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Technology has provided eases, applications, approaches, and strategies in education with its features. The success of technology integration in any educational programs is dependent on users’ attitudes and perceptions. The establishment of new technology integrations for the improvement of education has been a significant issue to have influences on how education is perceived, implemented, and evaluated. This integration has been an interesting object of research in higher education (e.g., Hamshire & Cullen, 2014; Georgina & Olson, 2008; Mncube, Dube, & Ngulube, 2017; Beldarrain, 2006). One of many technologies which are integrated in higher education is Social networking services (SNSs). Robbin and Singger (2014) informed the utilities of the examples of SNSs such as massaging (WhatsApp, BBM, Telegram), images sharing (Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest), videos sharing (Vine, YouTube), audios sharing (iTunes, Sticher), micro blogging, (Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Path), blogging (Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress), professional sharing (LinkedIn), and academic sharing (Google Scholar, Academia, ResearchGate).
Although, SNSs establishment was firstly proposed to establish a social interaction, the purpose has currently become popular in higher education (Greifeneder, Pontis, Blandford, Attalla, Neal, & Schlebbe, 2018) which has values on supporting relationships between lecturers and their students for learning, educators’ professional development, and content and knowledge sharing (Manca & Ranieri, 2013, 2016). Despite many educational values of SNSs in higher education, barriers in using SNSs for university lecturers have also emerged (Habibi, Mukminin, Riyanto, Prasojo, Sulistiyo, Saudagar, & Sofwan, 2018; Manca & Ranieri, 2013; Prasojo, Habibi, Mukminin, Muhaimin, Ikhsan, Taridi & Saudagar, 2017; (Hadiyanto, Mukminin, Arif, Fajaryani, Failasofah, & Habibi, 2017).
In addition to the SNSs establishment in higher education, they also become a thought-provoking topic for a foreign language pedagogy including teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) where many EFL researchers conducted research in this area (Fewell, 2014; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010; Prasojo, Habibi, Mukminin, Muhaimin, Ikhsan, Taridi & Saudagar, 2017). Mondahl and Razmita (2014) informed that foreign language learning is a collaborative and individual learning process that can be mediated through the use of SNSs. SNSs have been widely integrated in supporting language teaching and learning since they have decreased other responses of physical activities offering limitless opportunities for communication (Fewell, 2014).
For the Indonesian context, the studies on SNSs in educational settings of higher education informed various benefits and barriers viewed from students’ perspectives (Habibi et al., 2018; Prasojo et al., 2017). However, research on the SNSs integration from the perspectives of universities lecturers is limited and to fill the gap, this study was done to answer the following questions: