The role of Social Networking Sites (SNSs) is coming under increased scrutiny as their online prowess grows. The objective of this research work is to investigate the students’ perception of this reality and try to understand their understanding of the SNSs potential for learning. The theory of Social Presence provides the academic impetus as the main conceptual framework for the study. Students of the Virtual University, Pakistan, were interviewed to understand their sense making of the SNSs role as platforms for learning in a virtual setting. The results highlight the importance of social presence dependent on myriad other factors, significant in their own right but extremely potent when they act together and thus influence the role of SNSs as virtual online conduits. It also indicates that our understanding of these networks, in the context of online learning especially in a developing country environment is still in its infancy and the numerous external environmental factors equally play a significant impact on the students’ perception of the role of these SNSs.

This qualitative study aims to investigate the use of social media sites by university library staff to facilitate undergraduate students. Two Greek academic libraries were examined and the specific social media investigated was Facebook since it was the only common social media to both libraries. The method that was used was the interpretive method in order to gain better insight of students’ perceptions, motivations and request their suggestions regarding the use of social media by academic libraries. More specifically, twelve undergraduate students were interviewed and then the results were analyzed via Thematic Analysis. The results of this research showed that students appreciate the existence of their library’s Facebook page as an informational tool. On the other hand, improvements should be made regarding its use as a communication tool. Benefits, such as time gain, the ability to get in touch with new people, job opportunities, and reminders of important educational programs (Erasmus), were acknowledged by all students. Moreover, interesting suggestions were made, such as to increase the availability of open access books, the use of cameras for communicating with librarians via Facebook, and an increase in the number of photos of books. Other ideas were the ability to see the availability of books in the library, the ability to borrow them electronically, and the creation of a Facebook group to discuss common interests with other students.

Vänner möts inte längre bara på fysiska platser utan även online på olika typer av plattformar. Denna studie utforskar var onlinevänner träffas, i vilka aktiviteter de umgås, hur frekvent onlinevännerna umgås samt hur många onlinevänner som även träffas offline. Syftet med studien är att få en större förståelse för var och hur människor möter vänner online. Studien genomfördes med hjälp av en enkätundersökning med 1000 deltagare som spreds via sociala nätverkstjänster och offline, samt genom att analysera tidigare forskning inom relaterade ämnen. Resultatet av studien pekar på att det finns ett stort antal olika plattformar där onlinevänner kan skapas. De vanligaste av dessa är Facebook och World of Warcraft. Främst umgås onlinevänner via textchatt, röstchatt och genom att spela tillsammans. De flesta onlinevänner umgås dagligen och majoriteten av deltagarna träffade 2-5 onlinevänner offline. Studien väckte stort engagemang på sociala medier och kan förhoppningsvis komplettera redan existerande forskning samt bidra med inspiration till framtida studier. / Friends no longer meet only in physical places; they can also meet on various different online platforms. This paper aims to explore where online friends meet, in which activities they socialise, how frequent they socialise and how many online friends also meet each other offline. The purpose of this paper is to get a better understanding of where and how people meet friends online. The paper was realised through a survey with 1000 participants, distributed both on social networking sites and offline. An analysis of already existing related research papers was also made. The result of the survey showed that there are various different platforms where online friends can be made. The most common platforms were Facebook and World of Warcraft. Most online friends socialised via text chat, voice chat and through playing games together. The majority of the online friends kept in touch with each other on a daily basis and met 2-5 online friends offline. The survey was given big attention at social networking sites and hopes to complement already existing research as well as contribute with inspiration to further studies.

The web 2.0 technology and its associated social networks have brought tremendous effects in each day life. The effect is now reaching the educational settings due to online increasing activities. Indeed, new ways of learning have started to attract the ongoing debate for inclusion web 2.0 technologies into pedagogy. The effects of Blogs, Wikis, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Moodle, RSS feeds and other related social networking tools in the formal and informal education, is vividly seen. Educators all over the World are keen to implement them into educational practices. What benefits have so far been observed by both students and educators? This is an important question that needs to be answered thoroughly, in order to establish a new shift in educational and pedagogical thinking. Information sharing accompanied by openness and a great deal of voluntary collaboration, is what forces the exploration in this area of informatics. In Tanzania, the Ministry for Education and Vocational Training has developed a policy for Information and Communication Technology for Basic Education in July, 2007. This was done so as to integrate ICT in education after realizing its potentials in daily life. Through this policy and other initiatives supported by Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), a birth of eSchools was realized for integrating ICT in Education. The aim of this study is investigating the importance of online social networking sites in education in Tanzania. Using a quantitative method, this study includes a total of 56 participants (key informants) as a sample. All participants are students at the University of Dar es Salaam pursuing various courses. The instrument for data collection was a questionnaire composed of 19 questions. The usable rate of returned responses was 61% of the anticipated responses. The responses were then collated for analysis by means of MS excel. The study was conducted in March and April, 2012 and revealed that, the online social networks is not fully utilized in Tanzania for educational purposes. Lack of wider access to technology is a big hindrance, although not a definite factor by itself. Another factor has been identified as lack of sensitization among students and educators. Furthermore, the report provides recommendations on how this technology can be fully exploited for the benefits of the students and community at large. / This Thesis is all about the inclusion of new learning technologies in education. The study has been conducted in Tanzania and the population included the University students. Due to continuous growth of user generated content and the subsequent ability to share and even collaborate online, the social networking sites have emerged to be of great importance. The importance is not only in information sharing but also in education processes. On the other hand, the communities have not yet realized the great potential lying in the social networking sites in terms of education. Despite the publications and studies done elsewhere including America and Europe still much has not been done in the developing World and particularly in Tanzania. This study has concentrated on the use of the social networking sites into academic perspective putting focus on the students. / +255786924648/+255719476712

This master thesis is in theoretical part focusing on the term of self-regulation according to Albert Bandura's theory (1991) and its domains of self-monitoring, self-judgement and self-reaction. Next we define its stand against terms such as addiction and habit, in case of low ability of one's regulation. Thanks to analysis of mainly foreign resources we oriented the work to explanation of relationship between self-regulation and loneliness and life satisfaction. These resources are chosen for their historical consistency and contemporary application, especially in domains of media and online environment. In empirical segment of thesis we are proposing our own questionnaire measuring our ability to self-regulate Facebook usage (SRQ-FB), inspired by original theory of Brown et al. (1999) and Czech translation of their questionnaire, translated and tested by Jakešová et al. (2015). Next we tested hypotheses based on assumption of relationship existence between score of our questionnaire (SRQ-FB) and score of loneliness (measured by UCLA Loneliness Scale; Russell et al., 1980) and life satisfaction score (SWLS - Satisfaction With Life Scale; Diener et al., 1984). Research sample consisted of two nation-based groups: Slovak (N = 168) and Czech (N = 21), which differed significantly in achieved score...

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can enrich the ways in which citizens participate in civic and political matters. Indeed, many theorists on online participation, or eParticipation, proclaim the potential of digital technologies to empower citizens with convenient ways to participate in democratic processes and to hold leaders to account. However, it is not clear if and how digital technologies, notably social media, can contribute to a more democratic system and engaged public in a country where open expression is limited. This thesis studies Social Networking Sites (SNS) as Information Systems (IS) artefacts, including individuals’ motivation for using them, how their features enable participation - or not - and the impacts of their use in an authoritarian country. Through personal interviews and focus group discussions in Uganda, this thesis finds that the common enablers of online participation in often-studied, mostly Western democratic countries are rarely translated into the offline world in an authoritarian country with one president for the last 30 years. The thesis proposes ways to increase eParticipation in authoritarian contexts, citing the social accountability sector (where the thesis shows evidence of eParticipation working) as a pathway to greater citizen participation and government responsiveness. Findings also contribute to the Information Systems artefact discourse by illuminating the political, social, technological, and information artefacts in SNS when used for eParticipation. Moreover, the thesis shows how, in contexts with a democracy deficit, resource-based theories such as the Civic Voluntarism Model (CVM) fall short in explaining what motivates political participation. It also explains how social networks contain the various constitutive aspects of the IS artefact – social, technical, informational and political - and how these various aspects need to be aligned for eParticipation to work.

This research aims to understand the different practices and strategies early career researchers and PhD students from the social sciences have in Social Networking Sites (SNSs) for science communication in one particular country: Brazil. Following this purpose, the central research question is which are the motives and rationale of the researchers for using social networking sites for science communication. Two sub-questions arise from this general research question: How do practices and strategies relate to the academic system of this country? And How do the traditional science communication practices translate into the use of Social Networking Sites (SNS)? This research is empirically oriented building up on case studies in Brazil. This study makes use of the adaptation that Van Dijck (2013) made of the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and the review of affordances of social media platforms (Bucher & Helmond, 2016) to apply it to the study of social media as the theoretical approach. The methodological approach of this research is qualitative, using both interviews and netnography as research methods. The primary motivations for using different Social Networking Sites are all related to connectivity: communication with peers, to the public and research subjects, updating themselves about their research issue, dissemination of research, availability of papers, self-branding and participation in interest groups are the most mentioned. These motivations translate into cross-posting practices and integrated communication strategies -combining online and offline elements- on the different Social Networking Sites. These motivations translate into perceived affordances all related to social affordances, therefore, social capital processes: availability, scalability, visibility and multimediality. The academic system of the country has remained unchanged as it privileges traditional scholarly academic formats; therefore, early career researchers and PhD students from the social sciences only use the different Social Networking Sites (SNS) as a side aid but not as a primary means of communication. Social media is underused as a means of public science communication, even though these platforms offer a lot of advantages for pursuing such issue. Traditional science communication practices translate into the use of Social Networking Sites (SNSs). The most important issue that came out in this report was the fact that social affordances provided by Social Networking (SNSs) are still required to be endorsed by real life meeting to start further collaboration and the fact that English is the preferred language for such issues.

This diploma thesis focuses on data included in social networking sites. It also evaliuates the possibilities of using such data from small and medium enterprises (SME) point of view. The first part of the thesis describes the context of social networking sites (SNS). Further it explores structures in which SNS data persist and conditions to be met when loading the data. The first part incorporates an overview of basic actions to be peformed when starting using the data. The second part of this thesis is more focused on usage of the data. It offers a detailed overview of cases of use in terms of data on SNS. The third part is subdivided into two separate sections. The first section describes results of an experiment on what data can be found based on name and email address. The second section contains a suggestion on a course of actions needed to be made to establish an SNS strategy in a SME. The course of steps is further demonstrated on a real world small enterprise. The main asset of the thesis is the overview of data available on SNS, steps to load it and it's cases of use. This allows the enterprises in SME sector to orientate themselfs in the world of SNS data and to fast integrate the data in the everyday life. Another asset of this thesis is the demonstration of what data can be found on SNS after entering name and e-mail address. This can help individuals imagine what data they are sharing without knowing it.

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This master's diploma thesis focuses on the dissemination of information in the context of the Czech community of so-called foodies (people who like good food and are constantly looking for new experiences in this field). The theoretical part outlines the development of online communities environments, from web forums to social media. It also examines the possibility of applying Katz and Lazarsfeld's model of the two-step flow of communication in the online environment. We also explain the features of online food communication and present widespread social media foodie platforms, including the Czech app Scuk. The research part of the thesis uses the social network analysis method to identify opinion leaders of this online community in the environment of Twitter, Instagram and Scuk and examines how the information spread and the form of this community changes with regards to the particular online environment in question. The thesis also includes qualitative research on the impact of the online information spread on the offline environment - more specifically, on sales, visit rate and reputation of selected Prague restaurants.