Use of Social Media as A Research Tool A Study Among Researchers in Kashmir Valley

The intense penetration of Information and Communication Technology has transformed our way of living and thinking, leading to the emergence of Social Media. Social media can be used for many purposes like for social interaction, news update, business, etc, yet it`s full potential is not tapped. Being a bandwagon concept, its usage within research scholars is scarce. One of the most vital needs of researchers is to acquire, use and disperse the information, and social media tools provide that facility. These have the ability to disseminate the information in a very efficient way. The focus of this paper is to analyze the usage of various social media tools for research purpose. The study has been conducted on the research scholars from various departments of different universities in Kashmir valley. Both primary and secondary data has been used in the research. Primary data was collected through a structured questionnaire adopted from previous research which was modified accordingly. The sample size of 80 research scholars has been selected for this study through random sampling technique. The results revealed that the social networking is mostly used tool and for the research purpose researchers use E-mail and Research Gate. The results also show that majority of the population use it for research work and that too for reviewing the literature and data collection. It was also exhibited that the most important reason for the use of Social media tools were their access to wider range of information and ideas.