Running head: SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE ITALIAN UNIVERSITIES

SOCIAL MEDIA AND ITALIAN UNIVERSITIES: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ON

THE ADOPTION AND USE OF FACEBOOK, TWITTER AND YOUTUBE

Alessandro Lovari (alessandro.lovari@unisi.it), University of Siena, Italy

Fabio Giglietto (fabio.giglietto@uniurb.it), University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to investigate the use of social media by Italian universities as

communication and relational tools. An analysis of the 95 Italian higher education

institutions highlights how nearly half of the universities (51.6%) have an official

presence on at least one social media. In particular, private institutions and small-medium

size universities are those that are mostly embracing the relational potentialities of these

participatory media. Finally, in order to evaluate the social media performances of the

analysed institutions, we introduce the “university social media performance index”

(USMPI). Implications for public relation research and practices are discussed.

Keywords:
social media, university, public relations, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube

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Highlights

 We collected and analyzed data on official social media usage by all Italian higher

education institutions.

 We analyzed the social media strategy in terms of post rate.

 We identified the structural properties of an institution (ownership, size, type)

positively correlated to social media adoption.

 We developed the “university social media performance index” (USMPI) to

evaluate effective use of social media.

 We discuss the impact of social media on the overall organizations’ public relation

strategies

1. Introduction

In the past ten years university communication has deeply and rapidly changed due to

internal and external factors that have impacted on public and private higher education

institutions. Italian universities seem to have understood the need to innovate their PR

and communication strategies in order to reach new publics and to better manage

relations with them (Aquilani & Lovari, 2008, 2009). Although many Italian universities

still adopt traditional communication mixes, recently there is a growing evidence that an

increasing number of institutions are integrating in their strategies interactive tools and

social media (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010), such as blogs and social network sites, to

communicate and to manage relations with students and strategic publics (Aquilani &

Lovari, 2009, 2010). These platforms are particularly suitable for university students who

spend many hours on the Internet to interact with their peers and to manage relations and

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transactions with brands, institutions and universities (Bennet, 2008; boyd, 2008; Shirky,

2008; Jenkins, 2009; Ito et al., 2010). Indeed social media represent popular platforms in

which students search for information, share comments and contents, and communicate

about their lives and activities (Smith, Rainie, & Zickuhr, 2011). For these reasons social

media can represent today a great opportunity but also a challenge for Italian universities

in order to interact, dialogue and listen to students not only in this country but also in a

higher education globalised context. The next section will provide a brief review of the

literature in the field of university communication and social media to contextualize the

study.

2. Literature review

The relations between universities and students have deeply changed thanks to the big

development of Internet and social media. Indeed these new digital environments allow

new ways to spread information, to offer and deliver services, and to better relate and

engage with students during their entire life cycle: from potential to enrolled students,

from graduate to alumni, university websites and more recently universities' social media

profiles, play an important role in the relationship between higher education institutions

and their publics.

Universities' websites are strategic tools in the area of higher education. For instance,

some studies revealed that prospective students, who consider a college website

inadequate, associate their electronic experience with the quality and functioning of the

university itself (Abrahamson, 2000). The value of university websites lies not only in

spreading information and creating visibility through the cyberspace; they are also

powerful tools of relational management between universities and students (Aquilani &

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Lovari, 2008; Kang & Norton, 2006; Jo & Kim, 2003; McAllister-Spooner, 2008, 2009;

McAllister-Spooner & Taylor, 2007; McAllister-Spooner & Kent, 2009; Will & Callison,

2006). Indeed the university-student relations can be empowered by implementing

dialogic and effective websites that are able to activate a two-way symmetrical

communication process that can foster mutual satisfaction, build loyalty, and create

partnerships.

Despite these potentials and optimistic expectations, often websites have been used by

universities as a one way media instead of employing the dialogical potentials of these

tools to interact with students and other publics (Aquilani & Lovari, 2008; Gordon &

Berhow, 2009; McAllister-Spooner, 2008, 2010; Pock & Lefond, 2001, 2003; Will &

Callison, 2006).

2.1 Social media and their impact on students and university communication

Social media are very popular in the university students’ media consumption patterns: a

2011 Pew research study on college students and technology found that 86% of

undergraduate and 82% of graduate students use social networking sites (Smith, Rainie &

Zickuhr, 2011). This is a global phenomenon and not only concerning the United States:

for example Mori (2007) reports that over 95% of British undergraduate students

regularly use social network sites; and in Italy 82.9% of Internet users between 18 and 19

years old habitually use and engage with social network sites such as Facebook and

Twitter (Istat, 2011). Moreover Facebook represents an important social tool for high

school students in their process of transition to university: boyd1 (2007) reported that

Facebook’s university origins attracted those high school students aspiring to go to

1
Please note that danah m. boyd, for personal and political reasons explained at
http://www.danah.org/name.html, spells her name using lowercase letters.

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university; and Madge, Meek, Wellens and Hooley (2009) highlighted how Facebook is

part of the social glue that helps students settle into university life.

Thanks to their popularity among students and to their dialogical potential, higher

education institutions started to colonize social media and especially social networking

sites to attract potential students, to communicate with the enrolled ones, and to maintain

relations with graduate and alumni (Education Insider, 2010; Pearson, 2011; Slover-

Linett & Stoner, 2011). Slover-Linett and Stoner (2011) found that 94% of American

education institutions use Facebook to engage with different stakeholders. Other social

media such as Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube, even if with a lower rating of adoption,

are also used in their strategies by over half of the schools surveyed. In addition “almost

60% of institutions have added social networking features to their own websites” (Slover-

Linett & Stoner, 2011, p. 4), confirming the importance of these platforms and

institutionalising the use of these media. The website represents the main gateway to

access the official pages built by universities, not incurring in fake profiles or groups

managed by students, alumni or other users.

These profiles are managed for different aims and they mainly involve students in their

public relations activities. The 2010 Social Media and College Admissions Study by

Cappex (Education Insider, 2010) highlighted that Facebook, Twitter and college search

sites are among some of the most common digital approaches to recruiting and making an

impression on students. Universities report a variety of social media’s uses to connect

with students in various stages of the student life cycle: prospective students (57%),

current students (69%), and alumni (96%) (Slover-Linett & Stoner, 2011). Furthermore

the top three goals that universities report trying to achieve through social media are:

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engaging alumni, strengthening the institutional brand, and increasing awareness,

advocacy and rankings of the university (Slover-Linett & Stoner, 2011).

Several PR scholars started to analyze the relational role played by social media, and

Facebook in particular, in the context of non-profit organizations (Bortree & Seltzer,

2009; Waters, Burnett, Lamm & Lucas, 2009) and higher education institutions (Aquilani

& Lovari, 2009, 2010; Ellison, Steinfield & Lampe, 2007; Griffith & Liyanage, 2008;

Hewitt & Forte, 2009; Valenzuela, Park & Kee, 2009; Mazer, Murphy & Simonds, 2007;

McAllister-Spooner, 2012 in press; Madge, Meek, Wellens & Hooley, 2009).

The impact of social media in the university life has been analyzed in different areas and

contexts: they can be used, for example, as a strategic tools for collecting students’

voices, monitoring services and listening to students’ needs: Aquilani and Lovari (2009),

analyzing students’ conversations raised within 125 Facebook groups built around La

Sapienza University of Rome in Italy, found how these conversations covered a variety of

topics including significant information about quality of services, relations with faculty

members and university reputation. Over a total of 414 topics and messages posted on

groups’ discussion boards and walls, 7.2% were evaluating university services, 4.8%

were about university reputation, and 6.5% concerned students’ general relations with La

Sapienza University.

The same scholars in a more recent study (Aquilani & Lovari, 2010) interviewed a

representative random sample of 415 university students enrolled at La Sapienza

University. The survey’s results showed how a wide majority of students (72.77%)

demand their university to be on Facebook with an official page. Students are in favour of

the creation of this institutional page for having easy and quick access to updated

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information (84.68%) rather than developing a sense of community with other students

(54.05%).

Furthermore McAllister-Spooner (2012, in press) analyzed the web-based tools

implemented by the world’s best 100 universities, according to 2009 U.S. News & World

Report, and found that more than half of these universities (62%) have Facebook pages. It

is relevant to notice how these universities, according to the author, are still using social

media as a top down broadcasting tools to spread information, often limiting the

interactions activated by students. Indeed only 15% of university Facebook pages allow

students and other users to post contents on the universities’ walls.

3. Research Questions

Although international literature on the impact of social media on university relations

with its publics and stakeholders is flourishing, little has been done at this extent in Italy.

At the same time most of the studies focused on a selection of the best or top universities

in the world. On one hand, the analysis of the communication strategies of these

institutions may give an important glimpse on the future potential use of social media by

all universities; but on the other hand the results of studies focused only on top

universities may be misleading when extended to all the other higher education

institutions. For these reasons the research team proposes an index of performances of

social media usage by universities that is easily applicable to a large number of

institutions.

Based on the literature review of the university-student relationships and the impact of

social media in these dynamics, the researchers, therefore, propose the following research

questions.

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RQ1: are Italian universities adopting social media to communicate and relate with

students and other strategic publics?

RQ2: which structural properties of a higher education institution make it more likely to

adopt and make effective use of social media?

RQ3: is it possible to create a balanced index of social media performance based on

indicators publically exposed by hosting platforms and programmatically accessible

(number of likes, followers, subscribers, etc)?

Creating such an index would allow analysing the performance of a large number of

universities with a relative low effort. The index takes in account the size of the

institutions in order to balance the results. It would be therefore possible to reuse this

index to compare the social media performances of institutions in different countries.

4. Methodology

Researchers collected data about the official social media presences of all of the 95

Italian higher education institutions, including 9 special institutes2. A complete list of the

institutions and their structural proprieties (number of enrolled students at the date

02/09/2011, number of faculties and departments, public/private ownership, official

website and physical address) was retrieved from the website of the Italian Ministry of

Education.

Researchers decided to limit the scope of this analysis to official social media presence. A

simple search, performed by typing the name of the institution in the internal search

engines of sites such as Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, reveals, in fact, a heterogeneous

galaxy of grassroots communities and channels of information often created by students

2
The authors would like to thank Francesco Cosimi for his availability and help in collecting data for the
analysis.

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or by unauthorized autonomous efforts of the faculty and staff members of an institution.

Researchers therefore choose – following Slover-Linett and Stoner (2011) - a simple

criterion to define an official social media presence. A social media presence was

considered official if linked from the institutional website, directly from the homepage or

from the secondary level of the website.

The research team operated four exceptions to this general rule. We discovered four

Facebook Pages claiming to be the official presence of the institution on Facebook. In

these cases, researchers reached by phone an official representative of the institution to

confirm whether the page was actually official. In all four cases the pages were

recognized as official and therefore included in our sample.

Once identified the link to the official social media presence for every institutions,

researchers started to gather data on this presence. During this process several minor

different social media platforms in use (LinkedIn, Flickr!, SlideShare and Gowalla) were

also identified. All the data about these platforms were gathered but the in depth analysis

focused on the three more represented platforms: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

The methodology implied in this phase was based both on direct observation of the social

media presences and on the use of the platform’ application programming interface (API)

to automatically retrieve available data. The data were collected between the 1st and the

15th of October 2011.

For Facebook we retrieved data about the type of presence (page, page with enabled

place, profile or group), the number of likes, friends or members, the type of user

permissions (read, comment or post), the number of people talking about this (a

Facebook metric that counts the number of users actually engaging somehow with the

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page during the last week), the number of check-ins, the adoption of a vanity url for the

page (a shorter unique internet address that administrators can choose to make the page

easier to find and remember for users). For Twitter we collected the number of followers

and following, the Klout3 score of the channel, the date the channel was created, the total

number of tweets published, and the small self-provided description of the channel.

Finally, for YouTube, we collected the type of presence (channel/branded channel), the

number of channel’s subscribers, the number of channel’s page views, the number of total

videos views, the number of uploaded videos and the channel creation date.

All the data were analyzed with standard statistics ranging from simple frequency count

to variable correlations and hierarchical cluster analysis.

4.1. Structure and calculus of the University social media performance index

Finally researchers developed an index of the performances of the higher education

institutions on social media. The aim of this index was to provide an effective way to

evaluate social media performances without human interventions and by using the data

publically available on social media platforms. The index, called “university social media

performance” from now on USMPI, is a 0 to 1 index that synthetizes several metrics.

Researchers, in fact, created one 0-1 index for each major platform (Facebook, YouTube

and Twitter) and they attributed bonus points for presence on minor social media

(Slideshare, Gowalla, LinkedIn and Flickr!). Facebook, YouTube and Twitter

performance indexes were calculated as follow: the Facebook performance was evaluated

using four different indicators: [fb_m1], the ratio between the number of Likes on the

Facebook Page and the number of enrolled students; [fb_m2], the ratio between the

3
Klout aim to synthetically measure the overall user’s influence, see also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klout.

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number of people talking about the page during the last week and the number of Likes on

the Facebook Page; [fb_3], the ratio between Likes on the Facebook Page and the number

of check-ins; and [fb_4], the presence/absence of a vanity url for the Facebook Page.

Each metric was then normalized on a 0 to 1 scale. The zero value was attributed in case

of no presence.

Facebook performance [0-1] = ([fb_m1]*0.54 + [fb_m2] + [fb_m3] + [fb_m4]5)/4.

The Twitter performance was calculated on the base of four different indicators: [tw_m1],

the ratio between Twitter followers and enrolled students; [tw_m2], the Twitter Klout

score; [tw_m3], Tweet Rate by day; [tw_4], the ratio between followed and followers

users. Each metric was then normalized on a 0 to 1 scale. The zero value was attributed in

case of no presence.

Twitter performance [0-1] = ([tw_m1]*0.5) + [tw_m2] + [tw_m3] + [tw_m4])/4

Finally the YouTube performance was calculated using four different indicators: [yt_m1],

the number of average views for uploaded video; [yt_m2], the ratio between subscribers

to the YouTube channel and enrolled students; [yt_m3] the presence/absence of a branded

4
Note that only half the weight was attributed to the metrics dealing with the number of enrolled students.
Considering the number of enrolled students is important to get a fairer comparison between large and
small universities. On the other hand we noticed that simply creating a ratio between likers, subscribers and
followers and the number of enrolled students was significantly favoring small universities. For this reason
we decide to keep the metric but to attribute half of the weight to compensate.
5
The presence/absence of a vanity url was selected as one of the metrics since it represent an indicator of
an active marketing strategy for the page.

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channel on YouTube; and [yt_m4] the rate of video uploaded by day. Each metric was

then normalized on a 0 to 1 scale. The zero value was attributed in case of no presence.

YouTube performance [0-1] = ([yt_m1] + [yt_m2]*0.5 + [yt_m3] + [yt_m4])/4

Finally, for minor social media presence [0-1] we attributed 0.25 points for every

presence on one of the following minor platforms: LinkedIn, Flickr, Gowalla, and

Slideshare.

The final score was calculated as follow:

USMPI [0-1] = (Facebook performance + Twitter performance + YouTube performance +

minor_social_media_presence)/4

The final score is therefore taking in to account both the performances on major social

media and the variety of platforms adopted.

5. Results

Thanks to the wide range of data collected on the entire universe of Italian higher

education institutions, we managed to create a detailed map of the adoption and practices

of social media platforms by Italian universities.

The results are structured in three areas: a map of social media official presences enriched

by a quantitative analysis of the social media conversation strategies and rate of posting

of the institutions; an analysis of correlations between social media adoption and

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structural properties of an institution; and finally the application of the USMPI to our

sample.

5.1 Overview of the main results

Slightly more than half of the 95 Italian institutions (n=49 or 51.6%) have an official

presence on at last one of the social media taken in consideration, minor social media

included. The most adopted social media is Facebook (n=42 or 44.2%) followed by

YouTube (n=31 or 32.6%) and Twitter (n=28 or 29.5%). Concerning minor platforms

LinkedIn is used by 4 higher education institutions, Flickr! by 3, Gowalla by 2 and

Slideshare only by one institution.

The opening of an official space on one of the different social media platforms available

seems to be often conceived as part of an articulated strategy more than an episodic

event. The 67.4% of the institutions with some presence on social media (n=49) is, in

fact, present on more than one platform. When only one platform is adopted, Facebook

(56.2%) is often the choice.

The large majority (n=30) of institutions with an official presence on Facebook (n=42)

chose to open a page. 17 over 42 pages decided to make their presence easier to find for

users, by selecting a vanity url for their presences. Slightly less than half of the pages are

associated with a place (a geographic location where users can check-in). Opening a

Facebook page is a common marketing strategy for business, brands and institutions.

Creating a personal profile for an institution like a university is, in fact, forbidden by

Facebook policy. Nevertheless 5 out of the 42 higher education institutions on Facebook

opted to be present with a personal profile like a real person or friend. Furthermore, three

institutions decided, instead, to choose groups for their official presence.

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In few cases (n=8) the interaction of the user is limited to commenting posts published by

administrators. Most often (n=31) users are allowed both posting their own contents in

the form of text, photos or videos. Italian higher education institutions seem to be very

open and inclined to favour users’ interaction on Facebook, in order to develop dialogue

and exchange of information: indeed 39 out of the 42 universities’ Facebook presences

(92.85%) allow different forms of interactions between the institutions and their public

on this platform.

The research team also registered the presence of the office in charge to manage and

update the university’s Facebook presences. A clear and institutionalised strategy is still

missing: only 18 universities (42.85%) clearly indicate the office in charge of managing

the Facebook presence. Moreover higher education institutions employ different branch

of the organizations on this task, ranging from webmaster or website staff (n=4) to

admission (n=2), press (n=4) and public relation offices (n=3).

Of the 31 (32.6%) higher education institutions with an official channel on YouTube, only

6 created a branded channel, a more customizable space free for educational

organizations. Not surprisingly the average number of views for videos posted by

institutions with branded channels (1223.46) is well above the mean (697.2). On average

Italian universities publish less than one video a week but the most prolific institution

publishes a mean of 4 new videos every week. The six branded channels are also more

prolific (1.34 videos/week) than the average (0.86).

Twitter is used by 28 institutions (29.5%). The accounts on Twitter are significantly

newer (a mean of 517 days of activity) than the ones created on YouTube (823.45 days).

Institutions post, on average, less than one Tweet a day (0.9) with the most prolific one

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producing around 3 Tweet a day (2.99). The most successful channel is followed by 2901

users while the mean is 661.46. The average ratio between followed and following users

is 0.19 and the average Klout score is 23.3. The most influential channel has a Klout

score of 46.17.

5.2 Institutions most likely to adopt social media

The institutions analyzed differ under several perspectives. The number of faculties,

departments and students enrolled may be used to create more homogenous category in

order to make fairer comparison. At the same time the ownership of the institution

(private or public), its geographic position, its belonging to the category of online

distance education universities, universities of science and technologies (Polytechnic) or

special institutions were also used to segment the sample, in order to identify the

characteristics of institutions that make it more suitable to the adoption of social media

for their communication strategies.

Researchers therefore created, following the structure commonly adopted by several

Italian universities’ ranking institutes, the four category of small, medium, large and

extra-large institutions. The data about enrolled university students were available for 88

over 95 total institutions: indeed the data on enrolled students from some special

institutes were not available on the Italian Ministry of Education website. According to

these categories 44.3% (n=39) of the higher education institutions are small, 21.6%

(n=19) medium, 21.6% (n=19) large and 12.5% (n=11) extra-large.

The category of medium sized universities is the most present on social media (63.2% of

the institutions in this category is, at least, on one social media). Medium sized

universities also have the highest average rate of social media platforms used (1.74).

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Small universities follow with a mean of 1.28 platforms for institutions. Extra-large and

large institutions lag behind with a mean of less than one platform adopted.

Table 1. Social media adoption by size of the higher education institutions

Is on at least one social media Average number of platforms

Small (n=39) 53.8% 1.28

Medium (n=19) 63.2% 1.74

Large (n=19) 47.4% 0.89

Extra Large (n=11) 54.5% 0.91

Average (n=88) 54.5% 1.25

Out of the 29 private institutions 17 adopted at least one social media. This makes social

media adoption by private universities more likely (58.6%) than the average (51.6%). On

the contrary, the 9 special institutes are significantly less likely (33.3%) than the average

to be present on social media. Surprisingly online distance education universities are also

less likely (36.8%) than average to establish an official presence on these platforms.

Finally only 2 of the 4 Italian universities of science and technologies have some

presence on one of the platforms analyzed.

Focusing on the average number of social media platforms adopted by Italian higher

education institutions it is confirmed that private universities, with 1.52 platforms for

institution, appear to be more inclined to create a social media presence.

Institutions located in the North of the country (North-East 76.9% and North-West

63.2%) are significantly more likely to embrace social media. It is also important to

underline that only the 39.1% of the institutions located in the South of Italy and 33.3%

of the ones located in Sicily or Sardinia are presents on at least one social media

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platform. The same kind of geographical divide is also observable by taking into account

the average number of platforms adopted for institutions with South and Islands well

below one platform for institution.

Concerning the adoption of platforms, is interesting to note that while the adoption of

YouTube and Twitter by size of the institutions matches the distribution of general social

media usage, things are slightly different for Facebook. Small universities are more likely

(53.8%) to be on Facebook than medium ones (52.6%) and significantly more likely than

average (46.6%). Moreover the share of institutions with a presence on Facebook

decrease as the size of the university increase with only 27.3% of extra-large institutions

with an official presence on the most popular social network site. However the highest

percentage of Facebook pages with vanity url is in the segment of large institutions, a

clear sign of the presence of an active marketing and visibility strategy.

While the favourite platform for small and large universities is Facebook, YouTube is the

most frequent choice for medium institutions, and Twitter for extra-large ones.

Finally, it could also be interesting to connect these data in an international framework:

only nine Italian higher education institutions are ranked in the 2011 edition of the U.S.

News & World Report’s world‘s best 400 universities. This subgroup of institutions are

more likely than the average to be officially present on social media with a mean of 1.33

platforms adopted (average mean is 1.17).

5.3 Social media performances among universities

The “universities sm performance index” (USMPI) varied from 0 to 0.31 (registered by

Libera Università Internazionale di Studi Sociali "Guido Carli" LUISS in Rome and

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Università Commerciale "Luigi Bocconi" of Milan, both private universities) with a mean

of 0.0502 and a standard deviation of 0.07351.

Again medium universities outperformed the other categories with an average USMPI of

0.0751. The performances of small (0.0502) and large universities (0.0541) were almost

the same with extra-large universities lagging behind (0.034).

Private institutions registered a mean score (0.0726) significantly higher than the average,

while special institutes (0.0168) and online distance universities (0.0190) were well

below it. Interestingly the four universities of science and technologies registered the

highest score of all categories (0.0811).

The regional segmentation underlines once again the divide between the North and the

South of the country. Higher education institutions situated in the North-East (0.0926)

and North-West (0.0702) of Italy were performing significantly better than the ones

situated in the South (0.0238) and in the Islands (0.0182).

Finally the nine Italian institutions ranked in the 2011 edition of the U.S. News & World

Report’s world‘s best 400 universities, also performed significantly better than the

average with a mean USMPI index of 0.0878.

6. Discussion and conclusions

Social media can represent, as well as websites, a privileged window to observe the

university world and their relational dynamics. This study is the first attempt to offer an

in depth overview of the adoption and use of social media platforms by the Italian higher

education institutions. This paragraph further discusses the main results in the global and

local context. At the same time it also discusses possibilities and limits of the

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methodology employed as well as the potential impact of the USMPI for future research

studies.

As already pointed out the adoption of social media by Italian universities is not

homogenous. Medium sized institutions are more likely to adopt social media and scored

better results in the USMPI. Private institutions appear also to be more inclined and

effective in their social media strategies. Both medium and private institutions share a

high interest in the social web. They need to be more appealing in attracting new students

and engage strategic publics: for these reasons they are investing in these platforms, using

social media in a dialogic way rather than in a top down manner.

At the same time social media adoption reflects well know differences inside the country:

indeed institutions based in wealthier regions of the North of Italy are also more likely to

embrace social media strategies.

It is important to highlight that, despite the results reported by of other previous studies

(McAllister-Spooner, 2012 in press; Bortree & Seltzer, 2009), Italian higher education

institutions seem to be more inclined to embrace a more open users’ interaction on

Facebook: indeed 39 out of the 42 universities’ Facebook presences (92.85%),

representing the 41.1% of the entire Italian higher education system (N=95), allow

different forms of interactions and dialogue with students and other strategic publics.

Moreover the nine Italian institutions ranked in the 2011 edition of the U.S. News &

World Report’s world's best 400 universities are significantly both more likely and

performing better than the average. These results corroborate our doubts concerning the

representativeness of this category of institutions. Although the strategy of picking

institutions from higher education ranking may give us an overview of what best

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universities are doing in terms of social media usage, it can be risky to assume this group

as the average or to generalize the results.

On the other side it is almost impossible to fully grasp the higher education institutions’

social media strategy without deepening the analysis at the level of contents. For this

reason understanding, for instance, to what extent social media are exploited for their

interactive potentialities in engaging with students and strategic publics (McAllister-

Spooner, 2012), was beyond the scope of this paper. Future steps of research could

include quantitative and qualitative content analysis to get a more in depth picture of

dialogical use of these platforms. A reasonable follow up could also include other

qualitative methods such as in depth interviews with university communication

practitioners to focus on the constraints and opportunities they face to fully embrace an

effective social media strategy.

At the same time getting a full picture of a complex phenomenon such as the universities’

social media adoption requires a strategy that proves to be effective both in terms of

completeness, efficiency and affordability. For this reason the university social media

performance index (USMPI) was developed. The single indicators chosen to create the

index are all programmatically available from the social media platforms providers. The

availability of this data makes it possible to calculate such an index without human

intervention and in real time. Furthermore synthetic indexes such the one described in

this manuscript allow to easily comparing results from different contexts. Further

researches could adopt and use USMPI in different higher education systems in Europe,

United States of America or Asia, in order to provide an international benchmark on the

effective use of social media.

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1978393

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1978393
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Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1978393