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JRIT
15,1 Social media information and
student performance:
the mediating role of hedonic
132 value (entertainment)
Received 25 December 2020 Robert Kwame Dzogbenuku and Joshua Kofi Doe
Revised 27 May 2021
Accepted 12 September 2021 Central University, Accra, Ghana, and
George Kofi Amoako
University of Professional Studies, Accra, Ghana

Abstract
Purpose – This study evaluates the mediating role of social media entertainment on social information
(content) and social media performance, during the COVID-19 era.
Design/methodology/approach – Primary data were randomly gathered from 373 students from two top
universities (public and private) in Ghana, a sub-Saharan African economy. Data analysis was achieved
utilizing the partial least square–structural equation model (PLS-SEM).
Findings – Social media (SM) entertainment partly mediates the link between social media content and social
media performance of students, suggesting that social media entertainment is almost indispensable in creating
social media content to achieve optimum performance among tertiary students.
Research limitations/implications – The use of cross-sectional data alone for this study does not give us
the opportunity to observe the social media activities of respondents over a longer period. Future studies could,
therefore, include longitudinal data.
Practical implications – The findings in this study suggest that faculties can modify their pedagogical
activities to include social media and reflect some entertainment content, since it has an influence on student
performance within the social media space.
Social implications – SM has a great influence on students’ performance socially and academically;
therefore, educational stakeholders like university authorities, faculties, parents and guardians, and the
government should consider social media as a tool for attaining educational goals.
Originality/value – The study extends the use of UTAUT2, in understanding students’ learning and
behavior processes, by linking antecedents of adoption to the post-adoption effect.
Keywords Social media, Student performance, Pedagogical medium
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
The Internet and its increasing use for educational purposes (Jaiyeoba and Iloanya, 2019;
Stavroulia et al., 2019) have become a lifestyle issue in the developed and developing world. Its
popularity today is credited to the increasing availability of digital mobile devices like phones
and tablets that are convenient for surfing the World Wide Web and its ubiquitous character.
Interestingly, across the global divide, the youth who are mostly in school acquiring
knowledge and vocations depend on online technologies (Watjatrakul, 2020) to meet digital
goals (e-aspirations), particularly for social, entertainment and academic benefit (Al-Qaysi
et al., 2020; Spante, 2019; Al-Qaysi and Al-Emran, 2017). Emphasizing the significance of

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2397-7604
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having an online presence of the university community (Mehta and Aguilera, 2020), Hedonic
researchers have shown how digital ethnography motivates individuals and corporate influence on
organizations to leverage daily, if not hourly, on social media to satisfy e-aspirations
(Dzogbenuku et al., 2019; Shepherd and Lane, 2019). The leverage of social media for learning
social media
realized a crescendo with the advent of COVID-19, due to the compulsory or mandatory performance
pedagogical changes needed to prevent the discontinuation of educational curriculum across
the word.
Generally, social media is an online-based application driven by conceptual and high-tech 133
foundations of Web 2.0, which promotes the development and sharing of user-generated
content (UGC) frequently (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2009, 2010), thereby adding value to sites.
Some researchers perceive Internet-based communication as platforms wielding
opportunistic interactivity, discriminatory self-presence in real-time interaction, targeting
asynchronous audiences driven by online user-generated marketing content (Lund, 2019;
Carr and Hayes, 2015; Rothschild, 2011). Kaplain and Haenlein (2009) categorized social
media into blogs and micro-blogs such as Twitter; social networking sites (SNSs) such as
Instagram, MySpace and Facebook, including content platforms such as YouTube. Other
forms are weblogs, podcasts, pictures, videos, social bookmarking and WhatsApp. From the
user and gratification theory (Blumler and Katz, 1974), it is obvious that social media users,
often goal-oriented, actively select social media that best fulfills their individual needs such as
information, entertainment and socialization among others.
In recent times, researchers on social media (Pahlevan Sharif and Yeoh, 2018; Recalde and
Gutierrez-Garcıa, 2017; Yazdanparast et al., 2016), social media brand communities (Jones and
Glynn, 2019), acceptance in higher education (Dumpit and Fernandez, 2017), social media for
learning and students’ satisfaction (Or us et al., 2016), determinants of students’ intent and use
of social media (Balakrishnan, 2017), among others seek to understand the social media
phenomena among consumers such as students across countries. For example, with the
advent of the corona virus (COVID-19) in the early part of 2020, the social life of people
globally was disrupted, denying them from gathering for any activity including education.
As a remedy to augment lost academic time, various social media were adopted compulsorily
or voluntarily as pedagogical changes to promote remote teaching (Stenman and Pettersson,
2020). Consequently, while some of the new pedagogical technology users easily navigated
their way into the new platforms, majority of the users faced significant problems that stalked
the learning process. These further raise questions regarding the role of media in education
policies (Liu et al., 2019). For users who were successful however, the success factors are
worth investigating for further policy and dynamic adaptation of pedagogical technologies.
Social media (SM) is utilized by students to obtain information for research and academic
purposes as well as for entertainment due to their social needs. These include student
integration into the university system (Xiao and Wilkins, 2015). However, in the case of
tertiary students in sub-Saharan Africa, very few studies have been done, particularly on
social media entertainment and information (content) and their effect on the performance of
students. Consequently, this research attempts to examine the mediating function of social
media entertainment on social media information and how it affected students’ performance
in sub-Saharan Africa during the COVD-19. The research, therefore, makes some
contributions to the existing literature in relation to students’ dependence on social media
for entertainment and information as well as their subsequent performance post COVD-19.

Theoretical framework
Technology-specific theoretical models recommended for studying the utilization of
technology, such as social media, at the personal level, propose that perceptual beliefs,
values and the expected benefits to be gained are the determinants of why an individual will
use technology. These include the technology acceptance model (TAM) (Davis, 1989;
JRIT Venkatesh and Bala, 2008) and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology
15,1 (UTAUT) (Venkatesh et al., 2003). The UTAUT model is engaged as the underpinning theory
in this research.
The UTAUT (Venkatesh et al., 2003) propose that performance expectancy, effort
expectancy, social impact and other enabling conditions will drive behavior intentions to
adopt a technology. Venkatesh et al. (2012) extend the UTAUT to integrate three more
concepts into the proposed UTAUT2: hedonic inspiration, price value and habit.
134 The major performance expectancy of social media discovered by Whiting and Williams
(2013) are social communication, search for information, passing time, entertainment (hedonic
value), destressing, communicative efficacy, convenience, expressing opinions,
dissemination of information and surveillance/knowledge about others. This implies that
content and entertainment are two significant factors in social media usage.

Social media performance

SM performance is the ability to achieve an objective based on using social media tools
(Ahmad et al., 2019; Janssen and Van Yperen, 2004). Students’ academic performance
promotes group discussions, building a strong student-lecturer relationship, interaction with
classmates and lecturers, and ultimately, improving academic performance (Al-Rahmi and
Othman, 2013). In the context of social media usage, academic performance is driven
by coordination, communication, entertainment, collaboration and socialization
(Al-Tarawneh, 2014).
The significance of examining academic performance is based on the assertion that social
media networks have now become addictive (Pahlevan-Sharif and Yeoh, 2018; Recalde and
Gutierrez-Garcıa, 2017) and can, therefore, either hinder or improve a user’s (student)
wellbeing and performance. Various studies (Al-Rahmi and Othman, 2013; Guo et al., 2018;
Al-Tarawneh, 2014) have indicated an improvement in academic performance, which is
attributable to social media. Dzogbenuku et al. (2019) further argue that students’ social
media usage is dependent on students’ information communication technology (ICT) ability
to surf the Internet and use various social media tools.
Technology performance (Ahmad et al., 2018; Paniagua and Sapena, 2014) explains social
media adoption and its benefits. Also, several other authors have acknowledged the positive
effect of social media adoption on business performance (Paniagua and Sapena, 2014;
Rodriguez et al., 2012). Again, Rodriguez et al. (2016) have discovered that the utilization of
social media positively influences customer-interactions, and hence, sales performance.
The relationship between social media use and the wellbeing of students is worth noting
(Pahlevan-Sharif and Yeoh, 2018). Wellbeing defines the happiness and quality of life of a
group of people over time, including the type of fulfilment derived from technologies (Falter
and Hadwich, 2020; Deci and Ryan, 2008). Peoples’ (students) wellbeing in the long-term
affects their physical, satisfaction, social and mental (academic) performance (Marks and
Shah, 2004). In the services sector of the wider society, customer wellbeing remains essential
for service providers; hence, leading researchers like Ostrom et al. (2015) have coined the term
“transformative service research” (TSR) to emphasize the significance of how some services
have and are improving the wellbeing, leading to performance of their users globally.

Social media information (content)

SM information per Chan and Fang’s (2007) study describes the types, sources and uses of
contents accessed on digital media. Content usage could be for fun, work, fashion, travel,
shopping, socialization, education and health, among others. With regard to content,
Yazdanparast et al. (2016) also established that social media marketing activities (contents)
affect attitudes towards brands and propose that marketers provide social media content and
create experiences (entertainment) in line with customers’ motives for social media usage.
For such social media, information to be of maximum influence and benefit to its users; Hedonic
however, Aladwani (2017) suggests that four types of content quality must be present. influence on
These are:
Reflective quality (a belief), which describes a user’s beliefs regarding significant ways that
social media
social media information meets his or her needs. performance
Stimulated quality (a feeling), which describes a user’s feelings toward the degree of social
media content’s usefulness in task performance.
Practiced quality (an implied behavior), which describes exceptional social media contents 135
that support users’ needs.
Advocated quality (an obvious behavior), which describes open user support for social
media content that caters to his or her needs.
These content types are major drivers of individual and group actions (Jones and Glynn,
2019) and performance (Guo et al., 2018). del Rocıo Bonilla et al. (2020) acknowledged the
significance of social media as sources of information and engagement among stakeholders
in the university system. In that regard, academic researchers (Al-Rahmi and Othman, 2013;
Mingle and Adams, 2015; Guo et al., 2018) have reported how social media have improved
students’ academic performance through collaborative study (Guo et al., 2018).
We, therefore, hypothesize the following:
H1. Social media information (content) positively affects academic performance.
H2. Social media content has a strong positive effect on academic performance.

Social media entertainment

SM usage provides escapism (Korgaonkar and Wolin, 1999). Contents for entertainment,
pleasure and relief of anxiety are described as social media entertainment (Whiting and
Williams, 2013). Over time, social media has gained notoriety for its entertaining content (Lee
and Ma, 2012) and has been reported to elicit positive attitudes towards a product or a brand
(Sheth and Kim, 2017). The frequency of social media interactions has also become a regular
indispensable routine (Sheth and Kim, 2017), such that its perceived utilitarian and perceived
hedonic values have been reported to affect higher education service outcomes (Cao
et al., 2019).
Even though Brooks (2015) reports a negative correlation between social media usage and
performance, other studies such as Sledgianowski and Kulviwat (2009) and Dzogbenuku et al.
(2019) reported a strong effect of social media entertainment content on performance and
fulfilment. As a perceived hedonic benefit of social media (Venkatesh et al., 2012),
entertainment has been predicted in the UTAUT to lead to usage. This presupposes that
social media entertainment, as suggested by Yazdanparast et al. (2016), can influence
performance (Mingle and Adams, 2015; Guo et al., 2018). Hence, we also contend that if social
media information can influence entertainment (Yazdanparast et al., 2016), while
entertainment leads to performance (Guo et al., 2018), then social media entertainment
could mediate information (content) and performance.
We, therefore, hypothesize that:
H3. Social media entertainment positively affects academic performance.
H4. Social media entertainment mediates social media information and academic
performance.

Methodology
Context, sampling and collection of data
Survey data were gathered from students of two tertiary institutions in Ghana. With the aid
of random sampling techniques, students were engaged between March and April 2020 to
JRIT share their opinions on the subject. This target group was considered appropriate to
15,1 investigate the subject based on the fact that students spend long hours on the Internet (Gikas
and Grant, 2013; Fujita et al., 2018). The institutions selected were the largest public and
private universities in Ghana respectively. They are both located in Accra with over 46,000
student population. In all, 373 responses out of 400 were obtained and found to be useable for
analysis. This represents 93% of response rate. The partial least square–structural equation
modeling (PLS-SEM) and SmartPLS Release: 3.2.7 (Ringle et al., 2015) were used to analyze
136 data. Sample size, as well as a researcher’s biases, does not affect the application of this
software (Hair et al., 2011).

Measurement
The research instrument comprised two main aspects. The first section which touched on the
major constructs of the study was framed on a five-point Likert scale starting from 5 (strongly
agree) to 1 (strongly disagree). Each of these constructs was adopted and linked to study
social media information (Chan and Fang, 2007); entertainment (Dzogbenuku and Kumi,
2018); and students’ performance (Ahmad et al., 2019; Lee et al., 2002) as shown in Table 1. The
second section of the instrument contains respondents’ demographic information, including
favorite social media platform, ICT competence and how much time they spend on social
media, as indicated in Table 2.

Results of analysis
Following the high response rate (93%) attained in the study, non-response bias was not
tested. Common method variance bias was not present in the data because a variance
explained of 33.943% (lower than 50%) was attained using the exploratory factor analysis
with the extraction of solely a single factor (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Also, normality analysis
indicated 0.176 < α < 0.347; p < 0.01 for all items for Kolmogorov–Smirnov test and
0.713 < W < 0.912; p < 0.01 for all items for Shapiro–Wilk test, indicating that the data was
highly different from a usual distribution (Hair et al., 2013, p. 71).

Concept Items Source

Social media (SM) 1.1 Dependence on SM for my travel information Chan and Fang (2007)
information 1.2 Provision of fashion information
1.3 Provision of sports information
1.4 Dependence on SM for weather outlook
1.5 Dependence on SM for information on health
1.6 Information on SM helps me to shop
efficiently
Social media (SM) 3.1 I normally listen to music on SM Dzogbenuku and Kumi (2018)
entertainment 3.2 I have so much fun on SM
3.3 I usually watch movies or sports on SM
3.4 Leisure impacts Internet use
Social media (SM) 5.1 SM enables me to achieve certain academic Ahmad et al. (2019), and Lee
performance tasks faster et al. (2002)
5.2 SM enhances my productivity as a student
5.3 SM helps me to gain more knowledge about
my subject area
5.4 Helps in promoting or sharing my ideas with
classmates and friends
Table 1. 5.5 It improves my image among my classmates
Scales of variables and networks
in the model 5.6 It offers fresh opportunities
Variable Frequency Percent
Hedonic
influence on
Sex social media
Male 190 50.9
Female 183 49.1 performance
Age
17–20 42 11.3 137
21–24 211 56.6
24–27 24 6.4
28–31 17 4.6
32–35 48 12.9
36–35 20 5.4
36–39 3 0.8
40 and above 8 2.1
Program
The sciences 218 58.4
Business school 114 30.6
Communication studies 28 7.5
Social science 13 3.5
Educational background
Undergraduate 298 79.9
Postgraduate 75 20.1
ICT knowledge/skill level
Fair 152 40.8
Above average 41 11
Good 61 16.4
Very good 28 7.5
Excellent 91 24.4
Social media platforms/networks used
Facebook 53 14.2
Twitter 40 10.7
YouTube 28 7.5
Blog 16 4.3
WhatsApp 236 63.3
Average time spent on social media per day
Seldom 29 7.8
Less than 60 min 47 12.6
60–120 min 30 8
120–180 min 106 28.4
More than 180 min 161 43.2
Average daily frequency of SM use
Rarely 37 9.9
1–3 times each day 61 16.4
4–6 times each day 21 5.6
7–9 times each day 222 59.5
More than 10 times a day 32 8.6
Devices frequently used to access SM networks
Desktop computers 20 5.4
Laptops 223 59.8
Tablets 27 7.2 Table 2.
Mobile phones 103 27.6 Demographic data
Total 373 100 of respondents
JRIT All three concepts of the study that is social media information, entertainment and
15,1 performance were evaluated reflectively. It was exigent to delete some items as they highly
cross-loaded into other concepts with the application of the PLS software. Following
purification, the study assessed the model’s quality criteria: Cronbach’s alpha, composite
reliability and average variance extracted values all satisfy the minimum values of 0.7, 0.7
and 0.5, respectively as suggested by Hair et al. (2016). The results are given in Table 3. Also,
all remaining item loadings were statistically significant utilizing bootstrap t-values (5,000
138 sub-samples) (Tortosa et al., 2009). The outcomes show that convergent validity has been
effectively attained.
The study utilized both the Fornell and Lacker (1981) and heterotrait-monotrait ratio
(HTMT 0.85) (Henseler et al., 2015) for measuring discriminant validity in variance-based
SEM. The inter-construct correlations among the three constructs were smaller than the
square root of the regular variance extracted values for every factor (Fornell and Lacker,
1981) as presented in Table 4. Again, the HTMT ratio of relationships utilizing a specificity
principle of 0.85 (HTMT 0.85) demonstrated that all relations were lower than 0.85 (Henseler
et al., 2015) as depicted in Table 4. Therefore, the three-construct model indicates discriminant
validity.
Examining the predictive accuracy (R2) of the structural model, it revealed that social
media information explicated about 47% of the discrepancy in social media entertainment. In
comparison, both social media information and entertainment explicated about 45% of the
discrepancy in social media performance, both of which showed a considerable explanatory
power (Cohen, 1988). Q2 – values of 0.308 and 0.249 were attained for social media
entertainment and performance, both of which were more than 0 demonstrating predictive
relevance (Chin, 2010). Lastly, the effect sizes (f2) calculated for the independent variables
revealed that social media information had a significant effect size on SM entertainment but a
small effect size on academic performance, whereas SM entertainment had a medium effect
size on social media performance. The outcomes of predictive accuracy (R2), predictive
relevance (Q2) test and effect sizes (f2) are given in Table 5.

Construct Codes Loading Bootstrap t-values α CR AVE

Social media information INFO1 0.871 49.439 0.767 0.868 0.692

INFO2 0.950 145.335
INFO3 0.644 13.971
Social media entertainment ENT1 0.909 100.698 0.775 0.872 0.700
ENT2 0.944 129.612
ENT3 0.620 13.076
Social media performance SMP3 0.692 19.422 0.768 0.852 0.593
SMP4 0.821 41.112
Table 3. SMP5 0.842 57.566
Reliability and SMP6 0.714 22.888
convergent validity Note(s): All bootstrap t-values are significant at 0.01 degree of significance

Heterotrait-monotrait ratio
Fornell-Larcker criterion (HTMT)
Construct 1 2 3 1 2 3
Table 4.
Discriminant validity 1. SM information 0.832
(square root of AVEs in 2. SM entertainment 0.685 0.837 0.848
italic-diagonal) 5. SM performance 0.523 0.662 0.770 0.673 0.845
Hypothesis testing Hedonic
The outcomes of the structural model are shown in Figure 1. All paths are statistically influence on
significant; therefore, the first three hypotheses of the study are established in the current
context. Particularly, a positive and noteworthy association exists between social media
social media
information, entertainment and academic performance. Table 6 summarizes the conclusions performance
drawn from the hypotheses.

Mediation effect of social media entertainment 139

With regard to testing for mediation in PLS-SEM, Nitzl et al. (2016) suggest checking the
significance of the indirect impact of the exogenous variable (SM information) on the
endogenous variable (SM performance) through social media entertainment. If the indirect
effect is significant, there is mediation; otherwise, there is not. From Table 7, social media
entertainment partially mediates the connection between social media information and social
media performance. The high proportion of mediation (74.9%) suggests that social media
entertainment is almost indispensable when building social media content to achieve
optimum performance. Consequently, the fourth (H4) hypothesis of this study is affirmed.

Constructs R2 Q2 f 2(SM entertainment) f 2(SM performance) Table 5.

Predictive accuracy
1. Social media information – – 0.883(Large) 0.02(Small) 2
(R ), predictive
2. Social media entertainment 0.469 0.308 0.315(Medium) relevance (Q2) and
3. Academic performance 0.447 0.249 – – effect sizes (f 2)

Figure 1.
Structural path results
presenting the link
between SM
information,
entertainment and
academic performance

Hypothesis Structural path Path coefficient t-value (bootstrap) Hypothesis results

H1 SM Information → SM performance 0.131* 2.428 Supported

H2 SM Information → SM entertainment 0.685** 22.036 Supported Table 6.
H3 SM Entertainment → SM performance 0.572** 10.860 Supported Structural path
Note(s): **Significant at p < 0.01; *significant at p < 0.05 outcomes
 15,1

140
JRIT

Table 7.
Mediation of social
media entertainment
Mediation path Path coefficient “a” Path coefficient “b” Path coefficient “c” Indirect effect (a*b) SD (ai*bi) t Mediation type Proportion of mediation

Info > Ent > SMP 0.685** 0.572** 0.131* 0.391** 0.041 9.526 Partial 0.749
Note(s): **significant at p < 0.01; *significant at p < 0.05; Info (SM Information), Ent (SM Entertainment), SMP (Social Media Performance)
Discussion of findings Hedonic
This paper sought to ascertain the effect of social media content on students’ academic influence on
performance and wellbeing (operationalized as social media performance) and entertainment,
as well as how social media entertainment mediates information (content) and students’
social media
performance in sub-Saharan Africa. performance
The data showed that social media content leads to social media information (content),
which then leads to social media performance at a significance level of 0.05. These findings
lend support to previous studies (Al-Rahmi and Othman, 2013; Guo et al., 2018; Al-Tarawneh, 141
2014) that reported that social media leads to academic performance. This also confirms the
user gratification theory (Blumler and Katz, 1974) of using an artifact which enables the user
to achieve his objectives. Theoretically, the perceived usefulness construct in the TAM
(Venkatesh and Bala, 2008) and IMTA (Venkatesh et al., 2002), as well as performance
expectancy construct in UTAUT model (Venkatesh et al., 2003) are confirmed in this study.
The implication of these findings is that social media content must be relevant to each target
group; for instance, in order to engender performance.
The data also revealed that information on social media leads to entertainment at a
significance level of 0.01. This finding supports the report of Whiting and Williams (2013)
that users choose content that is entertaining to them. The finding also lends credence to
Yazdanparast et al.’s (2016) proposal for organizations to ensure that they provide content
that is entertaining. Theoretically, this finding likewise confirmed the adjustment factors in
TAM3 (Venkatesh and Bala, 2008), intrinsic motivation in IMTA (Venkatesh et al., 2002) and
hedonic motivation in UTAUT model (Venkatesh et al., 2003). This implies that social media
content must be entertaining to each target group. This will also call for some strategic
segmentation. We further discovered that social media entertainment leads to academic
performance at a significance level of 0.01. This finding supports some previous studies
(Mingle and Adams, 2015; Guo et al., 2018) and confirms hedonic motivation in UTAUT
(Venkatesh et al., 2003) as relevant in the utilization of technology.
Finally, it has been discovered that social media entertainment mediates between content
and performance. The high proportion of mediation (74.9%) suggests that social media
entertainment is almost indispensable when building social media content to achieve
optimum performance. This is because the direct link between social media content and
performance is not as strong as the indirect link, which is routed through social media
entertainment.

Theoretical contribution
The use of social media entertainment as a mediator between social media content and
academic performance of students is quite unique and interesting since there are few such
studies in Ghana and Africa. This contributes to the growing literature on social media
studies and youth in Africa. The study confirms performance expectancy and the hedonic
motivation of the UTAUT model, in understanding students’ learning and behavior process.
The study also extends the UTAUT model by linking the antecedents of adoption to
performance (post-adoption effect). This is an extension to the UTAUT model. Furthermore,
the use of SEM to investigate the connection between social media information, entertainment
and performance of students within the Ghanaian context is quite unique.

Managerial implications
The research reveals that students actively utilize social media and, therefore, education
stakeholders should use it effectively to achieve educational objectives. The findings of this
COVID-19 experience suggest that faculty can effectively modify their pedagogical activities
to integrate some entertaining social media content into their teaching materials since these
have an influence on students’ performance. In the medium to long term, therefore,
JRIT educational institutions should explore interactive technologies for teaching and learning
15,1 purposes. This must have some entertainment content which can enhance a longer attention
span of the students who interact with the media. Ultimately, this will improve their overall
wellbeing as students and more importantly their academic performance. The dilemma that
might arise in the attempt to include content with entertainment value is what content will be
appropriate to compliment the educational content?
Policymakers (both government and institutions) should also begin to craft policy
142 guidelines on social media usage as a pedagogical medium for the different levels in the
educational sector. We anticipate that the COVID-19 experiences will shift examinations also
to online platforms. This also calls for extensive logistical support. Some of such support
includes content policy framework, hardware as well as software support for educational
institutions. The creation of a “content bank” is also another practical step to enhance the
drive towards online teaching and learning. Some of the anticipated challenges in this new
pedagogical approach would be the cost of data usage, logistics and connections. To hold
students accountable, who pays for student data usage as well as faculty data usage? How
will the institution ensure that all students have equal access to smart phones and reliable
connection in developing country contexts in the digitally disadvantaged circumstances?

Limitations and recommendations for future study

Data for the study were collected from university students in Ghana only. It will be good to
include secondary school level students to understand the social media phenomenon better
since they would eventually move to tertiary institutions. The use of cross-sectional data
alone for this study does not give us the opportunity to observe the social media activities of
respondents over a longer period. Future studies should, therefore, include longitudinal data.
It will also be interesting to investigate in future the moderating role of gender and kinds of
social media platforms on students’ performance.

Conclusion
This study concludes that social media has a great impact on student performance.
Therefore, all educational stakeholders like university authorities, parents and guardians,
university teachers, administrators and ministry of education as well as policymakers would
need to examine how best they can utilize social media to enhance the achievement of
educational goals.

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Further reading
Naqvi, M.H.A., Jiang, Y., Miao, M. and Naqvi, M.H. (2020), “The effect of social influence, trust, and
entertainment value on social media use: evidence from Pakistan”, Cogent Business and
Management, Vol. 7, p. 1.
Shin, W. (2017), “Active mediation of television, internet and mobile advertising”, Young Consumers,
Vol. 18 No. 4, pp. 378-392.

Corresponding author
Joshua Kofi Doe can be contacted at: [email protected]

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