Effectiveness of Social Media on Information Sharing - Literature review Example

The paper "Effectiveness of Social Media on Information Sharing" is an outstanding example of a media literature review. In this review of the literature, findings of studies on the behaviour of users with regard to sharing information on social media are evaluated. The manner in which individuals share information has changed in the current times. This has been a result of different factors, one of them being the intertwining of social media systems and e-commerce systems, resulting in the development of new social commerce business models that are driven by the need of individuals to share information. Another one is the development of new tools and technologies which are included in social media platforms. The different tools facilitate user content generation practices and eventual collaboration among individuals in the form of sharing information. The aim of the discussion is to identify the gap that exists in the literature with regard to the manner in which individuals share information on social media. This will contribute to the achievement of the overall objective of the research which is to understand the behaviour that users show when sharing information on social media and identify different ways of improving information sharing on social media.

Information sharing behaviour of users of social media

The behaviour that individuals exhibit when sharing information on social media has been the subject of many studies (Ahmed, Scheepers & Stockdale, 2014). Of particular importance has been the subject of how individuals share information with others on social media and the overall interactive behaviour that they exhibited in the process. The social cognitive theory has been widely used to explain these attributes. The essence of the theory is that the behaviour of human beings is affected by their environment (Bandura, 2001). Therefore, this premise has been used to analyse how the behaviour of individuals is affected by the factors of the environment in which they operate and their own individual attributes. According to Khang, Han, and Ki (2014), the social cognitive determinants that are part of the social cognitive theory are linked to the overall behaviour that individuals exhibit when using social media. In this study, the link between the personal, behavioural and environmental determinants that are found in the social cognitive theory and the behaviour of users of social media with regard to sharing information occurs in different ways.