Literacy and Use of Social Networking Sites Among Research Scholars and Post Graduate Students of Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai: An Awareness Study

The innovation of using web 2.0 applications by us to get closer to each and trying to expand our on-line contact circle has become talk of the town. The process of creating social groups of commonly interested on-site surfers for the purpose of sharing and caring is possible in a click away. This study attempts to trace out the awareness and use of various social networking sites by the research scholars and post graduate students of Madurai Kamaraj University (MKU), Madurai. Data was collected from 98 respondents through a structured questionnaire. The data analysis done at MS Excel and the follow-up interpretation revealed that: 86.73% of the students are aware of Facebook, followed by twitter with 33.67%; Facebook is the used by the maximum number of the respondents i.e 73.47% followed by twitter with 26.53%; Most of the respondents 47% use internet browsing centres to access Social Networking Sites (SNS). 59.05% of the respondents learn about using SNS from their friends; 28.57% of users have contacts between 61–100 friends; 18.09% of the users surf SNS to find useful information; 25.66% of the respondents preferred SNS for their ability to help them develop read and write web skills. The major problem for the respondents in using/accessing SNS is that access is denied in their place of learning.