The Role of Social Media in the Scientific Relationship of Faculty Members of Mazandaran University and Its Impact on their Scientific Production

The aim of this study is to examine the role of social media in scientific communication of faculty members of Mazandaran University and its impact on scientific production.

This research was applied and performed by survey method. The statistical population included 202 faculty members of the five faculties of Arts and Architecture, Theology and Islamic Studies, Law and Political Science, Economic and Administrative Sciences, and Humanities and Social Sciences of Mazandaran University. In this survey, 132 people were selected using Cochran fourmula as the smaple. The Relative sampling was used as the sampling modle. In order to collect data, the questionnaires of the role of social media in the scientific communication of Golini Moghadam et al. (2018) and scientific productions of Soleimani and Shokooei (2008) were used. The reliability was determined using Cronbach's alpha coefficient at the desired level (α >0.70). Data analysis was performed using Spss and Amos software.

The results of the correlation coefficient test showed that there is a significant relationship between age variables, service history and the role of social media in scientific communication with scientific products (P <0.001). Based on the results of the T-test, according to the demographic characteristics of the faculty members, it was shown that there was no significant difference between gender (p = 0.989) and marital status (p = 103) with scientific production, However, based on the results of the analysis of variance test, there is a significant difference between the scientific level and scientific products of the faculty members (P <0.001). Professors have more scientific output. The results of the one-sample T test showed that social media played a strong and effective role in the scientific communication of the faculty members of Mazandaran University (in the five mentioned faculties), This strong and effective role led to an increase in their scientific production. The variance of scientific productions of faculty members was about 31%, influenced by the role of social media in scientific communication.

Faculty members from Telegram and LinkedIn social media had the most and the least use, respectively. Most of the scientific productions of the faculty members are in the field of articles published in scientific-research journals, which they have compiled in collaboration, and their least scientific productions have been registered in the field of invention. Since the faculty members of Mazandaran University (in the five mentioned faculties) have used the social media of Telegram, WhatsApp, Google Scholar and Wikipedia the most, in general, they have used modern methods more than traditional methods in communication and scientific production. However, they have the ability to share their activities with non-specialists to exchange, distribute and receive content.