Activities and Reasons for Using Social Networking Sites by Research Scholars in NEHU: A Study on Facebook and ResearchGate

Abstract

The paper has made an attempt to study the activities and reasons for using Social Networking Sites (SNS) by the research scholars of North Eastern Hill University (NEHU). For that the study has covered two social networking sites namely Facebook and ResearchGate based on popularity and widely used by research scholars. a self administered questionnaire was distributed among the research scholars of NEHU. And the primary data gathered through questionnaire were analyzed and discussed in accordance with the objective of the study. Here it is found that most of the scholars from social science background use SNS from education and research point of view; on the contrary scholars from pure science think that SNS has no role on research and education. They use SNS just for entertainment. The paper concludes with some suggestions given by the respondents for making SNS better research tool.