The relationship between social media use, social media types, and job performance amongst faculty in Kenya private universities

Abstract

There has been an increased interest in social media that is attributed to the rapid growth in the media use. Covid-19 has also significantly heightened the interest, with organisations relying more on social media. In particular, universities have reduced their dependency on face-to-face teaching and are relying more on social media for teaching, research, and service. Despite this, there have been concerns about faculty's ability to integrate social media into their work, and this has impacted job performance. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between social media use, social media types, and job performance, as well as determine the extent to which faculty uses the social media types and the most popular social media type. This study applied a descriptive cross-sectional research design and surveyed 388 faculty based in Kenyan Private universities using an online questionnaire. The study employed social capital theory to explain the relationship between social media use and job performance, and the Borman and Motowidlo model was adopted to classify job performance. Data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings showed that content communities was the most popular social media type among faculty, whereas virtual game world and virtual social world were the least popular. In addition, the study revealed a positive relationship between cognitive use, social use, social media types and job performance, while hedonic use had a negative influence on job performance. Academic social networking sites and virtual social worlds were the most important predictors of job performance. Therefore, this study recommends that universities should encourage faculty to become more aware of the social media use dimensions and social media types, and the impact social media has on job performance. In addition, private universities should ensure the availability of internet for faculty to access the important social media types.