Use of social networking tools and services among research scholars at the University of Kerala

The study investigates the scholarly use of social networking tools and services by the doctoral students at the University of Kerala. Structured questionnaires were used to collect data from a population of 649 full-time doctoral students from different departments of the university. The analysis revealed that most of the researchers were daily users of the internet for 'research purposes' and 'email' is the most preferred social networking services preferred by them. Statistical analysis shows that the majority of the social networking tools and services have no significant difference with the gender of researchers except in the use of blogging service. It was also revealed that there is a significant difference in the use of social networking tools and services by the researchers with respect to their faculty. The major obstacles faced by research scholars are 'overload of information' the study provides useful insight to promote the use of social networking tools and services among the research scholars in the University of Kerala.