Abstract
The purpose of the study is to investigate and clarify the factors that affect Saudi higher education institutions’ adoption and formulation of effective policies on social media. A focus group was conducted to explore the critical challenges and issues preventing Saudi higher education from creating and formulating a clear social media policy. Focus group sessions were held online, which involved administrators and policy makers from the higher education in Saudi Arabia. Data were analyzed using qualitative research methodology, specifically, the manual thematic analysis approach with the support of NVivo software. Factors perceived in this study as the major reasons and challenges for not having a clear social media policy included lack of policy makers, awareness, management support, and resources. The findings suggest that Saudi higher education institutions (HEIs) need to enhance their social media policy and may need to consider outsourcing to gather the desirable resources to formulate and implement a clear social media policy.
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Alharthy, F., Wang, Y. (2021). The Challenges and Policy Issues Faced by Saudi HEIs When Adopting or Formulating Social Media Policies. In: Meiselwitz, G. (eds) Social Computing and Social Media: Applications in Marketing, Learning, and Health. HCII 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12775. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77685-5_13
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