2 Social Media Use and Academic

ASIAN JOURNAL OF DOI: 10.22452/AJAP.vol13no2.
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Vol. 13, No. 2, p. 78-95
ACCOUNTING PERSPECTIVES 30 August 2020
SOCIAL MEDIA USE AND ACADEMIC

PERFORMANCE: A STUDY ON
UNDERGRADUATE ACCOUNTING STUDENTS
IN BANGLADESH
ZOBAIDA KHANAM
Received: 7 October 2019 / Revised: 20 February 2020, 31 March 2020/ Accepted: 12 May 2020
© 2020 Faculty of Business and Accountancy, University of Malaya. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Research aim: The paper aims to ascertain the relationship between social media uses and
academic performance of undergraduate accounting students in Bangladesh.
Design/Methodology/Approach: This study is based on empirical data gathered from a survey
of 154 undergraduate accounting students in Bangladesh. Structural equation modelling (SEM)
analysis is applied to make sense of the results of the research questions.
Research findings: The analysis disclosed that five factors are categorised as the reasons for using
social media for academic purposes of which online sharing and academic comprehension have
a significant positive impact on academic performance (CGPA), whereas the completion of course
tasks have a significant negative impact on CGPA or the academic performance. Academic
involvement and personal tutorial support do not associate significantly with academic
performance (CGPA).
Theoretical contribution/ Originality: Most of the studies on social media focus on the
relationship between social media use and educational outcome in general, not concentrating on
a particular subject. As regards the subject specificity, the interest and satisfaction of learning
accounting course was measured through the use of social media. In Bangladesh, the study of
social media use is limited. This analysis concentrates particularly on accounting discipline
learning perspective.
Practitioner/ Policy implication: This study identifies different academic uses of social media and
defines policies and procedures that will modify the use of social media as learning tools of
undergraduate students.
Research limitation: This study considered only 154 undergraduate students in Bangladesh,
mainly from the capital city Dhaka. The investigation is limited to the data collected from the
survey questionnaire administered to the sampled students.
Keywords: Social media use, Accounting students, Academic performance, CGPA
Type of Manuscript: Research paper
JEL Classification: A22, M41, M49
1. Introduction
In the present context, technology has facilitated mobile and web-based social
media engagement. Over the last decade, social networking sites have become a
strong platform in academia due to the affordability and easy access to shared
information (Lau, 2017). Users accomplish their day to day requirements through
the access of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace (Boyd and
Ellison, 2007). Lenhart, Purcell, Smith, and Zickuhr (2010) analysed that around
the globe on average 72 per cent of students in college have a profile on social
media where 45 per cent of college students sign into a social media site at least
Department of Accounting and Information Systems, Faculty of Business Studies, Bangladesh University of
Professionals, Mirpur Cantonment, Dhaka 1216, Bangladesh. Email: [email protected]
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Khanam (2020) / Asian Journal of Accounting Perspectives, 13(2)
once a day. According to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory

Commission (BTRC)’s December 2019 report, the statistics of total number of
internet subscribers revealed that Bangladesh has 99.43 million internet users most
of whom are engaged with social media (Rahman, 2020). Among them, Facebook
has the greatest number of users with approximately 35 million in Bangladesh,
constituting 94 per cent of the total monthly active users of all social media
throughout the country (Andreshak, 2020).
Considering the above circumstance, at present, many universities in
Bangladesh prefer to incorporate the academic curriculum through social media
sites such as Facebook pages, Instagram, YouTube or Twitter accounts, etc. This
has become a common practice of the university and faculties to create a specific
group on a social media where they share all the required academic documents.
Ultimately, it helps to centralise the study materials and academic activities (Khan,
Kend, & Robertson, 2016). However, conventionally students are focused on using
social media more purposively based on its quantity rather than the quality of its
use (Lei & Zhao, 2007). Though social media usage was not measured from the
viewpoint of its outcome, however, researchers emphasise the quality of using
social media focusing on its constructive output like how, whom and for what
purpose it is being used.
McFarlane (1997, p.4) denotes “Computer use alone, without clear objectives and
well-designed tasks, is of little intrinsic value”. In light of the above, a country like
Bangladesh which is ranked second in number of active Facebook users should
focus on the use of different social media sites giving importance to educational
objectives (Murad, 2017). Though different studies explored the usage of social
networking sites by students and its impact on education (Sponcil & Gitimu, 2013),
there is limited research in Bangladesh regarding social media usage, particularly
among accounting students, where the social media is studied along within the
purvey of information systems. The primary objective of the study is to assess the
academic outcome of social media usage among accounting students. To achieve
the primary research objective, the study explores the significant factors for the
students in Bangladesh to use social media and the impact of using social media
on accounting students’ academic achievement CGPA.
The present study will enable accounting students to mark different uses of
social media for academic purposes, and the positive outcome will encourage
them to take social media as a formal learning platform to accomplish academic
tasks effectively. In addition, the study will assist in formulating policies and
procedures that will modify the use of social media as learning tools for
undergraduate students. The other parts of the paper are as follows: First, the
relevant literature is reviewed regarding the usage of social media. Afterwards,
the relationship between social media use and academic outcomes is established.
Thereafter, the research questions are established. The paper concludes with the
scope for future research, implications, and recommendations.
2. Literature Review
Social media is known as the technological platform to collaborate and engage a
large community and has various formats such as blogs, social networking sites,
wikis, community networking (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). There are numerous
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active websites available to connect users. For instance, there are social news and
bookmarking sites, including Reddit and Digg, where users can rank different
sites through voting based on the importance of content. In the present context of
web 2.0, Facebook, Myspace, Instagram, LinkedIn are the dominant mediums for
social networking.
The information circulated in social media is used by people to introduce
themselves, products and services (Blackshaw & Nazzaro, 2006). The
technological aspects of different social media are similar and consistent with each
other, while the culture in operating those media vary (Boyd & Ellison, 2007).
Facebook initiated as a private communication platform for Harvard University
students; then the users started to increase, including general people to
professionals (Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, & Silvestre, 2011). Twitter has
encountered with this development since its inception in the year 2006. At present
more than 145 million users post on average 90 million message or “tweets” per
day about their opinion, feelings, and daily activities. In turn, other users comment
on a tweet and in doing so remain connected with other users. LinkedIn is treated
more like a professional network that focuses on communication with
professionals (Kietzmann et al., 2011).
The definition of social media is changing as the application are offering new
features and contents. At present, social media is portraying beyond its casual
functionality like sending a message, uploading photos and updating a profile. It
has been used as a virtual community, content sharing and application
development platform (Gruzd, Staves, & Wilk, 2011). Social media comes as a new
platform offering a socially connected educational place for researchers, students
and other learned people. In the study of Friesen and Lowe (2012), social media
use has been analysed in the context of media alteration endeavouring to measure
the ability to fulfil the significant part of learning. According to Gikas and Grant
(2013), though some inconvenience such as inattentiveness and distraction persist,
student use of social networking sites in the classroom produces some positive
outputs like information gathering and the availability of teaching materials.
According to Sheldon (2008), the main for social media use by young adults is
communicating with acquaintances. Entertainment and spending time are other
reasons for using social media. A study on Facebook users by Quan-Haase and
Young (2010) revealed that convenient ways of contacting family and friends drive
the users to surf social media. A wide range of studies found Facebook as the most
used instructional tool in university classrooms. Irwin, Ball, Desbrow, and Leveritt
(2012) focused on the activities of Facebook pages for four university courses
where 78 per cent of respondents regarded Facebook as an effective tool for
learning. According to the study, with the perceived benefits of increasing
interaction, participation in the course lecture, and posting lecture notes, Facebook
was found as the most effectively used social media.
Ophus and Abbitt (2009) reported similar results regarding the students’
opinion of Facebook utility. Students in a survey on biology course identified that
communicating with students (95.5 per cent), viewing schedule (82.8 per cent) and
access to materials (86.3 per cent) were the outcomes of using social media.
McCarthy (2010) suggested that Facebook could be used in a combined learning
environment. In a study of 120 architecture students, 95 per cent of respondents
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agreed that Facebook was a great help to build peer relationship through the
interactive discussions and engagement with peers in an assessment task of a
virtual classroom. In contrast, a study on 213 British students found that Facebook
can be used for social learning process but in informal environments. A survey of
300 randomly chosen students from University Sains Malaysia by Kabilan,
Ahmad, and Abidin (2010) found that 74 per cent students agreed that Facebook
could be treated as useful media for learning and getting motivated to learn and
communicate in English as a second language.
Other social media sites like Twitter were also examined. A sample of 125
respondents was assessed through the use of Twitter where the engagement of
educational activities such as book discussion, class reminders, asking questions,
conversations after class were found (Junco, Heiberger & Loken, 2011). However,
communication is not only the factor of social media use. For instance, an
exploration of social media use by M-Almadhoun, Lai, Dominic, and Dhanapal
(2012) on Malaysian University students found that 61.9 per cent of students use
social media for searching information and 52.8 per cent use social media for
educational purposes. Furthermore, online social media helps to foster formal and
informal learning among undergraduate students, as found in the study of the
Cyber University of South Korea. They use social media for connecting with
friends (24.38 per cent), for discussing class projects (10.33 per cent), for keeping
in touch with people (9.96 per cent) and for professional networking (10.14 per
cent) (Yoo & Kim, 2013).
Though social media is regarded as a social interaction tool, with proper usage,
this social networking tool can be accessed for teaching and learning (Tess, 2013).
The rapid increase in the use of social media in higher education among
undergraduate students is well-documented. However, there are mixed results in
the case of Facebook usage and its outcome. Some studies measured the output of
learning using academic result GPA and some use other variables such as self-
esteem, content in university activities, and sociability with other students in the
university (Tess, 2013). For instance, Sapsani and Tselios (2017) analysed the
Facebook use from the perspective of student involvement, amount of time spent,
engagement in co-curricular activities and performance in academia, and found
that access of Facebook was positively related with student preparation for the
class.
Concerning social media use for the purpose of academic performance, Khan
et al. (2016) study of university accounting students revealed a significant
association between social media use and student grades. Different studies
empirically tried to find the link between university students’ social media use
and academic performance. In a study of Egyptian undergraduate students,
Sobaih, Moustafa, Ghandforoush, and Khan (2016) found that social media holds
significant value for academic-related activities. According to Davis III, Deil-
Amen, Rios-Aguilar, and González Canche (2012), Facebook and other social
media platforms opened a new horizon of learning with prompt interaction
between faculty and students.
Nonetheless, Davis et al. (2012) found that engaging and involving students
through social media can yield more positive results to fulfil the objectives of
promoting education. For achieving a collaborative learning environment, social
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media plays a vital role by improving academic performance (Al-rahmi, Othman,

Yusof, & Musa, 2015). There is also evidence that social media tools are used for
reducing students’ anxiety by avoiding the situation of raising questions in front
of their colleagues (Wheeler, Yeomans, & Wheeier, 2008).
Numerous studies have investigated the relationship between social media use
on university students' academic outcome and psychological state. Saha and
Karpinski (2016) examined the link between 331 international students'
psychological happiness and general social media use and academic performance
to find that social media and Skype were positively associated with satisfaction
and experience with life and ultimately impacted academic performance.
Liu, Kirschner, and Karpinski (2017) found a negative association between the
use of social networking site and academic performance through GPA, whereas a
positive relationship between the use of social networking site and language test
was observed. The study found more intense negative relationship among the
female college students. Alwagait, Shahzad, and Alim (2015) surveyed the GPA
scored of Saudi Arabian undergraduate students and the time spent weekly on
social media where no linear association was found between social media usage
and GPA score. Among 108 responses, the result demonstrated that due to time
management, students were negatively affected. Although some of the studies
prefer to introduce the social media in the classroom, the study of Leyrer-Jackson
and Wilson (2018) suggested not to incorporate social media in the classroom,
especially in the field of biological science as the survey of 234 participants found
a negative correlation between the amount of time spent on social media and GPA.
Some studies contain indifferent results where usage and non-usage of social
media Facebook does not result in significant differences. For instance, Pasek and
Hargittai (2009) found no change of academic performance due to the use of social
media. Similarly, Dyson, Vickers, Turtle, Cowan, and Tassone (2015) explored a
study where a Facebook group was established within an introductory
psychology class to disseminate study materials and found no link between
Facebook use and student involvement in course understanding.
Other studies explored different outcomes from the use of social media
whereby factors other than GPA were associated with students’ academic matters.
For instance, Dabbagh and Kitsantas (2012) suggested in autonomous and
informal settings that social media influences high levels of self-motivation among
students. In contrast, Dyson et al. (2015) studied the association of social media
use and academic task completion. The result showed that students involved in
social media usually took longer to complete tasks than those who did not engage
in these activities.
In analysing the benefits of using social media from the context of accounting
education, most of the studies found the relevance of the usage. Accounting
requires a medium to communicate the financial results to the respective
stakeholders (Lee, Chen, & Chan, 2017). In that sense, access to social media and
communication are relevant. Social media such as Twitter and LinkedIn allow the
users to cope with virtual communication systems in this age of information
technology (Stone, 2012). Additionally, through social media people become
accustomed to the culture of providing instant feedback with online chats and
real-time messaging. These features are compatible with the learning objectives of
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accounting discipline, where financial information needs to be exchanged to the

stakeholders in a timely manner (Lodhia, Stone, & Parker, 2016).
As regards to the accounting education of university students, Stainbank and
Gurr (2016) assessed the use of social media platforms on the students of first-year
accounting course at a South African university where they found the networking
site is mostly used for career information, not for communication and teaching,
learning. On the other hand, some studies found resistance to using social media.
For instance, Watty, McKay, and Ngo (2016) interviewed 93 per cent of the
accounting faculty at an Australian university. In the finding, reluctance to
incorporate social media in their curriculum and teaching method was discovered
as a key constraint to technology acceptance and use.
In other branches of accounting such as management accounting, Holmes and
Rasmussen (2018) conducted a survey to determine if using Pinterest to share
online-based materials with their friends improved the interest to learn
management accounting course. Evidence projected that using Pinterest for
assignment completion significantly improved the understanding capability of the
course topics. Student responses also denoted that the assignment completion
through Pinterest ensured a positive impact on enhancing interest to learn
managerial accounting. In these studies, different methods were used to assess the
social media use outcome in academia. For instance, in the study of Leyrer-Jackson
and Wilson (2018), Pearson’s correlation was used to find the correlation between
the number of social media website subscribers and the time spent on using social
media. The social media use and the academic outcome was assessed through a
frequency table where percentage results were prevalent. Most of the studies
focused on the relationship of social media use and educational outcome in
general and did not concentrate on a particular subject (Piotrowski, 2015;
González, Gasco, & Llopis, 2016; Yu, Shi, & Cao, 2019; Mingle & Adams, 2015).
As regards of the subject specificity, the interest and satisfaction of learning
accounting course was measured through the use of social media. However, the
above studies did not focus on the relationship between different academic use of
social media and the current CGPA in accounting. In Bangladesh, studies of social
media use are limited. For instance, Sajid (2016) studied the application of social
media in marketing promotional activities in Bangladesh. The analysis rarely
concentrates on disciplines outside of marketing. Therefore, the opportunity is
available to further explore the academic-related engagement of students through
social media. The current study focuses on the accounting literature by analysing
how accounting undergraduate students use online social media to improve their
academic performance.
After analysing the literature, this study designed a research model connecting
social media usage and academic performance that was put in the questionnaire
and surveyed afterwards. After that, factor loading was applied to the statements
of the questionnaire based on the academic uses of social media to find the latent
variables or dominating factors. These dominating factors were used as a path
analytical framework where the impact of usage of social media on academic
output was analysed. Overall, the paper investigated the following research
questions after reviewing the previous studies: (RQ1) What are the latent variables
and dominating factors of the academic usage of social media that influence
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academic performance? (RQ2) Do the latent variables of social media use have a
positive relationship with the academic performance of undergraduate
accounting students in Bangladesh? (RQ3) If positive, which social media usage
factor has greater correlation with academic performance?
4. Research Methodology
4.1. Sample and Statistical Procedure
Undergraduate students from the accounting departments of different
universities were taken as the participants of the study based on their exposure to
and acceptance of social media. In Table 1 lists the number and gender of the
accounting department students of under graduation level from different
universities who completed the survey. In total, 180 students from the Bachelor of
Business Administration (major in accounting) completed the survey. In the
survey, if one-third of the questions were not answered, that questionnaire was
discarded. Following the proposition, the usable responses for analysis received
from 154 completed questionnaires which represented an overall response rate of
86 per cent. In addition, the academic year of the students was disclosed in Table
2 where it was observed that the majority of the respondents were in their final
academic year.
Table 1. Profile of the respondents

Male Female Total
Bangladesh University of Professionals 15 21 36
North South University 12 18 30
Brac University 17 12 29
Dhaka University 17 18 35
East West University 14 10 24
Total 75 79 154
Table 2. Academic Year

Frequency (Percentage)
1st year 2nd semester 32 (21)
2nd year 2nd semester 42 (27)
3rd year 1st semester 16 (10)
4th year 1st semester 64 (42)
5. The Research Instrument

5.1. Variable Measurement
5.1.1. Social media use
Academic usage of social media was analysed based on the questionnaire of 16
statements on which the Likert scale approach was used, where 1 represents
‘Never’ and 5 represents ‘Always’. Khan et al., (2016) developed questions to
evaluate undergraduate students’ social media use pattern. Multiple questions
which reflect the use of social media in academic activities. In this study, some
questions are incorporated from their research. Other items were also selected
from Lei and Zhao (2007). Based on these studies, the survey questionnaire was
constructed.
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5.1.2. Academic performance

Factor loading was applied to identify the dominating factors to assess social
media use that enhance academic performance. In Bangladesh, the four-point
grade is used to represent the ungraduated student result. The academic
performance was evaluated based on this CGPA measure.
5.2. Data Analysis

The methodology involves identifying the possible dimensions /constructs for
social media usage from the previous literature. Then the study is set to examine
the dominating factors by applying factor loading. For addressing the prime
objective, use of social media and academic performance, data analysis software
for statistics and data science: STATA was employed. First, the exploratory factor
analysis was conducted to explore the best possible groups. After identifying
groups, each group has been named or categorised, that are used as latent
variables for analysing structural path analysis. Finally, the structural path model
is measured to find the impact of social media use on CGPA. The measurement
scale reliability was also assessed by Cronbach alpha. The three steps data analysis
was followed: Step 1: An Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) along with varimax
rotation was employed to find the latent variables. Step 2: Confirmatory factor
analysis was performed to analyse whether the latent constructs provides a
goodness-of-fit of the model. Step 3: The association between social media use and
academic performance was evaluated using structural analysis. These three steps
were introduced in the following ways.
5.2.1. Exploratory Factor analysis

First, exploratory factor analysis was examined to “determine whether the
majority of the variance can be accounted for by one general factor” (Podsakoff,
MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003). The result of the factor loading of
measurement item SM3 was less than .5. Therefore, it is excluded from the
measurement model. The exclusion confirms that all the other measurement items
in each variable represent one factor, thus ensure convergent validity. For the test
of reliability among the Likert questions reliability coefficients, i.e., Cronbach’s
alpha values were determined and helped determine whether the scale is reliable
or not.
Table 3. Reliability Statistics

Cronbach’s Alpha Cronbach's Alpha Based on Standardised Items N of Items
.820 .827 14
From the Table 3 above, it is observed that the Cronbach's alpha value is .820,
which exceeded the prescribed .70 level thereby demonstrating a high level of
internal consistency in the scale with this specific sample (Garver and Mentzer,
1999). For finding the predominant factors which influence students to use social
media for educational purposes, a factor analysis was conducted on 14 statements.
The main objective of this analysis is to reduce the variables into categorical factors
regarding the use of social media for education purpose.
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To examine the adequacy of the sample and the suitability of data for factor
analysis, Kaiser Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett's test was executed. Sampling
adequacy is needed to get the information regarding the grouping of survey items.
The measurement of sampling adequacy evaluate the strength of the correlation
of different items in the exploratory factor analysis correlation matrix (Burton and
Mazerolle, 2011).
Table 4. KMO and Bartlett’s Test

Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy. .737
Approx. Chi-Square 731.015
Bartlett's Test of Sphericity df 91
Sig. .000
KMO correlation above .60-.70 is considered adequate for analysing the EFA
output. According to the KMO and Bartlett test result, all the variables regarding
the academic usage of social media are interrelated as the level of significance is
.000<.05 or .01. Therefore, based on the interrelation of these variables, factor
analysis could be employed.
In Table 4, the KMO measure of sampling adequacy is .737 and Bartlett’s Test
of Sphericity with appropriate chi-square is 731.015, which are statistically
significant at the 5 per cent level. This indicates that the sample is adequate for the
factor segmentation and 14 variables form the normal distribution. Fixed factor
analysis is applied to minimise the variable into five dimensions.
The factors are shown in rotated factor loadings in the Appendix. The
correlations between observed variables and the factors were suppressed above
±.50, meaning that those observed variables have correlation less than .50 with the
extracted factors are ignored. After having the result from the analysis, 14
variables were minimised into 05 key factors. This leads to the categorising of
variables displayed in Table 1.
By observing rotated factor loadings, it was observed that five factors influence
the use of social media for academic purposes. Here, Factor 1=f(OS9, OS8, OS15,
OS4) incorporates the variables that are related to group discussion, sharing
course materials, discussion of academic matters with privacy and confidentiality
and taking exam preparation which may be labelled as “online sharing”. In Factor
2=f(CC1, CC16) includes the variables which are related to the completion of
assignments and help for class presentation which may be labelled as
“Completion of course tasks”. Besides that, Factor 3=f(AC11, AC7, AC5, AC10)
integrates the benefits from academic blogger, comprehension of an academic
topic, remain up to date with study materials, enhancement of the spirit among
university group members which may be labelled as “academic comprehension”.
Moreover, in Factor 4=f(AI13, AI14) engagement in different club-related activities
of the university, posting opinion in any academic-related topic may be labelled
as “academic involvement”. Lastly, in factor 5=f(PTS12, PTS2), communicating
with academic instructors of the particular subject and receive help for academic
projects of different courses may be categorised as “personal tutorial support”.
Principal component factor was analysed through the varimax rotation
method. The result of the factors showed that five factors explain 70.66 per cent of
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the variance of the variables, with 30.22 per cent by the first extracted factor.
Therefore, no evidence found that a single factor appeared, or any factor explained
most of the variance. Thus, in survey variables, common method bias is not a
serious problem.
5.2.2. Confirmatory Factor Analysis

To support construct validity, convergent validity was assessed to ensure all items
measure the construct as intended (Hair et al., 2010). According to Hair et al.
(2010), for assessing convergent validity, the factor loadings, composite reliability
(CR) and average variance extracted (AVE) must be identified. As regards Hair et
al. (2010) recommendation, the loadings (the item reliability on the construct) for
all variables in this study were found significant as the suggested value of .5 was
exceeded. The AVE discloses the total amount of variance in the variables
accounted for by the latent construct, which was greater than the recommended
value .5 ranged from .505 to .559 by Hair et al. (2010). To specify the latent
construct, CR values were used, which was between .702 and .803, as shown in
Table 5, where the suggested cut-off value is .7.
Table 5. Instrument reliability and validity

Constructs Items Loading AVEª CRb
Online Sharing OS1 .92 .514 .803
OS2 .67
OS3 .66
OS4 .57
Completion of course task CC1 .79 .543 .702
CC2 .68
Academic Comprehension AC1 .75 .505 .800
AC2 .83
AC3 .63
AC4 .61
Academic Involvement AI1 .81 .552 .709
AI2 .67
Personal Tutorial Support PTS1 .89 .559 .707
PTS2 .57
a presents the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) = (summation of the square of the factor
loadings)/[(summation of the square of the factor loadings) + (summation of the error variances)].
b presents the Composite Reliability (CR) = (square of the summation of the factor loadings)/
[(square of the summation of the factor loadings) + (square of the summation of the error
variances)].
5.2.3. Discriminant Validity

Afterwards, discriminant validity was assessed, which measures the degree to
which a measurement reflects some other constructs. It measured the degree to
which a construct differs from other constructs. According to Fornell and Larcker
(1981), in any two constructs, the correlations among items should be lower than
the square root of the AVE shared by items within a construct. For acceptable
discriminant validity, each indicator evaluates its intended constructs.
Furthermore, the shared AVE between a construct and its measures should be
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greater than the AVE shared by the constructs in the model. In Table 6, satisfactory
discriminant validity was presented of the present study.
Table 6. Discriminant Validity of the Constructs

OS CC AC AI PTS
OS .717
CC .16 .737
AC -.43 .26 .711
AI .36 -.31 .026 .743
PTS -.046 .09 -.15 -.17 .745
OS is online sharing, CC is completion of course task, AC is academic comprehension, AI is
academic Involvement; PTS is Personal Tutorial Support. Diagonal elements are put down to
indicate the AVE between the constructs and their measures. While Off diagonal elements are
used to explain the correlations between constructs.
6. Result
This study investigated the effect of using social media on the academic
performance of undergraduate accounting students in Bangladesh. In this respect,
this study analysed the dominating factors of social media use for academic
purposes and categorised the five key variables for using social media. These are
online sharing, completion of course task, academic comprehension, academic
involvement and personal tutorial support which served the requirement of RQ1.
In summary, the RQ2 results of the structural path analysis disclosed that the effect
of the three factors of using social media for academic purposes had significant
results. where online sharing (b=.409, p<.05), completion of course task (b = -.819,
p < .01) and academic comprehension (b=.381, p<.05) were significantly related to
academic performance (CGPA). Furthermore, both academic involvement (b = -
.112, p>.05) and personal tutorial support (b=-.045, p>.05) were not significantly
associated with student academic performance (CGPA). As for RQ3, the findings
revealed that the out of five only two factors of using social media for academic
purposes had the most positive influence on academic performance. The study
explained 62.3 per cent variance of CGPA by five factors of using social media.
The outcome of the structural model is displayed in Table 7.
Table 7. Structural Model (Path Analysis) result

Path Std. beta Std Error P-value Decision
Online sharing > CGPA .409 .200 .04* Supported
Completion of course task > CGPA -.819 .908 .000** Supported
Academic Comprehension > CGPA .381 .193 .048* Supported
Academic Involvement > CGPA -.112 .201 .574 Not
Supported
Personal Tutorial Support > CGPA -.045 .194 .814 Not
Supported
Notes: *p<.05, **p<.01
The result in Table 7 was used to depict the relationship between the factors
and academic performance. In Figure 1, the relationship of academic performance
with five academic-related factors was presented where two factors (online
sharing, academic comprehension) had a positive influence on CGPA and one
factor (completion of course task) had a negative influence on CGPA. In addition,
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two factors (academic comprehension, personal tutorial support) did not have any
impact on academic performance (CGPA).
Online Sharing .409*
Completion of -.819**
course tasks
Academic
0.381*** Performance
Academic
Involvement (CGPA)
R²=62.3
-.112
Academic
Comprehension
-.045
Personal tutorial
support
Figure 1. Structural Model outcome effect of these factors on CGPA
7. Discussion
The main purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between social media
academic use (i.e., online sharing, completion of course task, academic
comprehension, academic involvement and personal tutorial support) and
academic outcome through CGPA. The results of the structural path analysis
disclosed that the effect of the two factors (online sharing and academic
comprehension) of using social media for academic purposes had significant
positive results. On the other hand, completion of course task affected the
academic performance negatively.
Previous researchers had assessed hours of social media use as a dependent
variable to assess academic performance (González et al., 2016; Yoo and Kim,
2013). This study examined the factors to categorise the academic usage of social
media which explains that, when the students use social media as an online
sharing platform and for comprehending any academic topic, accounting
undergraduate students can have positive academic performance. On the other
hand, for completion of course tasks such as assignment and presentation, the
students particularly the accounting students can have significant negative
academic performance, and in the case of academic involvement and getting
personal tutorial support from social media, the involvement portrays non-
significant negative outcome. Thus, the present findings were similar to the results
of previous studies.
The results showed that online academic material sharing impacts academic
outcome (CGPA) positively. They indicated that through the platform of social
media students send assignments, exercises, books, notes and thus students can
encounter positive result in their studies and ultimately it reflects in their
89
academic performance (CGPA). Alwagait et al. (2015) found a positive correlation

between social media use and academic outcome measured through GPA. The
justification of the findings could be that students spend a substantial amount of
time on the social media platform, and experience instant and fast distribution of
files and information. Therefore, the conclusion can be made that undergraduate
accounting students use social media for sharing purposes, and it positively
influences their academic outcome.
On the other hand, the findings stressed that using social media for various
course-related tasks such as assignment completion and presentation completion
influence the academic outcome (CGPA) negatively. The particular finding is
supported by Dyson et al.’s (2015) study of the association of social media use and
academic task completion where the result showed that students who involved in
social media usually took longer to complete tasks than those who did not engage
in these activities. Thus, the accounting students do not usually benefit from using
social media platform in the case of assignment and presentation completion.
The present findings were also aligned with the finding that using social media
for academic comprehension is positively related to academic performance.
Previously, Bowman, Westerman, and Claus (2012) examined the ability of
student comprehension and the use of social media where a negative outcome
emerged in the efficiency of student learning of new information but not in the
understanding of study materials. This denotes that social media features can be
effective to get help to understand a given topic.
The present findings from the survey on the accounting undergraduate
students in Bangladesh had shown that Facebook and other social media offer a
friendly atmosphere to the students for exchanging instant feedback and comment
on any academic topic which promoted the group work effort. This helped them
to get assistance apprehending complex academic topics and remain aware of
recent academic materials. As regards the group contribution, through social
media such as Facebook and YouTube, students can follow and subscribe to an
academic blogger to connect with the particular community’s engagements.
In regards to academic involvement as categorised in terms of the engagement
of different club-related activities, accounting students in Bangladesh were not
active in using social media thus a non-significant negative relationship was found
in the case of social media use and academic involvement. The findings were
aligned with the study of Mathur, Nathani, Sharma, Modi, and Arora (2019) who
revealed that knowledge enhancement was a secondary purpose of using social
media, and over-usage of Facebook affected student involvement in different
academic activities. Likewise, in the case of personal tutorial help from academic
instructor and assistance in a project-related topic, the academic outcome and use
of social media come with a non-significant negative outcome. In the study of
Khan et al. (2016), it was disclosed out of 93 respondents, only 17 per cent had
used social media for tutorial task completion.
8. Conclusion
Social media is perceived as an informal learning platform among the students.
However, due to the proliferation in the use of social media, students discover the
media is more promising in academia. This particular study assessed the usage
90
pattern of social media by undergraduate accounting students, along with the

effect of social media on academic performance. Accounting students engage
actively in social media for academic-related tasks. With Facebook as the
predominant media, the accounting students mostly use social media for sharing
and exchanging course-related materials, academic information, and to
comprehend complex academic topics. The relationship of using social media for
online sharing and comprehending academic matter was positive. Therefore, if
social media is taken as a formal platform and is incorporated in university
academic tasks, it would help students. On the other hand, for personal tutorial
support and project-related help, the relationship between the usage of social
media and outcome was negative. Therefore, if the communication between
students and tutors are enhanced through the social media platform, then the
relationship would be more pronounced, and the use of social media for academic
understanding would be more effective. Also, for the completion of course tasks,
the significance of the relationship was negative. The reason could be the
inaccuracy of information shared via social media or time management in the vast
content of social media hamper the successful completion of the course tasks.
However, in different studies, this particular factor appeared as beneficial for the
students (Liu et al., 2017; Pempek et al., 2009; Lei & Zhao, 2007). Therefore, if
proper workshops are arranged to ensure effective use of social media for a formal
learning environment, the students as a stakeholder of this platform would receive
more assistance. In conclusion, the study framed the usage pattern and factors that
influence students to use social media for academic purposes. Though the study
measured the academic performance through the grade point (CGPA), there is a
scope for future research to assess the relationship with other qualitative factors
such as self-confidence, communication, and the personality of the students.
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Appendix
Table 1. Rotated factor loadings (Pattern Matrix)

Items Description Factor Factor Factor Factor Factor
1 2 3 4 5
OS9 I use social media to have group .92
discussions with other members.
OS8 I use social media to share course .67
materials with other students.
OS15 I use social media to discuss any .66
academic matter privately and
confidentially.
OS4 I use social media for taking .57
exam preparation with other
students.
CC1 I use social media for completing .79
my assignment.
CC6 I use social media to take .68
preparation for the course
presentation.
AC11 I use social media to get benefits .75
from academic blogger.
AC7 I use social media to comprehend .83
any academic topic.
AC5 I use social media to remain up .63
to date with study materials.
AC10 I use social media for enhancing .61
the spirit among university
group members.
AI13 I use social media to get engaged .81
in different club related activities
of the university.
AI14 I use social media to post my .67
opinion in any academic-related
topic.
PTS12 I use social media for .89
communicating with academic
instructors of the particular
subject.
PTS2 I use social media to get help for .57
academic projects of different
courses.
95

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ASIAN JOURNAL OF DOI: 10.22452/AJAP.vol13no2.

SOCIAL MEDIA USE AND ACADEMIC

once a day. According to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory

media plays a vital role by improving academic performance (Al-rahmi, Othman,

accounting discipline, where financial information needs to be exchanged to the

Table 1. Profile of the respondents

Table 2. Academic Year

5. The Research Instrument

5.1.2. Academic performance

5.2. Data Analysis

5.2.1. Exploratory Factor analysis

Table 3. Reliability Statistics

Table 4. KMO and Bartlett’s Test

5.2.2. Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Table 5. Instrument reliability and validity

5.2.3. Discriminant Validity

Table 6. Discriminant Validity of the Constructs

Table 7. Structural Model (Path Analysis) result

Online Sharing .409*

Figure 1. Structural Model outcome effect of these factors on CGPA

academic performance (CGPA). Alwagait et al. (2015) found a positive correlation

pattern of social media by undergraduate accounting students, along with the

Table 1. Rotated factor loadings (Pattern Matrix)

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