Impact of Social Media Characteristics on Knowledge Sharing: With Special Reference to Facebook

Abstract

Social media is not a new phenomenon for the research culture in the world nowadays. Academics and researchers are interested in the effects of social media on different figures, with a specific focus on the most popular social media website; Facebook. With the dawn of social web initiatives, some argued that these new emerging tools might be useful in knowledge sharing through providing interactive and collaborative technologies in the society. This research will strive to study how far Facebook can contribute to the knowledge sharing purpose of its users by testing an adapted model for social media and tacit knowledge sharing developed by Panahi , Watson , & Partridge, (2012). Accordingly, five characteristics of social media which were identified by the model developers, as main components towards knowledge sharing, will be used in the conceptual model of the study. They are social interactions, experience sharing, observations, informal relationship and mutual trust. A sample of Sri Lankan employees in the eighteen to thirty four age group who use Facebook as their primary social media network will participate as the respondents of the study. Descriptive statistics, frequency analysis and multiple regression analysis will be applied in the study as the statistical tools. This study fills a gap in literature by acknowledging the findings of the study which developed a model for social media and tacit knowledge sharing; hence it will test and validate the model in most popular social media network in Sri Lanka.