Universities’ Social Media Usages for Sustainable Corporate Communication: A Research on Students' Views in Online Learning Processes During Covid-19

ABSTRACT

Covid-19 was appeared in 2019 and rapidly spread worldwide. In Turkey, the universities had to execute online learning as a precaution. The courses and sustainable corporate communication activities had to move to an online environment by the universities during the pandemic. During this period, the universities strived to convey both information and sustainability messages via their social media (SM) accounts. In this context, this study aims to identify students' views on their university's SM usage for its sustainable corporate communication during the Covid-19 process. A structured questionnaire was carried out with 272 students at Sakarya University of Applied Sciences. The research results revealed that many students followed their university's SM accounts, and most of their families and friends encouraged them to follow them. In addition, the study showed that most of the students found their university uses SM accounts for sustainable corporate communication useful and enjoyable. However, it was found that the student's preferences in adopting the sustainability messages would be affected if the messages were complicated. The data also indicated that most of the students were aware of the sustainability messages of the university through SM accounts.