An evaluation of social media policy awareness and compliance at the Nelson Mandela University

Abstract

With the rapid increase in social media use in higher education institutions, social media policies and guidelines have generally been implemented by those institutions as a means to monitor and manage their staff and students’ social media use. Like many other South African public universities, the Nelson Mandela University has a social media policy and a set of guidelines to inform and monitor social media use by its staff and students. Given the existence of the social media policy and guidelines, it was thus considered important to know whether the Nelson Mandela University’s staff and students were aware of and complied with its policy and guidelines. The overall staff and students’ awareness of the university’s social media policy and guidelines showed a Medium level of awareness, with a mean average score of 3.213; while the overall staff and students’ compliance towards the social media policy and guidelines indicated a High level of compliance, with a mean average score of 4.256.