the value of social media engagement?
Design/methodology/approach
A content analysis approach was used to study all Saudi universities (26 public, 11 private). Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter were the anticipated social media platforms in this study.
Findings
The results showed that Twitter is the most frequently used platform to communicate with audiences. While visibility in the anticipated social media platforms was high, the engagement was lacking. On the other hand, authenticity and branding in the anticipated social media platforms were medium, while commitment was low except on Twitter. In general, the private universities exceed the public universities in terms of visibility, branding, authenticity, commitment and engagement in the anticipated social media platforms, which indicates their attention on gaining their audience’s satisfaction, a dynamic of trust which will lead to maintaining current relationships or building new ones.
Originality/value
Since there are few studies in the field regarding social media platforms usage by Saudi universities, this study aims to understand how Saudi universities are utilizing social media platforms to engage their audiences and propose recommendations for how Saudi universities can build value from social media platforms.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by the Research Center of Humanities, Deanship of Scientific Research, King Saud University. The authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions.
Citation
Alsufyan, N.K. and Aloud, M. (2017), "The state of social media engagement in Saudi universities", Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, Vol. 9 No. 2, pp. 267-303. https://doi.org/10.1108/JARHE-01-2016-0001
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited