Report Social media and impacts

report, social media, impacts on interpersonal communication, grade B. Social media is more and more developed, however, it has two sides. Both sides have its impact on interpersonal communication. questionnaire survey was conducted by HUST SOFL students in 2019.

The Impact of Social Media on Interpersonal

Communication?

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine Social Media use among college students and how it impacts on interpersonal communication and their self-concept In this study, the college students were required to complete a questionnaire on how Social Media impact interpersonal communication Fifty percent

of participants were first and second year students and the rest were third and final year students, studying at Hanoi University

of Science and Technology These findings provide implications for future researches on how Social Media impacts on

interpersonal communication

I INTRODUCTION

1. Rationale

1.1.Statement of the problem

Social media has become a completely omnipresent

phenomenon in modern society over the last decade This is often organized as a sign that people can still connect with each other more than ever before, but in truth, the whole picture about social media may be considerably more

complicated than that People use many social media sites such as Facebook, Zalo, and Instagram to create and sustain relationships with each other (Boyd & Ellison, 2007) These social media sites allow users to create accounts and

personal profiles while connecting with other users, and they can also upload photos, post status or whatever at any time, comment or send messages to whomever they want as well

In particular, college students have advantage of the

technology trend when using Social Media, and they are most likely to use Social Media that enable them to post photos and video ( McCord et al., 2015) It can be seen that

problems related to the Internet, in which social media is one

of the issues that researcher is interested in research in terms of behavior However, the research works have not yet concretized the acts used for students, also on the

theoretical level Especially when explaining human

behaviors when used and especially the effects of social media use on personal activities, as well as on societies that have not received much attention from society

Recently, some gloomy news related to the effects of social media were leaked such as a gang of students fought and struggled together fiercely owing to simply

disagreements about a small issue on social networks,

causing unintended consequences; or a singer was

responsible for posting a abetted status on social media that

he would reward 20 million Vietnam dong for someone giving

a drunk father a thick ear Conversely, there were also news

as many students had learned multilingual by themselves when using social networks All of the above demonstrate indicate that, if improper use, social media will have

astonishing negative effects and many generations might lose trust in social media Addressing this problem will have practical benefits for college students and contribute to understanding of this widespread issue

On the basis of theoretical research and the current status

of social networking behavior of Hanoi University of Science and Technology (HUST) students, the thesis proposes some recommendations to help students use social networks more appropriately to communicate effectively

1.2.Significance of the study

This area of research is vital because sociality is a

fundamental subject in technology and information era As this era of Social Media grows incredibly, it is important to

understand the effects of Social Media Social Media sites offer a simple way to connect with friends and receive peer feedback,

as well, this may influence interpersonal communication

Concretely, the comments that people use on Facebook to reply

to each other should have more symbolic importance than lower

effort stylized communication, such as “likes” that are also regarded as feedback or replies ( Burke & Kraut, 2016) Social media makes it simpler to communicate with multiple people at one time

This study will contribute to the improvement of positive effects of social media, and foster new ways to properly use social media on college students' communication The outcomes

to be considered consist of the following: bring into play the active side of "virtual" society to promote "real" one, instruct to use right ways social media in interpersonal communication

2. Aims of the study

The research is conducted with the two main objectives The aim of the study is to understand the factors that

influence interpersonal communication of social media

Besides the above main factors, evaluating relationship between the effects of social media and college students’ communication with the others The purpose of this study was about to find the aspects of social media already

influences interpersonal communication

3. Scope of the study

This study is limited only to the students of Hanoi University of Science and Technology (HUST), who use social media, like

Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube Their ages range from 18 to 21 years old

This study will mainly identify and assess different factors that affect the interpersonal communication of social media Also, this study yearn to identify the issues related to the relations of social media with interpersonal communication and how social media affect interpersonal communication and the problem that may come into future

4. Methodology

4.1.Research question

From the problem stated as well as the purpose of the study, the researcher raises some research questions which will be later clarified

in the study:

a. What is the extent of usage of social media to communicate?

b. What are the negative and positive impacts of Social Media on students’ interpersonal communication?

c. And do college students self-realize these factors of social

media affect their interpersonal communication?

4.2.Population and sampling

The study was deployed on randomly 150 respondents regardless of gender or educational level, with ages between

18 up to 21 years old, all of them studying in HUST ( SOFL) and have access to social media connection It was used a self-administered questionnaire which was developed based

on the review of the literature

Qualitative methods will be used to gain in-depth insight into the impacts of social media on interpersonal communication This data will be contextualized with a review of recent literature on the social media's effects on interpersonal communication to analyze

II. LITERATURE REVIEW

The Social Media has an enormous and profound influence on our lives Especially for students, it’s influence is reflected in the way of clothing, behavior, and thought The concept of Social Media is a top priority for many business today Social Media has become a

convenient internet way to netizens identify in which companies can use profitable applications such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter Despite this interest, there seems to be a very limited

understanding of the exact terminology of Social Media According to Wright and Hinson (2009), 61 percent of respondents supposed the development of Social Media had changed the way their organizations communicate The common point of all Social Media sites is that we can discuss, comment, vote, or connect with many people at the same time The widespread usage of social media without intentional thought has been causing many consequences in modern life, and also creating a wave of debate surrounding this issue, in which of the argument of direct communication and indirect one through social media sites

I start by describing the concept of Social Media Based on this definition, I then provide the classification of Social Media, a group of applications currently placed under general terms into more specific categories according to characteristics such as social news, social sharing, social networks, and social bookmarking Besides, my

research also indicates some effects of social media on college

students such as students’ efficiencies, grades, and communication According to Gillin (2009), social media not only have ended the age of one-way messaging but also pressure on businesses to engage constituents in unprecedented ways

Social media is computer-based technology that facilitates the sharing of ideas, thoughts and information through the construction of virtual networks and communities By design, internet-based social media and provide users with faster electronic communication of

content Content includes personal information, documents, videos and photos (Dollarhide, 2019)

Wikipedia (2019), Merriam-Webster defined "social media" as

"forms of electronic communication such as websites for social

networking and microblogging through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other contents

Social media may take the types of a variety of tech-enabled

activities These activities include photo sharing, blogging, social gaming, social networks, video sharing, business networks, virtual worlds, reviews and much more Even governments and politicians utilize social media to engage with constituents and voters

(Dollarhide, 2019)

Kakkar (2018) classified social media into these key categories: Social networks, media sharing networks, discussion forums,

bookmarking & content curation networks, consumer review

networks, blogging & publishing networks, social shopping networks, and interest-based networks With the availability of many social media sites, clearly that some receive much more web traffic than others

With the emergence with diverse features and rich sources of information, social media has allowed users to receive, share and select effective information Information is transmitted over time and space obstacles, over the distance between generations From the advantages that it brings, social networks have had the effect of changing many old habits and forming new manifestations including thoughts, lifestyle, culture, and etc in surprisingly large part of users College students have took advantages the benefits of social

media such as using it in studying, communicating and finding career opportunities Moreover, students, through social networks, may actively collaborate with each other into wide groups of people with similar interests, hobbies, and aspirations and then proceed with meaningful actions such as organizing charitable activities on Tet

holidays, helping street children, or organizing healthy cultural

activities; additionally, many groups share the hobby of traveling combining charity work in remote upland areas Not only that, many students from different universities across the country have set up websites to help each other to study English or specialized subjects This is one of the valuable tools to help students improve learning efficiency, and sharing knowledge and materials

However, besides the positive aspects, the use of social media also causes negative impacts on students Social media has led many students to neglect their studies and participate in extra-curricular activities The amount of time students spend on their self-study decreases on account of a large amount of online time Social media also pose a real risk when private information, content, or images are posted online to share with others which accidentally be abused and used by bad people for unpleasant purposes All of these issues have

a negative impact on the lives and learning of students

III. IMPACTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION

Participants and procedures

The surveys (N = 130) were distributed to undergraduate students at School of Foreign Language (SOFL) of HUST in first term 2019

Surveys were covered in classroom and common areas, and online Most of the respondents (90%) were female and all of them were 19 –

21 years old In which, freshmen consisted of 20% of the sample, 37%

were sophomores, 19% juniors, and 23% seniors ( see Table 1).

The survey comprised thirteen questions ( not included personal information) which asked about the extent of using social media, social media’s impacts on college students’ interpersonal

communication, and their self-realizing about these impacts The first five questions asked them to identify the influences of social media on interpersonal communication The next six questions asked them about the impacting factors of these influences The final two question asked whether or not they self-realize the influences of social media

on interpersonal communication

Demographics

RQ1 What is the extent of usage of social media to communicate?

Descriptive statistics and frequencies were used to conduct the

analysis To measure the extent of usage of social media, five

questions were used The questions were as follows: 1) Do you use any forms of social networking sites on the internet to communicate

with others, 2) What social networking sites do you use and mostly

use to communicate, 3) How many hours per day do you spend

visiting social media sites, 4) How often do you communicate with others using social media sites per week, 5) How do you communicate with others through social media sites

Overall, all participants used social media sites to communicate with others, and most (65%) respondents reported that they spend 2 – 15

hours each day using social media sites (see Table 1)

All numbers are percent

Table 1 Demographics and summary information

The second question was asked them to identify their most used social media to communicate Response options included Facebook, Messenger, ZALO, Instagram, Viber, Google, Skype, YouTube and others such as Snapchat Participants reported using Facebook page the most (100%), followed by Messenger ( 96%), ZALO ( 78%), and Google ( 67%) The least used social networking sites were Viber

( 8%) and Snapchat (9%) ( see Table 2).

Table 2 Social media sites were used to communicate

Frequency of usage social media shown that most students tried to visit a social media site several times a week, especially at the

weekend Hence, social media appears to be an insufficient tool to communicate with college students Half (60%) of the respondents reported they managed to have time to online every day, and in

which of participants, 52% spent more time to online at the weekend (

Table 2) 23 percent who spent spare time to angle for surfing, 15

percent reported they went to online once or twice per week, and eleven percent using social media to communicate three or four times per week

The frequency of using social media to communicate per week

I always manage to have time to online every

Whenever I have spare time, I always angle for

I spend more time to online at the

All numbers are percent

Table 3 The frequency of online time and gender differences

The fifth question was asked the way students communicate through social media sites Students used a variety of ways to communicate with their friends on social media sites Sending private messages was the most common way to communicate (89%), but students posted status, photos or videos as well