Online Social Support to University Students: Does Lecturer’s Popularity Matter?

Abstract

Rapid growth and innovation of the technologies is having a very large and burgeoning impact on people’s lives – from the way they share as well as the way they learn. Launched in 2004, Facebook is one of the social networking sites (SNS) that has become a centre of social interaction that involves various dynamics inside its communities including higher education institutions. With its daily active user are reported to be 1.038 billion and available in more than 70 languages, these are the clear evidence that indicates Facebook popularity and among the predictors for Facebook user to use it as they find it cool and fun. University students are driven to Facebook not only to maintain existing social relationships but also for learning purposes. As most of the research has been carried out looking at the motives for Facebook usage, what are the factors that help them to determine to whom they should seek for social support are remain unclear. However, some researchers suggest that social support can gained from the closest and the most credible. Credibility has been revealed to closely related with individual social status and perceived to be one of the factors contributing to popularity. Does lecturer’s popularity making them a credible option for the students to seek for social support? Is number of friends and with whom the lecturers befriended with are among one of the criteria that the students would look for while seeking for social support? Using questionnaire survey distributed among students in University Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), we hope that this research will be useful to educational practitioners in understanding of what, who, when, where, why and how their students use of Facebook and effectively help them to adjust themselves in parallel with the need to increase the learning opportunities.