Evolution of Social Media in Scientific Research: A Case of Technology and Healthcare Professionals in Saudi Universities

American Scientific Publishers The importance of social media is maturely growing in different spheres of life. The usage of social media in colleges and universities is also very high, where not only the students but the teachers use social media application quite frequently and regularly. Although, among the basic purposes of social media, fun, is more prominently known purpose, yet the academicians have slightly different usage patterns, at least in Saudi Arabia. In this research a case of Saudi universities is considered. The paper focus to identify that how the academic staff (in technology and medical) integrated SNSs into their daily communication for academic purposes. A multi method research study was conducted, and it was revealed that most of the users preferred the Facebook and ResearchGate for academic research purposes. Collaborative and peer-to-peer learning have common benefits from social network although some articulated concern about privacy and cyber-bullying. Majority of the respondents indicated the sometimes using SNSs, a waste of time, privacy concerns, data security, cyber-bullying etc. are the major problems faced while using social networking.