Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010, states social media, by definition as a group of Internet-based

applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the
creation and exchange of user generated content. Advanced social media (SM) have become tools and
has increasingly attracted global attention, due to their pervasiveness and social impact. The dramatic
development of this media form has revolutionized how people share their knowledge, and
communicate and collaborate with each other, while engaging in conversations in the workplace in a
timely manner (Filo et al., 2015, Li and Sakamoto, 2014). Social media platforms incorporate a wide
range of online media, including word-of-mouth forums such as Social Networking (SNS) (like Myspace
and Facebook), microblogs (like personal blogs or Twitter), pictures or video-sharing applications (like
Flickr or YouTube), and collaborative websites like Wikipedia (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010, Osatuyi, 2013,
Yan et al., 2013). These types of social media tools are considered to be prominent and well-established
spaces for creating knowledge sharing channels, where people are able to find other individuals with
similar interests, and share their thoughts with them (Bilgihan et al., 2016).

Nowadays, social media applications have moved beyond personal use. They have been
increasingly adopted by organizations as tools for knowledge sharing and communication, through a
myriad of different means (Kane et al., 2014, Lam et al., 2016). For instance some organizations,
including those in the public sector, are exploring the ways social media can be used for knowledge
sharing, as a way of enriching citizen’s awareness, and the actions of governments (Dekker and Bekkers,
2015, Osatuyi, 2013). Others may use the tool as a means of generating knowledge within business
sectors, and integrating customers into several areas of activity (Busalim, 2016, Kormin and Baharun,
2016). Higher education institutions have also adopted social media as a means of inspiring learning
activities (Balakrishnan and Gan, 2016, Kulakli and Mahony, 2014). Health care organizations have
adopted the internal use of social media tools for knowledge sharing, facilitating the efficient flow of
work-related information within and between teams (Li et al., 2016, Yan et al., 2016). Moreover, since
the 2010 Haiti earthquake, social media has increasingly been used for knowledge sharing within the
disaster management field (Yates and Paquette, 2011).

It is prevalent in this time that social networks incessantly influence the lives of young people.
Apart from entertainment and informational purposes, social networks have penetrated many fields of
educational practices and processes. The usage of social network influences (a) the learning processes
(support, educational processes, communication and collaboration enhancement, academic
performance) from the side of students and educators; (b) the users’ personality profile and learning
style; (c) the social networks as online learning platforms (LMS—learning management system); and (d)
their use in higher education.

With the increasing use of social media, the addictive use of this new technology however also
grows. Previous studies found that addictive social media use is associated with negative consequences
such as reduced productivity, unhealthy social relationships, and reduced life-satisfaction. However, a
holistic theoretical understanding of how social media addiction develops is still lacking, which impedes
practical research that aims at designing educational and other intervention programs to prevent social
media addiction. Moreover, the spread of misinformation in social media has become a severe threat to
public interests. For example, several incidents of public health concerns arose out of social media
misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Against the backdrop of the emerging IS research focus
on social media and the impact of misinformation during recent events such as the COVID-19, Australian
Bushfire, and the USA elections, we identified disaster, health, and politics as specific domains for a
research review on social media misinformation.

In a nutshell, conclusions can be revealed that social media has positive impacts in most of the
dimensions especially higher education which indicates that the wider future use of online social
networks is quite promising. However, professors and higher education institutions have not yet been
highly activated towards faster online social networks’ exploitation in their activities. The knowledge
sharing applications of social media has dramatically changed how we live, work, learn and interact.
They allow for smooth and continuous knowledge sharing within the virtual world. Nevertheless, they
also pose a disadvantage to several aspects such us health, security, reliability, and credibility.
Therefore, to cast away such risks, it is but necessary to develop literacy and awareness for the
reduction of such circumstances.

Bibliography

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