=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2740/20200053
|storemode=property
|title=Higher Educational Establishments in Social Media: an Analytical Review
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2740/20200053.pdf
|volume=Vol-2740
|authors=Tetiana Bondarenko,Galina Tkachuk,Nadia Stetsenko,Vladimir Stetsenko
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/icteri/BondarenkoTSS20
}}
==Higher Educational Establishments in Social Media: an Analytical Review==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2740/20200053.pdf
Higher Educational Establishments in Social Media: an
Analytical Review
Tetiana Bondarenko[0000-1111-2222-3333], Galina Tkachuk[0000-0002-6926-1589], Nadia Stet-
senko [0000-0002-9802-6529] and Vladimir Stetsenko [0000-0003-2232-2089]
Pavlo Tychyna Uman State Pedagogical University, Uman, Ukraine
tanyabond2006@gmail.com, tkachuk.g.v@udpu.edu.ua,
stecenkonm@gmail.com, stecenkovp2006@ukr.net
Abstract. Social media have become a popular online platform for modern soci-
ety, as they are simple and easy to use. The paper presents the content analysis
of higher educational establishments’ official web pages on Facebook and Insta-
gram social nets as well as their promotional role in creating a definite image of
a school. On the one hand, the article reveals the ranking of the top universities
on Facebook with the reference to objective statistic data (Harvard University,
the University of Oxford, and National Autonomous University of Mexico) and,
on the other hand, the web pages of Harvard University, the University of Oxford
and Stanford University are analyzed on Instagram. Such research allowed to
summarize the experience of foreign countries in creating an optimal platform
for the popularization of the educational institution and to identify Information
and communications technology (ICT) tools to present the page of the higher
education institution in the social network.
Keywords: Facebook, Instagram, social media, higher educational establish-
ments (HEE), ICT.
1 Introduction
Іnternet services which aim to introduce, publish, spread information, and provide com-
munication among people with similar interests or social background develop at a high
pace. The majority of people are active participants in online communities. They are
eager to maintain contacts, communicate, and produce media content.
The data obtained from the research conducted by the Internet resource «Statista» in
November 2019, show that Facebook (Fig. 1) [13] is the most popular social media in
the world according to the number of active users. Meanwhile, Youtube is mainly used
as a video hosting аnd WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat are telecommunica-
tion services to exchange text messages. Instagram is also quite popular. Nowadays it
has reached more than one billion active users a month.
Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
Fig. 1. The most popular social nets in the world in November 2019 (according to the number of
active users).
Social interaction on Facebook and Instagram is an effective tool to promote the image
of higher educational establishments, to become more influential and authoritative, en-
large the access to education resources, to create the possibilities for communicative
exchange.
The objectives of the research are to statistically measure the online audience of the
most authoritative higher educational establishments regarded through their official
web pages’ content, the peculiarities of their work, exposure of facilities of ІКТ for
projecting, designing the page of a higher education institution with a social network.
2 Related Scientific Works
Namely, Dilek Doğan and Yasemin Gülbahar suggest using a wide range of Facebook
instruments (information exchange, the spread of adverts, publication of comments) to
obtain higher education results [7]. Kalelioğlu researched the integration of academic
courses on Facebook [10]. Some aspects of learning English via Instagram were ana-
lyzed by Fitri Handayani [9].
Saleem Alhabash and Mengyan Ma analyze social media in their works which reveal
and prove motivational differences among Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat tak-
ing into account their intensity and motivation to use. There are some instruments to
evaluate and measure the time spent by the user on each of these platforms [2].
In the listed publications the researchers mainly highlight the added educational value
and effectiveness of online learning in social networks. However, their work does not
pay enough attention to analytical research aimed at identifying and analyzing the dig-
ital profile of higher education institutions, presenting their identity in the network for
the formation of social image and cooperation with users of the Internet audience. The
need to study and cover this issue has led to the relevance of the chosen topic.
3 Higher Education Institutions in Social Networks
We have focused our analytical review on the three leading educational brands’ social
channels: Harvard University, the University of Oxford, and the National Autonomous
University of Mexico. It was done to measure the social effectiveness of information
content and to reflect public interest in the university activities on the Internet. The
conclusions reflect the benchmarks of a Facebook page for higher educational estab-
lishments. According to UniRank [16], which covers 5000 universities from 200 coun-
tries in the world in its sample and measures their level of popularity in social media
(Fig. 2), the above-given universities' representatives are the most successful world
companies on Facebook.
Fig. 2. The most popular social nets in the world in February 2019 (according to the number of
active users).
Despite the fact that the audience of higher education institutions has significantly in-
creased, such factors as the number of publications, likings, and comments have re-
newed, when our article is published, still, this analysis permits to define the general
state of activity of the three leading institutions. It allows evaluating the prospects of
world education leaders in social media to follow their pace and experience for national
achievements.
We have applied professional automated services of social networks monitoring Rival
[12] and Likealyzer [11] as well as partially turned to hand calculations to evaluate the
content, which was produced by the corresponding higher education institutions in the
period of January 11 – 25, 2019. We provide all the data in Table 1 given below.
Table 1. The analysis of the HEEs’ digital profiles on Facebook social network dating from
January 2019
Characteristics Harvard National Autono- The Univer-
University mous University of sity of Oxford
Mexico
The number of likings (general infor- 5 328 495 2 967 338 3 604 193
mation about the page during its whole
history)
The number of followers (general in- 5 292 984 2 985 357 3 600 232
formation)
Publication numbers per day 1 14 1.14
The most popular publications (the 0.046% 0.37% 0.044%
frequency of interaction in the given
time period)
The biggest number of comments (in 67 840 75
the given time period)
The widest spread (in the given time 579 2528 482
period)
Information about the record being ad- - - -
vertised (general information)
Profile interface and image (general - + +
information)
Information about the page (in gen- Partial Partial Partial
eral)
Communication with the visitors (gen- - - -
eral information)
Users’ comments (general infor- - + -
mation)
During the preliminary analysis, we have found out that the information published on
Facebook is put on the main web site of the higher educational establishments with
traffic generation. Sometimes, the reposts made by friendly pages or resources are pos-
sible. It is mainstream in the work of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Facebook should correspond more to the popular reading inquiries of the users than
visual Instagram as the first one is a more readable social network. Thus, publications
with qualitative, dignified, and considered content with video- or photo-reports are typ-
ical for the posts in the Internet resources of Harvard University, the University of Ox-
ford, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Correspondently, they attract
a wide circle of readers. In other words, there is created some significance and scope of
an interesting topic, which predetermines its full coverage, spread, and commenting.
According to our research data, the official web page of the National Autonomous Uni-
versity of Mexico has the biggest number of posts (around 14 publications a day). Dur-
ing the analyzed period of time, Harvard University published the most popular news
post «Bill Gates visited the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Har-
vard and got a firsthand look at innovative robots»: https://www.facebook.com/Har-
vard/videos/592416614514545/ (the frequency of interaction 0,046%). The National
Autonomous University of Mexico demonstrated a popular video of Janis Lyn Joplin
devoted to her birthday: https://www.face-
book.com/UNAM.MX.Oficial/videos/296101104596860/ (the frequency of interaction
0,21%). The University of Oxford published «Anna, studying Geography, writes about
her first term at Oxford in 'Student Blog: from North Yorkshire to the first term at
Brasenose College»: https://www.facebook.com/the.university.of.ox-
ford/posts/10161531419075107 (the frequency of interaction 0,044%).
The followers of the above-mentioned universities communicate via spread, comments,
likings of the published posts. On having analyzed these data, we found 2528 reposts
of the news on internationalization of Mexican culture and 840 comments about the
career-oriented post of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. If it runs about
the likings, their number is practically the same for Harvard University and the Univer-
sity of Oxford pages. It means 2,1 and 2 thousand «likings» correspondently for the
most popular publications. Still, National Autonomous University of Mexico took the
lead over its rivals having 5 thousand «likings».
The statistics prove that Harvard University is the leading one among its rivals accord-
ing to the number likings and followers. The University of Oxford comes next. Though
the National Autonomous University of Mexico drops behind its concurrents, still, it
has a chance to become an open informational and educational space which is able to
orient society and form a public point of view. Unlike other universities, the webpage
of this institution is frequently renewed. There is a possibility for both administrators
and readers to publish. All its pages are marked with a wide variety of publication dis-
cussions and reposts. Relevant «youth» of the page explains its lagging in audience
growth. Thus, Harvard University created its page in 2009, the University of Oxford
developed theirs in 2008. There was a page for National Autonomous University of
Mexico only in 2011.
Correspondently, the successful public pages of Harvard University, the University of
Oxford and National Autonomous University of Mexico, which are in our sample, have
the following positive characteristics:
1. Quality. The resources present only useful, trustworthy, topical, informative, and
unique materials.
2. Content. Text posts are accompanied by strong author’s video or photo.
3. Following links. There is a reference to an external corporative resource, which
could be followed to other important issues.
4. Systematic character. In general, the frequency of publications is once a day.
5. Events. Creating scientific events, conferences, seminars, exhibitions, photo-al-
bums, etc.
6. Advertisements. The absence of clear advertising content and sponsored posts. Still,
there are some promotional and career-oriented posts but the advertisement is delicate,
unobtrusive, and natural.
Along with enumerated positive functions and content, the higher educational institu-
tions usually ignore the interactive possibilities, which they obtain for communication.
The universities’ pages are mostly used to generate news content. The networking ac-
tivity could be raised with the help of commenting initiation, clearing up the disputable
questions by the administrator, creation of questionnaires, drawings, development and
application of the feedback option Click-to-Messenger. The effective tools to promote
the educational content are geolocation setting, marking people on the photos or men-
tioning them in the posts. Marked publications appear on followers’ personal pages and
in the lines of their friends, which contributes to natural visibility of the posts in social
space.
We evaluated the integration prospects of learning and teaching spaces of the leading
education brands such as Harvard University, Stanford and the Oxford Universities on
Instagram with the help of Professional Automation Services like Rival [12] and Likea-
lyzer [11], and partially using hand calculations.
According to UniRank evaluation [16] (Fig. 3), Harvard University and Oxford Uni-
versities represent the most successful education companies on Instagram. Stanford
University takes the lead over the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Fig. 3. HEEs ranking according to the number of followers on Instagram social network dating
from February 2019.
In the course of the study, it was found out that the number, regularity of postings,
subscribers, and comments on pages of Harvard University, the University of Oxford
is much higher on Facebook than on Instagram (see Table 2). But if you turn to the
number of preferences, you may notice that the percentage of coverage is higher on
Instagram, which proves a much higher viral activity of photos which motivate users to
share their emotions with members of their social environment. Comparing digital pro-
files of the above-mentioned universities, we found out that posts on Facebook are al-
most never duplicated on Instagram. Such a technique segments the audience and al-
lows to immediately generate information and adapt the posts according to the require-
ments of a certain social networking site.
Table 2. HEEs digital profile analysis on Instagram social network dating from January 2019.
Characteristics Harvard Uni- Stanford Uni- The University of
versity versity Oxford
Number of publications (general infor- 1 242 1 252 1 224
mation)
Number of readers (general information) 1млн. 471 тис. 453 тис.
Frequency of publications (per week) 3.5 4.5 5.5
Typical posting (frequency of interac- 4.85% 1.66% 3.57%
tion for a time period)
Hashtags for messages (for a definite pe- 0.86 1 0.82
riod)
The biggest number of likings (for a def- 49 429 25 004 29 504
inite time period)
The biggest number of comments (for a 274 37 74
definite time period)
All this testifies to the developed concept of the use of Instagram where visual appeal
of information is of great importance. Therefore, professional photos of higher educa-
tional establishments mostly dominate on Instagram. Photographers use a variety of
software tools, editors and filters to handle shots. There are also stock photos or frames
made by students, teachers or casual people. The network contains pictures of build-
ings, auditoriums, libraries, gymnasia, laboratories, university campus; successful grad-
uates’ photos, their speeches or quotations; students’ and employees’ photos of every-
day life, their achievements; research and scientific work; cultural, educational, sport-
ing activities, as well as funny, ridiculous, and just positive images.
Instagram may contain stories or permanent stories that reveal a small plot. Such a for-
mat of information presentation is often found on pages of the University of Oxford.
An accelerated real-time video of a snowy courtyard with the students walking in it
from time to time, hiding from the wet snow, gained the greatest number of likings for
a definite time period. The topic of weather phenomena is also popular at Harvard Uni-
versity. Thus, according to our sample, the picture of the snow-covered Main Gates of
the University gained the greatest number of likings. Stanford University page pub-
lishes the videos of laboratory tests, which allow looking closely at the world of the
academic life of the university. In our sample, one of such video materials got the big-
gest number of likings.
The Stanford University website publishes videos with laboratory experiments that al-
low look closer at the world of scientific life of the university. One of such videos in
our sample collected the most likes.
On average, leading social networking sites of higher educational establishments usu-
ally publish a little less than one post a day. Still, there is no reduction in the number of
readers as the quality of content and the frequency of publications is more important
for Instagram than the number of postings. Unlike Facebook, links to external resources
are rare. Studying the selected accounts of higher education institutions, we found out
that there is at least one hashtag in the posts. Such markers, as well as geolocation tags,
help users to detect posts more effectively on Instagram. Therefore, their increase
(about 5-10 under each new post) will contribute to positive results and draw the atten-
tion of social network participants to the digital profile of higher education institution.
The main idea of Harvard, Stanford and Oxford Universities’ presence on Instagram is
based on advertising and information campaign. The advantages of such managing
tools are in enhanced recognition and formation of the university's digital profile for
self-identity, presentation, the creation of a positive image, growth of users' interest in
the institution's activities, trust, and loyalty of visitors.
Representation of a higher education institution in a social network is impossible with-
out the use of ICT tools of the appropriate software. Consider the ICT tools used by the
above-mentioned institutions of higher education in the social network in the design of
their own digital profiles.
Geolocation allows you to get the real geographical location of the institution of higher
education, as well as learn about the location of events, conferences, seminars held on
the basis of the institution and more.
Hashtags. A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by a lattice symbol that converts the
specified word to a reference. By selecting such a link, the user will be able to see posts
that have the same word (tag). The use of hashtags makes it possible to reach more
users, and promote higher education through the use of widely used hashtags.
Automation. Post release scheduling, sorting, filtering, posting, and more. You can also
search using a pre-configured category (topics).
Confidentiality:
Selection of the target audience. This is an opportunity to show relevant con-
tent to those categories of users who are interested in receiving it. What cate-
gories of users can see posts on the page of a higher education institution -
administration, teachers (different faculties as separate categories), students
(I-IV courses as separate categories), graduates, etc. This feature can also be
used for career guidance when you need to advertise certain information to
potential applicants and their parents.
Tags. Allows you to view the materials in which a user has been spotted. These
can be photos, posts, videos that are distributed by the institution of higher
education.
Multimedia. This feature allows you to download your own video content, embed vid-
eos from various services (mostly YouTube), watch live broadcasts. This way of
presentation allows educational institutions to publish in real time a variety of events :
seminars, conferences, celebrations and more.
Feedback. Communication has always been an important tool for attracting more par-
ticipants in higher education events. As a means of feedback on the social network, they
use the functions of liking, commenting on posts, distributing them to other users, direct
communication in chat, etc.
Analytics. Provides the ability to track user activity, comments, view posts, number of
visits, etc. The analysis of statistical data will allow to determine the effectiveness of
publications on the page of the higher education institution and the further strategy in
covering various events.
These ICT tools can significantly strengthen the information component of a higher
education institution, promote the institution, identify priority ways of development,
get feedback on the quality of educational services, etc.
4 Conclusions
Taking into account the popularity of social networks and the peculiarities of inter-
action in communicative environment under analysis, higher education institutions are
trying to state their presence in the place where there is a real opportunity to tell about
themselves, to provide support for the educational vector of influence, to gain new tech-
nologies for development and communication.
In the course of our research, we revealed that, at the present stage of development,
the digital profiles of higher educational establishments, which we have selected, have
a clear concept and strategy of functioning in the web space. There are social channels
for educational brands on Facebook (Harvard University, the University of Oxford, Na-
tional Autonomous University of Mexico). Harvard University, the University of Ox-
ford, Stanford University have their own development models, originality and novelty
on Instagram.
Considerable potential for further scientific analysis is traced in the study of ICT
tools for the development of information and educational environment of higher edu-
cation institutions in social networks, the organization of feedback with participants in
the educational process, improving the quality of educational services in general.
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