Evaluation of Social Media Usage of Universities in Turkey: A Qualitative Application for Twitter Posts

ocial media platforms are seen as the most important communication tools of the digital age. The use of social media comes to the forefront as a new norm in terms of increasing the institutional reputation and globalization of universities. Thanks to social media, universities have the opportunity to communicate with current and new students, as well as to develop new projects, collaborations and other scientific research with individuals or institutions in many different parts of the world. While many posts with different content are shared in the social media accounts of universities with thousands of followers, content that is deemed valuable by other social media accounts can create interaction. For this reason, the increase in content that is not considered valuable by the followers can reduce the effectiveness of the social media account. In this direction, within the scope of the study, it is aimed to examine Twitter accounts of universities with content analysis method and to compare the posts made between universities. Based on this purpose, the findings obtained by examining the Twitter accounts of the ten universities with the highest globalization score in Turkey between April and September 2021 were evaluated. According to the research findings, it has been concluded that the focus of posts on social media accounts of universities in Turkey consists of promotion and information activities. It has been observed that there is not enough space for sharing about academic activities. It is predicted that universities' differentiation and enrichment of the content of their posts will increase the effectiveness of their social media accounts, and it is suggested that more scientific studies should be included in to posts.