Abstract:

The digital revolution has permeated and impacted immensely on almost all walks of life and professions; the academia included. The global use of social media platforms such as, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp and others, are revolutionizing the way people communicate, interact and socialize. This article, with attention to the use of WhatsApp as a social media platform, concentrates on the issue as to when the academics use WhatsApp, particularly on the issues of the patterns of submissions of responses, times between the submissions, and the periods of submission. With a Google Form-based questionnaire, data was collected through sharing a link on WhatsApp to 127 academics. With a response rate of 55%, data was analyzed using Microsoft Excel. It was found out that the that the more the days pass, the less the number of submissions; it was also found out that the more the days passed, the more time it took between submissions; additionally, it was found out that the time for attending the WhatsApp was mainly in the evening between 18:00 hours and midnight. The paper recommends that in order to make effective use of WhatsApp when communicating with Academics, the evening hours are used; additionally, as there is tendency not to attend messages three days and above old, a reminder is necessary, if more submissions are desirable.

Keywords: Social media, WhatsApp, Academics, research

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