Future Directions: Emergent Social Media Technologies and the Potential for Higher Education

Background

Worldwide use of social media will continue to grow (Chaffey, 2017). Based on the sheer numbers of active users of social media for business and personal use is approximately 24% of the world’s population; growth will continue globally with great potential for use in tertiary settings (Chaffey, 2017; United Nations, 2017). While the digital divide remains an issue, access to the support technologies and infrastructure can be facilitated by governmental programs (Adams Becker, Cumins, et al., 2017, 2017; Unesco, 2016). Underlying infrastructures, technologies and affordances of devices will continue to change creating potential opportunities. A greater number of programs and applications are offering the affordances of Web 2.0 technologies enabling some form of social interaction, e.g. the ability to conduct live chats while editing in a Google Doc. Moreover, augmented reality, virtual reality and gamified learning offer even more social media alternatives and potential for the higher education classroom. The lines are becoming blurred as to where the social meets the media’s purpose; i.e. social tools, such as chats and forums, can be found in virtually any program or application.