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In Search of Media Richness and Social Support Functions on the Home Pages of University Websites: A Content Analysis Abstract Studentadvisor.com compiled a top-100 list in 2011 of colleges and universities it deemed were best at using social media to recruit high school students for college. See the list at http://www.studentadvisor.com/top-100-social-media-colleges Authors used the list to examine the home pages of these universities to learn how such pages are used in the high-stakes recruiting game. We found that the majority of home pages-the 24-hour virtual university gateway--failed to adequately apply the principle of media richness, which is defined as the more media content resembles face-to-face communication the more people are more likely to engage with it. Content also failed to adequately fulfill the social support functions--the informational, emotional, esteem, tangible and social network needs-- of young people. The authors argue that media-rich content on home pages that also meet the social support functions (needs) of high school students would make the pages more appealing, resulting in, perhaps, increased campus visits by students and enrollment.

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In Search of Media Richness and Social Support Functions on the Home Pages of University Websites: A Content Analysis Introduction In the spring of 2012, North Carolina A&T State University, in Greensboro, N.C., revamped its website to bring it into the 21st century. It was the first major makeover in 16 years, and was designed to improve content, navigational structure and to make the website more mobile-device friendly for Internet and social-media savvy students the university hopes to attract . Today, university websites, particularly the front page, represent a 24-hour virtual gateway into the campus for the world to see. Initially, colleges and universities did not take the building websites too seriously . Sites were built so that universities could say they had a presence on the Internet, with little or no concern for content, how and why people access that content, and navigational structure. With the growing popularity of social media, university websites have had to update their sites in order to stay competitive in the student recruiting game . Here is why. For high school students, university websites ranked second to campus visits as the source for researching colleges . Yet a study of 374 university websites revealed that most targeted prospective donors, followed by faculty/staff, then students . In a survey of 1,000 students, 72% said their first stop is the universitys home page after a Google search. Eighty-eight percent said they would drop a college or university for consideration if the websites did not have the content they needed . News about universities--both negative and positive, fact and gossip-- can travel quickly among young people through the electronic devices they use. Young people between age 8-18 spend 7.5 hours a day using some type of electronic device as they access the Internet and text message , 66% of 8-18 year olds owned a mobile phone in 2009, compared to 39% in 2004, and
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85%of 11-18 year olds owned a mobile phone in 2009, up from 56% in 2004 . This generation of high school students grew up using the Internet and easily adopted social media. They have great confidence in their ability to perform computer-related tasks, what Bandura would describe as self efficacy. How do colleges and universities use their websites in conjunction with elements of social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to recruit students to campus so that they will eventually attend? How will an understanding of media richness and social support functions of young people who use emerging media help colleges and universities meet the online expectations of future students? The answers to these questions are explored in this study. Why is this Study Important? Studies of university websites have focused on design and navigation considerations , what high school students and their parents like and dislike about university websites they visited , how well university websites have allowed for dialogic (two-way) communication between visitors and university officials , and how people look at websites . But few studies have attempted to examine the content found on the all-important front page of university websites-the virtual, 24-hour gateway--through the lenses of media richness and social support functions. If universities understood the importance of media richness, the needs that the Internet and social media fulfill among young people, and applied these lessons, universities might reap greater recruiting benefits among students who visit their sites. This study helps to fill that gap. Theoretical Foundation What is Social Media? Kaplan and Haenlein defined social media as Web-based and mobile technologies that turn communication into interactive dialogue and allow for the creation and exchange of user3

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generated content. While Dominick (2011) argued that the first social media was the telephone, because it connected friends and family and kept people in touch (p. 72), the first Web-based social media was founded in 1997 as sixdegrees.com , followed by Friendster (2002), Linkedin and Myspace (2003), Flickr (2004) and YouTube (2005). Facebook and Twitter began in 2006. Today, millions of users--many of them young people--have integrated these famous and lesserknown examples of social media into their daily lives . Scholars refer to three web phases. Beginning in the 1990s, the Web 1.0, the so called read only web, is rooted in the basic static website that provides a one-way communication model where content is broadcast to many. There is little feedback . Web 2.0, introduced in 2003, marked the beginning of the social media, i.e., the interactive web. It is characterized by YouTube, Facebook, and other programs that allow content providers to engage with an online audience, a two-way communication model often in real time . Web 3.0, the current phase, is described as the mobile web, where mobile devices are used to connect to social media. Mansfield (2012) argued that integration of Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 is critical to the successful use of social media by nonprofits. From a corporate perspective, businesses wanting a strong social media presence have to think beyond social media and develop an online social strategy that helps fulfill the online social needs of people using social media . Learning about media richness and the five social support functions of computer-mediated communication (CMC) provide some insight into the needs of people using social media. Such information may help businesses, nonprofits and colleges and universities maximize social media efforts as they promote the university to undergraduate students.

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Media Richness Daft and Lengel first introduced the idea of media richness to explain why and how organizations meet their information needs and reduce ambiguity in the communication process. It proposes that media users are more likely to respond to media content that closely resembles face-to-face communication. Daft and Lengel (1984) devised a media richness hierarchy. At the top was face-to-face communication, which allows for the highest degree of instant feedback, the ability to assess verbal and nonverbal cues, and the potential for clear exchange of information between the sender and receiver of the information. Beneath face-to-face communication were telephone calls, letters, written documents and numeric documents, the least media rich content of all. The more senses a particular media content can evoke, the more attractive that content becomes. Media- rich content is good for the sending of difficult or potentially misleading information that the sender wants clearly understood. Media richness helps explain why desktop conferencing over a webcam in the business world is a more effective form of communication than an audio conference . Thanks to emerging media, other content can be included in the hierarchy: email, text messaging, video, Skype, podcasts, audio slideshows, blogging, and mapping programs. Content that is media rich suggests interactive content, and that is important to high school students. Fifty-three percent of Black, 49 % of Latino and 37% of White high school students said they were attracted to interactive websites . Evidence supporting the importance of adding media richness to website content is found in a study of employee testimonials delivered via audio and video on a recruiting website, which were found to be more credible and attractive among viewers than testimonials with pictures and text . In addition to media richness, the concept of

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social support functions help answer the question, What needs do the Internet and social media fulfill in the lives of young people? Social Support Functions Before the Internet, scholars defined social support function as the exchange of verbal and nonverbal messages that convey emotion, information, or referral, to help reduce someones uncertainly or stress,. Confined mostly to close personal relationships, social support is now found in CMC involving the Internet , and by extension the web and social media. Social support made its way from person-to-person communication to virtual communities that sprung up on AOL, to the establishment of list serves, and online bulletin and discussion boards in the early 1990s . In studying virtual communities and how people interact online, Cutrona & Suhr (1992) discovered five social support functions of CMC that help explain why people use the Internet, mobile devices and social media. (1). People seek informational support from a variety of sources, including their own research and information obtained from and about family and friends. (2.) People seek emotional support through online interaction from family members and friends. They want to know that things will be OK when they have a bad day. (3.) People seek esteem support, i.e. praise and admiration for a job well done. (4.) People seek tangible aid online. They use social media to ask friends and family for help, such as moving furniture. (5.) People also seek social network support among people who share common goals and experiences. Informational support (Stay in the know) can include using the Internet and social media for research to finding out from other social media users the location of the next party. In one aspect of social support that points to informational support, 71% of 18-29 years said keeping up with current friends and family was the main reason they use social media; 51% said
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they used it to find friends and family with whom they have lost contact. Based on the idea of staying in the know, 11% of Latinos, 10% of African-Americans and 3% of Whites said the main reason they used Twitter was to keep up with the trials and tribulations of their favorite public figures, athletes or and celebrities. Thirty-one percent of Blacks, 26% of Latinos and 16% of Whites said that keeping up with public figures was a minor reason for using Twitter . When it came to emotional support, Facebook users in 2011 had significantly more online confidantspeople with whom they discuss personal mattersthan Facebook users in 2008 . Facebook users who accessed the site several times a day averaged 9% more in close, online social ties than people who used other types of social media. One of the authors noted the power of emotional support when the cousin of one of his students died following a motorcycle accident. After the student posted the news on her Facebook page along with a picture of the mangled bike, hundreds of friends responded with kind words. A virtual prayer service broke out on her Facebook page. It lasted for at least an hour. Evidence of esteem support can be found in a study which noted that positive comments about an adolescents online profile page enhanced self esteem, while negative comments decreased self esteem and well being. As positive comments increased, the more the adolescents visited their own site. As negative comments increased, the fewer they visited . In terms of social network support, you can look at the late R&B singer Whitney Houstons Facebook page to see how people shared a common online experience after her death in February of 2012. As of March 4, 2012, more than 3 million people had clicked on her like link and 21,571 had posted comments about the singers death and what Houston had meant to them .

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Research Questions Media richness suggests that media rich content on university websites would generate more interest among student recruits than content with text and pictures or graphics. Video and audio content would stimulate more of your sensessight and hearingthan pictures and text. Media-rich content is what young people expect when they visit a website. Consequently, this research question is offered. R1: To what extent are universities using videos or other media rich types of communication on the front pages of their sites? The five social support functions suggest that college and universities could improve their online recruiting efforts if their content attempted to fulfill more of the online social needs among high school students. Consequently, this research question is offered. R2: To what extent are colleges using elements of social support on the front pages of their sites to fulfill the social support needs of high school students they are trying to recruit? Methodology The authors looked at the top 100 university social media sites as selected by studentadvisor.com, an online product of the Washington Post Company. See list of websites at http://www.studentadvisor.com/top-100-social-media-colleges. Editors at studentadvisor.com compiled a list of the top 100 colleges and universities using social media from among 6,000 colleges and universities in the United States. The list was last updated in the fall of 2011 . In addition to telling potential students which universities are using social media, the site also

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serves as a resource for high school students and their parents as they try to select what college or university their child should attend. Using its list as a point of reference and armed with a coding booklet and coding sheet, the authors looked at the front pages of these sites. Focusing on the front pages made this study manageable. Sklar noted that the two most important areas of content on a web page--where the majority of people look--were the top banner and the middle of the page. The authors primary focus was information from these two areas on the home page as they looked and coded for evidence of media richness that a potential high school student might find appealing. Were there audio, video, or some other type of interactive element versus just pictures and text on the front page? Were there links from the home page to the universities social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, or some other type of social media accounts? The authors also searched the front page and coded for content that reflected efforts to fulfill the social support needs of high school students. Were there efforts to appeal to the informational, esteem, emotional, social networking and tangible needs of students? The content analysis was conducted in the spring of 2012. To ensure intercoder reliability, two authors coded the same 3 home pages to see how closely their coding matched. Recal2, a program that calculates intercoder reliability statistics , calculated an average Scotts pi of .85. The authors coding matched an average 85%.

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Results

General Findings Out of the 100 sites, the author examined 94 of them for a return rate of 94%. Six sites were not accessible during the time the authors tried to look at them. Taking into consideration the enormous impact and popularity of social media on potential college students, 86% of the home pages linked to their universitys perspective Twitter account. In addition, 90% linked to their Facebook, 84% to Youtube and 23% to Flickr accounts from the home page. In addition to Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, 35% of the home pages linked to other social media, including Google+, Tumblr and Foursquare. Ten-percent had no links to social media from their home pages. The authors noted additional evidence of universities acknowledgement of the impact of social media. Twenty-four percent of the universities had Youtube accounts where more than 500,000 people had watched university-produced videos. Twenty-four percent of the universities had between 100,001 and 200,000 followers on their Twitter accounts, 15% had between 200,001 and 500,000 followers. Twenty-four percent had more than 500,001 Twitter followers. Eighty-percent of the universities had more than 5001 likes on their Facebook pages. The authors are not suggesting that these thousands of social media users came to the universities social media sites via the front page. There are many paths to the universities social media accounts. But the numbers show the impact of social media in our lives. .

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Specific Findings R1: To what extent are universities using videos or other media rich types of communication on the front pages of their sites? For the majority of universities, media richness was limited. Ninety-three percent of the front pages did not have video embedded in the prime real estate area of their sites, the top banner or middle part of the page. A handful had such videos but it was in secondary areas of the site or linked to another page. Located along the top banner of the homepage was where 66% of the universities posted pictures in a Flash-based software program that rotated different ones. Thirty-one percent of the university home pages posted static pictures, graphics and text. Not surprisingly, content on these front pages (92%) focused the majority of the time on campusrelated news and information, including visits by celebrities, public figures, student news and faculty/guest lecturers. R2: To what extent are colleges using elements of social support on the front pages of their sites to fulfill the social support needs of high school students they are trying to recruit? Informational support was the need being fulfilled by the majority of the university front pages. To be more specific, 72% of the front pages focused on providing news and information followed by esteem support 17%, and emotional support 16%. Beyond links to social media, the authors found no evidence of social networking--beyond a link to the universitys social media site(s)--or tangible aid support on the front pages.

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Discussion While universities in this study are beginning to optimize their use of social media, the home pages, the 24-hour gateway to the university, are lagging behind in their ability to take advantage of media richness and fully tap into the power of meeting the social support functions of young people. Most of the home pages lacked the vibrancy and interaction found on pages dedicated to social media. Few of the universities used video on their front pages--a high level of media richness--opting instead to resort to a set of rotating pictures found mostly along the top banner. Some posted static pictures and text, illustrating even lower levels of media richness. Media richness seems to be very important when you consider the hundreds of thousands of views noted on many of the universities Youtube accounts. In terms of tapping into social support needs of students, content on the home pages was limited primarily to information support. Content that appealed to students need for esteem and emotional support was rare, although there was some evidence of social network support where most of the home pages provided links to the universities social media accounts. It is clear from this study that universities are not maximizing their use of media richness and social support functions in their efforts to recruit potential students from their home pages. But as the studentadvisor.com list showed, some of these universities have found ways to embrace social media. Some noteworthy examples from its list show a combination of media-rich content in their social media and efforts--whether strategically or unintentionally--to tap into the social support needs of viewers. Columbia University has set up a web page that lists all of the universitys social media sites. See http://www.columbia.edu/content/social-media.html. The directory included a list of

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faculty and student blogs, Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook pages maintained by departments and organizations. The blogs and videos that are linked from this directory show evidence of emotional, social support and esteem needs being met. In addition to media rich content, the PR department at Kentucky University uses its Youtube page to feature campus-related stories that meet a number of social support functions, information and esteem. See http://www.youtube.com/universityofky. With more than 500,000 views, people apparently find this media-rich site attractive. While the majority of university home pages lacked significant efforts at using media richness and tapping into social support functions, there were a couple of exceptions. While not as media rich as videos, the rotating photos on the home page of Johns Hopkins Universitys website http://www.jhu.edu/ tap into the viewers need for emotional support by suggesting a family bond exists on campus. There are easy ways to incorporate media richness, video, audio, audio sound slides-anything that engages more than one of the human senses--on the home pages. Such tools are not being used as much as they should be. The technology has advanced to the point that many of the tools, such as Soundslides, Windows Live Moviemaker, Audacity, are easy to use and produce quality multimedia productions that help increase media richness. You can produce the content that is informative and meets the social support needs of viewers, especially high school students. The authors also brainstormed ways to build media-rich content that taps into social support functions. You could target esteem and emotional support by vetting video testimonial from current students about the struggles and triumphs of being a student and why they decided to attend your university.

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You can build esteem support by incorporating live webcams on the front page that focus on important campus landmarks with a blurb about the history of these sites. You can construct timelines on the front page with links to multimedia that explain important events in the life of the university. Such efforts suggest esteem and emotional support.

Klamm alluded to the importance of media richness and social support functions when he advised colleges and universities using social media, and by extension websites and blogs, to make their messages personal. By humanizing your organizations social media presence, students will be more likely to interact with you, (p. 1). He continued. They should also keep it real (have people explain what it is like working or going to school at the university with a flip camera or smartphone video), deliver exclusively (give students a peak into culture of the organization), add value (give future students a chance to interact with current students or staff via social media) and stay ahead of the curve (embrace the technology that students are using). These tips point to the importance of fulfilling social support functions for maximum online student interaction. Research shows that this generation of Internet-savvy and Youtube-generation high school students expects a high degree of media richness when it comes to online content. Attending to those their demand for media-rich content, which also better fulfills social support needs, could mean the difference between landing and not landing recruits for next years freshmen class in the highly competitive university recruiting environment.

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Limitations and Future Research The 100-university, purposive sample is too small to generalize to a larger population. But the results provide valuable information and a snapshot of what may be taking place on the home pages of other university websites. Yin referred to qualitative findings, such as revealed in this study, as an analytical generalization. AG allows you to take findings that emerge from qualitative studies and generalize them to a similar situation. The next logical step in this study might be a: (1).content analysis of a random sample of home pages of all regionally accredited colleges and universities in the United States; (2.) an empirical look at how universities are using social media; (3).obtain a random sample of university undergraduate student admission website and code them for media richness and social support; and (4). study of the importance high school students place in a university webs degree of media richness in content and whether that content satisfies students social support functions (needs).

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References

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