Abstract
The recent pandemic has raised significant challenges worldwide. In higher education, the necessity to adopt efficient strategies to sustain education during the crisis is mobilizing diverse, complementary, and integrative action in response. In this research article, we rise to the challenge of designing and implementing a transparent strategy for social media awareness at King Abdulaziz University (KAU). We introduce a framework for social media impact, termed the KAU Pandemic Framework. This includes the factors with the most important role in enhancing the deployment of social media in crisis in order to minimize the negative impact on education’s sustainability. We used a mixed-methods approach, integrating quantitative statistical analyses of social media data and online surveys and qualitative interviews in such a way as to construct a comprehensive framework. The results show that a methodological framework can be justified and that Twitter contributes significantly to six areas: administrative resilience; education sustainability; community responsibility; positive sentiment; community bonds; and delivery of promised value. The components of our proposed methodological framework integrate five pillars of the strategic adoption of social media: social media governance; social media resilience; social media utilization; decision-making capability; and institutional strategy. Finally, we show that the KAU Pandemic Framework can be used as strategic decision-making tool for the analysis of the gaps and inefficiencies in any social media plan that is deployed and the management challenges arising from the pandemic.
Highlights
We intend to build a methodological framework for the dialogic, interactive use of Twitter in higher education institutions, and we focus on the case of King Abdulaziz University (KAU) in a pandemic
We introduced our proposed methodological framework, the KAU Pandemic Framework, to deal with the pandemic of COVID-19
Our research study can be used as a benchmark for relevant studies worldwide on the analysis of pandemic emergency management strategies in colleges and universities
Summary
The recent pandemic emergency has brought forward two further significant shifts: traditional academic institutions with slow-moving processes and bureaucracy must adopt fast to the new conditions and set up efficient communication and awareness channels for diverse stakeholders. New technologies, for example social media, are revolutionizing traditional communication [1,2,3] In this context, this study emphasizes the adoption strategy for social media at a leading academic institution, King Abdulaziz University (KAU) in Saudi Arabia. The current coronavirus disease—COVID-19 pandemic is having a tremendous impact on the strategies and procedures of higher education institutions worldwide. Some aspects of this change are summarized in the following paragraphs. One of the most critical implications is the need both to manage the communication of significant knowledge and messages to key stakeholders fast and effectively and without compromising trust in the institution, and to increase its capacity for an effective response to pandemic emergency management
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