Use of Social Media for Academic Purpose in China

In this article, social media in the academic context is summarized, differences between social media usage patterns in China and the United States are contrasted, Research methods are described and final results are presented. Our specific contribution is to clearly delineate the unique social media ecosystem as found in Mainland China and its subsequent impact on social media as applied to academic settings. Social media is very helpful in auxiliary academic activities but is not a suitable way for people to obtain specialty information due to insufficient credibility, information management functions and Chinese users' usage pattern. Expectation on social media to support academic relationship building has generally failed. We hope to suggest how to integrate the power of social media to promote academic activities while avoiding these negative effects. The article concludes by evaluating social media as a tool to support academic purposes with the facets of user experience and suggests future research directions. Author