Using social media tools for theses and dissertations

There is an increasing variety of social media tools that can be used by graduate students for their research. However, their use is still limited in academia. Moreover, the available literature largely focused on graduate students’ use of these tools for general purposes instead of academic purposes. Therefore, this study explored why and how graduate students use social media tools for their thesis and dissertation research and the reasons for not using them. Interviews were conducted with 17 participants (9 women, 8 men) purposefully selected from 14 different programs within three institutes. An interview protocol with fifteen open-ended questions was used after being examined for content validity and pilot testing. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. The results showed that graduate students use social media tools mostly for communication, collaboration, multimedia, and information retrieval and management for their research. They reported that these tools enable them to easily communicate and collaborate with other academicians, share and receive up-to-date information, and increase their efficiency. They were reluctant to use these tools because they may cause distractions and information overload. Moreover, they prefer not to use these tools because of privacy and safety concerns, the restrictions of the tools by the government, and the tools’ complexity of use. The participants desired to have a guideline or a seminar to be introduced to these tools that may help them with their thesis and dissertation research