Exploring doctoral Community Social media preparedness for a B-School using A socio-technical Lens

Abstract

Doctoral research scholars look for quality information to fulfil their research pursuits. They are in-formation alert as they have a narrowed down interest area for which they are constantly looking out for information. The behaviour, environment and the associations of the research scholar play an im-portant role in creating conducive grounds for quality information seeking. A qualitative enquiry us-ing the Socio-technical lens that looks at individuals, social and technology in a context and explores the interaction between these. The study explores the Social Media preparedness of the doctoral com-munity. The study was conducted in a premier B-School located in South India. Preliminary findings indicated that communities play a major role in supporting the scholars information behaviour. How-ever, communities in the physical spaces, though enable them to be in proximity to each other, the online communities enable a better support system for information. Attitude and comfort level with seeking information from Social Media was also found to be a major hindrance to utilise it for infor-mation seeking. Library has a crucial role to play in this regard. The scholars see the library as a place where they will start their information search.