Abstract
Technical and professional communication instruction is well suited to helping students develop digital literacy but must be informed by research regarding how students are using specific social media platforms, particularly the propensity to post content that could damage their career capital. This study examined this question for students in Austria, Australia, and the United States. In Austria and Australia, this behavior was found to be no greater for Twitter than it was for Facebook. Conversely, for the United States, the behavior was found to be more pronounced. These and additional results regarding attitudes toward information privacy are reported.
Introduction
Cybervetting, or “the acquisition and use of online information to evaluate the suitability of an individual or organization for a particular role” (Berkelaar, 2014, p. 480), has transformed the landscape for job applicants by opening up whole new areas of employment communication (Berkelaar & Buzzanell, 2015). Yet, this transformation has not been accompanied by a similar transformation in technical and professional communication instruction, which, with some exceptions (Hurley & Kimme Hea, 2014), has largely remained limited to traditional kinds of instruction in employment communication, such as cover letters and resumes (Moshiri & Cardon, 2014; Sharp & Brumberger, 2013).
While preparation of these documents is still vital, the kinds of communication an applicant must cultivate to succeed in a job search have expanded vastly to include the whole of an applicant’s available digital record. Berkelaar (2014) explains: Unlike background and credit checks—which use institutionalized, public records and require workers’ permission and/or adverse action reports—cybervetting typically involves ad hoc, covert, extractive communication. Namely, contrasted with interactive, if asynchronous, communications of conventional selection (e.g., résumés, interviews, background checks), cybervetting usually occurs without workers’ specific knowledge, permission, or opportunity for correction. (Also see Ramirez, Walther, Burgoon, & Sunnafrank, 2002) web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. (Ellison, 2007, p. 211)
An understanding of this terrain does not come naturally but requires education in digital literacy that the technical and professional communication classroom can provide (Clokie & Fourie, 2016; Hurley & Kimme Hea, 2014). The stakes are high, especially for students who, at the beginning of their careers, are particularly vulnerable to damage to career prospects resulting from the discovery of controversial or otherwise embarrassing social media content through cybervetting (Elzweig & Peeples, 2009). To effectively address this problem, technical and professional communication educators need to be informed in two ways.
First, technical and professional communication educators need to be informed about how students are using specific social media platforms, which cannot be grouped together monolithically because individuals use them in different ways (Duggan & Bremmer, 2013). For example, unlike Facebook, the ethos of Twitter encourages an open account profile that will be easily accessible to potential employers. Yet, because Twitter does not require the use of real names, and users are more likely to be connected to their peers rather than family members or authority figures (Duggan & Bremmer, 2013), students may be more likely to post content that may be professionally damaging to themselves in the future, as shown in a previous study (Salmona, Melton, & Miller, 2013). Thus, a situation is created in which Twitter, the social media platform where students may feel the most free—to like content, make tweets, or follow other accounts in professionally risky ways—is also the platform that is the most open and susceptible to cybervetting. Facebook, on the other hand, has continued to grow as a generic social media platform among users of all kinds (Pew Research Center, 2016). Facebook is pertinent to cybervetting because employers do not look only for disqualifying content but also look for positive content such as hobbies or extracurricular involvement that can mark an individual as passionate or prepared for the job (Berkelaar & Buzzanell, 2015).
Thus, inquiry into student perceptions and behavior with regard to the major, yet contrasting platforms of Facebook and Twitter would be a good place to start in pursuing research that can inform curricular and pedagogical decisions with more than anecdote. Armed with this more complete understanding, educators can better create curriculum and instruction that will help not only entry-level applicants but also potentially all technical and professional communicators whose digital literacy must extend well beyond the first interview or the first job (Berkelaar & Buzzanell, 2015). A more nuanced understanding can help instructors avoid falling into the dichotomy noted by Hurley and Kimme Hea (2014) of social media dystopianism or utopianism.
Second, as social networks are, by their nature, global (Ellison, 2007), and technical and professional communication educators are part of a global discipline that prepares students to contribute to global organizations (Starke-Meyerring, 2005), inquiry into student use of social media technologies should not be limited to the United States. A comparative study would help prevent the research from being skewed toward one group of users while also strengthening findings by showing similarities and differences in different contexts. Although it would be impracticable to research users in numerous countries at once, it would be useful to provide a study that can ascertain how the social media habits of American students compare with others. Ideally, a start in pursuing this objective could be made by focusing on a few widely separated countries, which could then be replicated in additional countries.
Despite the needs outlined earlier, the literature review that follows shows that research in this area is lacking, meaning that technical and professional communication instructors largely remain in the dark about students’ posting perceptions and behavior. If this knowledge deficit persists, instructors’ guidance and possible intervention to prepare students for cybervetting will remain uninformed. The study described in this article aims to address this deficiency by drawing on empirical data to sketch a fuller picture of student social media use. Following the literature review is a description of methods that were used to address this need, followed by findings, discussion, implications, and conclusions.
Literature Review
Employers’ use of cybervetting for evaluating applicants has long been recognized (Berkelaar & Buzzanell, 2015; Caers & Castelyns, 2010; Klier, Klier, Rebhan, & Thiel, 2015; Melanthiou, Pavlou, & Constantinou, 2015), despite ethical concerns (Lam, 2016; Wheatcroft, 2016). Employers view the evaluation of online content, specifically social media, as an effective way to screen candidates (Chiang & Suen, 2015; Klier et al., 2015; Melanthiou et al., 2015; Sameen & Cornelius, 2015; Slovensky & Ross, 2012). Not surprisingly, studies are consistent in finding that online content perceived as unprofessional hurts candidates’ prospects (Bohnert & Ross, 2010; Brown & Vaughn, 2011).
Student perceptions about how employers will evaluate online content have not been extensively studied but are thought to generally mirror the views of employers (Melton, Miller, & Jensen, 2016). What students actually post and how they perceive it with respect to potential employers’ views is underrepresented in the literature, but some studies have investigated this question. Karl, Peluchette, and Schlaegel (2010) found that students who were less apprehensive about how their profiles might be viewed by employers were more likely to present a professionally problematic online image. On the other hand, students who were worried about the way employers or other authority figures might view their profiles were more likely to present a professional image. Peluchette and Karl (2010) identify six types of images commonly portrayed in student profiles spanning the following range: (a) appealing to the opposite sex, (b) wild, (c) fun and friendly, (d) offensive, (e) intelligent, and (f) hardworking. These images were generally consistent with the various primary audiences these students were trying to reach.
A small number of studies inquire into whether students recognize content that would put them at risk professionally. Root and McKay (2014) studied student awareness of employers’ use of social media screening: Students were cognizant that employers consider posts about drugs, alcohol, sex, profanity, and negative comments. Students did not consider posts and photo tags by friends to be important to employers, nor did they consider grammar and spelling to be important. (p. 202)
Research suggests that students use social media to gratify their social needs as well as to build social capital (DeAndrea, Ellison, LaRose, Steinfield, & Fiore, 2012; Ellison et al., 2007; Johnston, Tanner, Lalla, & Kawalski, 2011), but Berkelaar and Buzzanell (2015) suggest that they should expand their use of social media to build what they term career capital. Career capital can be built or destroyed through the use of multiple social media platforms, ranging from those such as LinkedIn that are dedicated to professional ends to those, such as Facebook and Twitter, that could be directed toward personal or business ends. To understand how career capital is built and protected through social media, technical and professional communication instructors and practitioners must know how students use different social media platforms in comparison with one another.
In response to this need, preliminary investigation by the Miller and Melton (2015) found that university students in the United States were more likely to post controversial content on Twitter than on Facebook, a phenomenon termed the posting paradox, or the propensity of users to post content that they know will harmful in a future evaluation such as cybervetting. However, follow-up research is needed to confirm these findings and expand the inquiry from the United States to other parts of the world. Key questions should focus on the attitudes of users in different countries toward the possibility of employers and others viewing their accounts on various social media platforms, particularly Facebook and Twitter, and an investigation of the measures they take with regard to their online privacy. How do university students in different global contexts view their posting behaviors, how aware are they of the professional risks to what they post, and how does the prospect of employment pitfalls related to what might be judged as inappropriate posting affect their attitudes and behaviors? This article addresses these questions in the following sections: methodology, results, discussion, and implications.
Methodology
To address the research gaps identified earlier, a preliminary study of Twitter and Facebook use among university students was conducted, aiming to explore the outlines of the posting paradox in a broader international context, with data collected in Austria and Australia. This research was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Central Michigan University and was approved by all universities that took part in the study. Data were collected two phases over a 6-month period in order to increase the sample size for Twitter users in Austria and Australia, where Twitter usage was found to be low. The following sections describe the research methodology that was used in the study.
Research Instrument
The survey used in the study was a slightly modified version of the instrument designed by the Miller and Melton (2015) for study in the United States. The instrument consisted of four sections: (a) demographics including gender, age, and academic classification, (b) Facebook usage and student perceptions about posting appropriateness, (c) Twitter usage and student perceptions about posting appropriateness, and (d) student beliefs regarding who is or should be viewing their social media profiles. A copy of the survey in provided in Appendix A. This survey was distributed using links to SurveyMonkey as well as paper surveys, depending on the preferences of the universities that were hosting the survey. All participation was voluntary and anonymous.
Participants
The study sample was drawn from undergraduate students attending three large universities in Australia, the United States, and Austria. Undergraduate students were chosen as the target population because they are some of the most active users of social media. Students were recruited from classes selected by the researchers’ contacts at the universities in each country. Instructors in these classes distributed a paper-based survey (see Appendix A) in their respective classes. Students were informed that participation was voluntary and that their grade in the course would not be affected by their participation or lack thereof. The surveys were completed in class, taking approximately 10 minutes to complete. The study and the survey instrument were approved by the institutional review board at each participating university.
Surveys Showed Use of Facebook, Twitter, and Both Platforms in Samples Collected in Australia, Austria, and the United States.
Results
The study yielded results regarding the percentage of social media users, disparities in the posting paradox for each country, a comparison between countries, patterns of use, and attitudes toward privacy. The survey results revealed unexpected findings in light of a study of Twitter use among American university students (Miller & Melton, 2015). Mixed results were found with regard to the posting paradox for Twitter, with it being evident in Australia but not in Austria. Furthermore, a largely opposite set of findings was found between Twitter users in the United States, on the one hand, and in Austria and Australia on the other. First, the percentage of Twitter users in Australia and Austria proved to be much lower than in a comparable university-age demographic in the United States. Likewise, the way Twitter is used among these groups appeared to be very different from in the United States in the areas of the posting paradox, patterns of use, and views on privacy. Yet, despite these differences, decisions about actual privacy settings seemed to be similar among the three groups.
Percentage of Users
The relatively low percentage of Twitter users in the total sample, 186 out of 499, was unexpected. In light of previous research showing high levels of Twitter use among university students in the United States (Smith & Brenner, 2012), and similar levels of Facebook use in the United States, Austria, and Australia (Melton, Miller, & Salmona, 2012), we expected the rates of Twitter use for the three countries to be fairly similar. We were surprised to find that although the rate of Twitter use among the Australian and Austrian survey groups was similar to each other, it diverged widely from the American survey group.
We found that the percentage of respondents who use Twitter in the United States was, as expected, relatively high, at 61% (73 out of 118), but the percentages were much lower in Austria at 24% (44 out of 183) and in Australia at 33% (70 out of 210). Possible reasons for this disparity will be reviewed in the discussion section.
Disparities in the Posting Paradox for Each Country
Among American Students, the Posting Paradox Was More Pronounced for Twitter Than for Facebook and Was Statistically Significant (Marked in Bold) With Regard to Parents, Boy or Girlfriend’s Parents, and Professors.
For Australian Students, Comfort Levels With Twitter Flattened Out, Making the Posting Paradox Less Pronounced for Twitter Than It Was for Facebook, With Statistical Significance (Marked in Bold) for Friends and Potential Employers.
Respondents’ Comfort Level for Others Being Able to View Their Facebook Was Relatively Even Across Categories. Respondents Were More Comfortable With Others Viewing Facebook Than Twitter, With Statistical Significance (Marked in Bold) for Friends, Parents, Professors, and Potential Employers.
Results from Austria and Australia were not similar to results from the United States. Rather than being less comfortable with parents and other authority figures viewing their Twitter accounts, as compared with Facebook, respondents were more comfortable with friends viewing Facebook. In Austria, the posting paradox was not evident, with respondents showing comfort levels being quite high for potential employers.
Comparison Between Countries
In addition to comparing respondents’ comfort levels with others viewing their Facebook and Twitter accounts within each country, the study also revealed marked differences between countries, as shown in the tables, with many of these differences being statistically significant (marked in bold).
American Respondents Were Found to be Much More Comfortable With Others Viewing Their Social Media Accounts in all Categories, Except for Potential Employers With Statistical Significance (Marked in Bold).
American and Australian Respondents Were Found to be Similar for Most Categories in Their Comfort Levels With Regard to Others Viewing Their Twitter Accounts But Not Their Facebook Accounts.
Austrian and Australian Respondents Were Very Different From Each Other in Their Comfort Levels With Others Viewing Their Twitter Accounts and Produced Mixed Results for Facebook.
Patterns of Use
These differing findings for respondents in the three countries correspond to how students are using Twitter—including how often they tweet, how often they access their accounts, how many followers they have, how many Twitter accounts they are following, and how long they have had a Twitter account.
The number of tweets made per day reveals interesting divergences in the way Twitter is used in the three countries (see Figure 1). More than half (52%) of the U.S. respondents tweet one or more times a day, while this percentage is much lower in Australia (19%) and even lower in Austria (9%). Likewise, a great majority of U.S. respondents, 77%, access their Twitter accounts more than one of more times per day, compared with 35% of Austrians and 34% of Australians (Figure 2). By comparison, American respondents access Facebook multiple times a day at a lower rate, 64.4%, than Australians at 75.6% and Austrians at 78.3%. There seems to be at least somewhat of a tradeoff between energies devoted to Facebook and Twitter among the three groups.
Under half the American students tweeted less than once a day, while a large majority of Austrian and Australian respondents fell into this category. More than 60% of American respondents said they opened their Twitter accounts at least once a day. On the other hand, approximately 40% of Australian and Austrian respondents said they access their Twitter accounts less than once a month, revealing a wide polarization in frequency of Twitter use.
Evidence of engagement with Twitter for U.S. students suggests a high level of comfort with the medium. As will be discussed, this kind of active usage may lead to decreased caution and increased odds that potentially risky content could be posted, resulting in American students’ lower comfort levels with employers and professors being able to view their Twitter accounts.
On the other hand, the low numbers of tweets per day among Australian and Austrian respondents suggest that they may be using Twitter primarily as an information gathering service or not really using it at all. This possibility is supported by the fact that 41% of Australian respondents and 39% of Austrian respondents said they access their Twitter accounts less than once a month (Figure 2). This low level of usage would fit with a less pronounced posting paradox for Twitter than for Facebook: Students who are not really posting on Twitter and are only occasionally using it to view information on a topic of interest would probably not be uncomfortable with employers or professors viewing the contents of their Twitter accounts. A commonality, however, was that a great majority all three groups (71% of Australian, 70% of Austrians, and 66% of Americans) said that when they do access Twitter, they are typically on for less than 10 minutes.
The average number of followers for the Twitter users in each country, along with the number of people the users are following, substantiates the notion that Twitter is used differently in the three countries among university students. The number of Twitter followers respondents in the United States said they have was nearly three times the number of followers of Australian respondents and well above twice that of Austrian respondents. The number of Twitter accounts respondents in the United States said they were following was more than twice the number of people on Twitter compared with Austria and Australia (Figure 3). Such a relatively high average number of followers and of people being followed is expected, given the previous findings related to frequency of access and frequency of tweets. In fact, given the wide differences in these areas, one might expect disparity to be even greater.
The average number of Twitter followers for the American students was nearly three times that of Australian respondents and well above double that of Austrian students. The number of Twitter accounts American respondents said they follow was also more than double of Austrians and Australians.
Interestingly, these differences do not seem to be a function of the length of time a student has had an account (Figure 4). However, more research would be needed to investigate the influence of possible demographic differences: The median university class standing of the students in the samples for the three countries varies, with the Australian respondents generally having more school to complete than the Austrians and Americans.
Respondents in all three countries followed a similar pattern for the length of time they said they have had their Twitter accounts.
Attitudes Toward Privacy
Although there are wide differences between the groups, their attitudes about whether they would change their accounts if they knew a potential employer could view them are remarkably similar (Figure 5). Yet a related question about whether employers should be able to view their social media accounts shows a stark difference (Figure 6). While over half the American respondents (51%) said they thought employers should be able to view their accounts, the percentage in Australia was 12% less, at 39%, and was very low in Austria, at just 18%. This finding is similar to that of another study (Melton, Miller, & Salmona, 2012), with similar divergences between Americans, Australians, and Europeans (from Denmark and the United Kingdom) in that case.
All three of these are remarkably similar, especially given the divergence in other areas. A majority of American students said employers should be able to view the contents of their social media accounts, with a lower percentage for Australian students and much lower percentage for Austrian students.
Despite wide differences in attitudes about privacy, all three groups set their Twitter accounts to be public rather than private at a relatively high rate (58% in Australia, 67% in Austria, and 61% in the United States). Likewise, Facebook settings are largely similar, with most respondents in all three groups saying that only friends are permitted to view their profiles (73% of Australians, 87% of Austrians, and 78% of Americans).
Limitations, Conclusions, and Suggestions for Future Research
The purpose of this section is to discuss the results of the study and put them in a larger context. The following sections present limitations, conclusions, and directions for future research.
Limitations
This study had several limitations. First, initial surveys found the number of respondents using Twitter in Austria and Australia to be unexpectedly low. This was a surprising and interesting finding. The researchers then conducted additional surveys to obtain a sample size that would allow for statistical significance on questions regarding Twitter. Although somewhat limited by sample size, the study is an important step, particularly given the current lack of similar inquiry and the germaneness of the subject, and can help open the way for further inquiry. Second, surveys of university students provide a relatively narrow picture of social media use in this age-group, although the findings are still potentially useful because they can be applied by instructors at the university level. In any case, efforts to broaden the study to other groups are needed. A final limitation is that the survey design, as shown in Appendix A, did not include open-ended questions, which may have provided valuable data. For example, privacy ended up being a major area of discovery for this study, and open-ended questions in this line may have allowed for a fuller picture to emerge. Additional research is needed to address these questions.
Conclusions
The approach of studying the use of both Twitter and Facebook in three countries proved fruitful and can lead to further research. The study showed evidence of a divergence in Twitter use between American university students and university students from Australia and Austria. While discomfort with the prospect of authority figures being able to view one’s account was more pronounced for Twitter than for Facebook for American respondents, the situation was largely reversed for Australian and Austrian respondents. Along with this difference, American respondents were much more engaged in Twitter use, including more tweets, account access, followers, and people followed. The survey showed that both the percentage of users and the intensity of Twitter use among the Austrian and Australian respondents is much lower than for the Americans. Among those who do use Twitter, the frequency and number of tweets are much lower, as is the frequency of account access, number of followers, and number being followed. All of these findings suggest that American students are using Twitter to connect with friends, much as they have used Facebook. And, in fact, Facebook usage was lower for the American respondents, relative to the other groups, while Twitter usage was higher, suggesting the possibility of a replacement, at least in part.
The fact that the posting paradox appears more pronounced on Twitter for American students may be based on the perception that relatively few older adults—parents, employers, or other authority figures—use Twitter, and therefore it is safe to post content that these outside observers may not approve of. Students are correct in their estimation of who uses Twitter: Users skew young, while Facebook is used broadly across age ranges (Pew Research Center, 2016). Students are often Facebook friends with parents and grandparents, 1 so they likely feel more constrained in the pictures they post or they kind of language they use. Adding to these limits is Facebook’s official policy, which, unlike Twitter’s, prohibits anonymous users and accounts.
These same dynamics do not seem to be developing in Australia and Austria, with findings suggesting that Australian and Austrian students were likely not using Twitter to connect with friends. The fact that Australian respondents were less inclined to feel comfortable with friends seeing their Twitter accounts than Facebook suggests that they are not tweeting the kind of content that friends would find interesting or any content at all, for that matter. On the other hand, the fact that they are almost equally comfortable with all types of potential authority figures viewing their Twitter accounts, from parents to employers, suggests that the content is relatively neutral or that the accounts are not actively used.
Implications
These findings have several implications for teaching and research. First, these findings suggest the need for technical and professional communication educators to pay greater attention to Twitter as a potential risk area for American students when it comes to the prospect of cybervetting. Not only does the content American students are posting on Twitter appear to be potentially more problematic under the gaze of employers—and they are posting a lot of it—but also, as mentioned earlier, Twitter is a network that discourages closed accounts, putting students at greater risk of this content being easily collected for use through cybervetting.
These findings are important to consider because the stakes can be high. While Facebook acts like a bulletin board, where users with real names post on each other’s and their own walls, Twitter can be a raucous group conversation, more like a party than a two-person chat. Spontaneity, suppleness, informality, and speed are all encouraged by the 140 character limit and the chaotic rush to be heard, which may deplete inclinations toward restraint and reflection. Yet, the freedom and openness of Twitter also create a risk that students may not recognize: When compared with Facebook, activities on Twitter tend to be more rather than less accessible to employers and other authority figures.
Having as many people as possible read one’s tweets and having one’s tweets re-tweeted are in many ways the whole point of Twitter. Thus, as the survey showed, it is uncommon for users, regardless of country, to restrict the visibility of their tweets to only their own followers. And, because much of the conversation takes place among people who know each other, it is difficult for individuals to be truly anonymous on Twitter, even if they use a pseudonym, because Twitter is often linked to Facebook or other social media. Restrictions on visibility are not foolproof since one’s protected tweets can easily be screen-captured and then retweeted. More subtly, even if a person does not post objectionable content, the Twitter feeds he or she chooses to follow are visible to the outside world, and there is no option to block this visibility without making the entire account private. Twitter users who choose to follow objectionable Twitter feeds will have this fact readily displayed to employers or to anyone else clicking on the Following tab in their accounts.
Research such as the current study can inform inquiry into curricula and assignments that can help students become better at building and maintaining their digital career capital (Berkelaar & Buzzanell, 2015). One example of this effort is an exercise the authors created to put students in the role of hiring an employee from a pool of three hypothetical applicants whose digital presences, including their Twitter accounts, had been cybervetted. Although the authors’ pedagogical research on the exercise showed that it largely failed to change students’ social media behavior meaningfully within the semester (2017), the study did yield interesting data about how students viewed job candidates’ digital records in the context of hiring (Melton, Miller, & Jensen, 2016). Informed by the current study and others like it that may come forth, this kind of exercise might be approached differently in technical and professional communication classes outside the United States.
Overall, the current study provides initial evidence that approaches to social media should differ for American, Austrian, and Australian audiences and prompts a need for similar study in additional countries. Researchers and practitioners should be open to the possibility and indeed the likelihood that differences in social media use will be present and will require a nimble response from educators.
Suggestions for Future Research
More research is needed to address the potential disparity between Twitter and Facebook use for students in the United States and students in other countries. Is the United States an anomaly when it comes to Twitter use, or is it on the edge of a trend? What are the underlying reasons for this difference? Are there cultural, linguistic, or economic reasons for any difference in usage rates and practices? How does gender affect Facebook versus Twitter or other social media use, along with other social media competitors such as Pinterest? How does research about social media in United States contexts transfer to other countries and cultures? For example, how would findings from a study such as that done by Ferro and Zachry (2014) of professional communicators’ use of social media to complete work-related tasks translate across cultures?
Low usage rates of Twitter by Austrian and Australian students also seem to drive a different kind of posting behavior—less engaged and also less risky. More research is needed to investigate this behavior, particularly research that can dig into the actual content of users’ social media, such as discourse analysis. Other useful research would examine users’ change in use over time related to Twitter, as has been done for Facebook (Salmona, Melton, & Miller, 2013). A related question is this: What influence do personal networks have on Twitter usage—in other words, what kind of pull do students feel when their friends are on Twitter, and how does Facebook use change when parents, grandparents, and other authority figures join a student’s network? Beyond Twitter, the same questions could be asked for other social networking technologies such as Instagram, SnapChat, and Pinterest.
Privacy is another area in need of more investigation, particularly inconsistencies between attitudes about privacy and actual practice. For example, American respondents were not comfortable with employers being able to view their own personal accounts; yet a majority would not change their accounts if they knew employers could view them. Not only that, but a majority believe employers should be able to view their accounts. And despite widely differing views of privacy among the three countries’ respondents, the reported practice of privacy settings for the three groups is similar. What can we make of these incongruities? Clearly this is an area in need of further investigation.
In addition, to what extent do social media users expect cybervetting when using various social media services? To what extent are they aware of surveillance and are they opposed or resigned to it? What is the difference in perception and reaction to cybervetting by companies versus surveillance by governments? How do attitudes toward these questions differ in various countries, and how do these differences manifest themselves in social media practice?
Research on students’ social media use cannot only add to the evolving body of pedagogical knowledge; it can also be extended by technical and professional communicators, university instructors, and organizations to help craft policies, procedures, and strategies. In industry, it can also inform professional practices, and in the university, it can inform pedagogy and curriculum design. In a larger sense, social media use is about decision-making, an area that has been studied by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahnemann and his collaborator Amos Tversky, among others. Kahnemann and Tversky’s prospect theory describes cognitive biases that distort individuals’ judgment of risks, rewards, and consequences (Kahneman, 2011). In future research, this theory and other theories about decision-making may help explain students’ social media-related perceptions and behaviors.
Understanding how university-aged adults are interacting with the medium of Twitter will require continued empirical research directed at their attitudes and behaviors. As with so much of social media research, addressing the immediate research questions leads to larger questions about ethics, privacy, censorship, and decision-making—all prime areas for further study. Integration of existing theory with models of social media behavior can add to our understanding about why university students and others may act against their own self-interest in their online behavior. The results of this research will also better inform organizations as they craft policies and guide employees. This research can also help educators, organizations, and individuals better understand their own decision-making process as it relates to the prospect using social media to build or evaluate career capital.
Footnotes
Appendix A
1. Gender: □ Male □ Female 2. Age: _____ 3. How far are you from graduating? □ More than 4 years □ 4 years □ 3 years □ 2 years □ 1 year □ Less than 1 year 4. Are you currently on the market for your first professional job? □ Yes □ No 5. Are you currently on the market for an internship? □ Yes □ No 6. Do you have a profile on Facebook? □ Yes □ No 7. How long have you had your Facebook profile? □ Less than 1 year □ 1 year □ 2 years □ 3 years □ 4 years □ 5 years □ More than 5 years 8. Please indicate how much you agree, or disagree, with the following statement: I consider myself to be very familiar/experienced with Facebook? □ Strongly disagree □ Disagree □ Somewhat disagree □ Neutral □ Somewhat agree □ Agree □ Strongly agree 9. How often do you access your Facebook profile? □ Multiple times a day □ Once a day □ Once a week □ Once a month □ Less than once a month 10. How long are you typically on Facebook when you access your profile? □ Less than 10 minutes □ 10–30 minutes □ 31–60 minutes □ More than 60 minutes 11. Who can view the contents of your Facebook profile? □ Everyone □ Friends only □ Friends of friends □ Friends and networks
Please think about your Facebook profile and consider how much you agree with the following statement for each of the listed individuals.
| Strongly Disagree | Somewhat Disagree | Disagree | Agree | Somewhat Agree | Strongly Agree | ||
| 12. my friends | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
| 13. my parents | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
| 14. my boy/girlfriend’s parents | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
| 15. my professors | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
| 16. potential employers | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
Please think about your Twitter account and consider how much you agree with the following statement for each of the listed individuals.
| Strongly Disagree | Somewhat Disagree | Disagree | Agree | Somewhat Agree | Strongly Agree | ||
| 26. my friends | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
| 27. my parents | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
| 28. my boy/girlfriend’s parents | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
| 29. my professors | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
| 30. potential employers | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
31. Are you aware that employers commonly search and view the social networking account(s) of their job candidates? □ Yes □ No 32. Do you believe potential employers should be able to view the contents of your social networking account(s)? □ Yes □ No 33. Would you change the contents of your social networking account(s) if you knew a potential employer could view them? □ Yes □ No
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.