Sub-theme 3.3: Students took a stand by developing

networking rules for their study groups

Students declared that they establish study groups, especially during examination time. The aim of these study groups, according to the students, is to enhance collaborative learning among them. They use social media as a communication tool to facilitate collaborative learning. The students have drawn up their own rules for the use of social media in their study group, in order to establish standards for acceptable social networking behaviour in the group.

“With WhatsApp group that we formed, we set our own guidelines: no vulgar language, you don't take numbers of people from the group and then inbox them privately because we know some nurses...I see a girl on

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that group then I want…to steal her number and then inbox her”. We also said that respect was one of our guidelines on the WhatsApp group and we also said that we don't post from time to time on that WhatsApp group. On the Facebook group what we said you post something relevant to the group” (XYZ/2, 9:11).

Broughton, Higgins, Hicks (2009:16) state that clear guidelines for the use of social media guide users in differentiating between acceptable and unacceptable social networking behaviour. While the students agreed about the rules for social media communication, they expressed concern about the non-adherence of their group mates to the rules, and they felt that they did not have the authority to enforce the rules because they are of the same status as their colleagues.

“It gets difficult to maintain the guidelines that we started ourselves…On WhatsApp our first guidelines was strictly English because we have coloureds and English students. Within 4 hours people were speaking in Xhosa- a guideline broken” (XYZ/2, 9:11).

One of the students drew attention to the fact that some social networking sites have rules for acceptable social networking, which should provide some guidance to the nursing students. It is clear that the students do not follow these guidelines when using social media. Policies on social media may not resolve problems related to inappropriate social media use if users social media do not perceive these policies as ethical (Broughton et al., 2009:16).

“The best way to use social media responsibly is to follow the Facebook guidelines the ones that they set for you, that no use of vulgar language, offensive pictures, no sexual pictures. These are the basic guidelines” (XYZ/2, 10:13)

Hardnova, Helbig and Peters (2010:14) suggest that before creating social media policies from scratch, it is important to identify existing policies that apply to the use of those media. Literature shows that social media users have trouble with existing privacy controls on social networking sites, and are not using them to customise their accessibility (Liu, Krishnamurthy, Gummandi and Mislove, 2011:2).

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“Responsible use of social media for me I would say these social medias they have their guidelines, for example with YouTube, you can’t

view a sexual video. It will say you must fill something like a form to prove that you’re over 18 so that’s a guideline. With Facebook you can’t

post, you can post anything but some, there’s a platform whereby someone can say I’m not happy with your post can you please remove

it. If you don’t remove it, then that person can report to Facebook”

(XYZ/2, 6:17).

This statement from this participant was supported by Kietzamann et al. (2011:245) who state that YouTube has controls requiring users who want to upload a video to register and agree to terms of use, and provides content management systems that allow users to identify and manage their content on YouTube and asking users to flag inappropriate content.

3.7 SUMMARY OF THE CHAPTER

In this chapter the researcher described how nursing students use social media based on the data generated from the twelve interviews, using quotes to substantiate the students’ views. The researcher placed his findings within the context of available body of knowledge found in existing literature.

In Chapter 4, guidelines will be developed for the responsible use of social media using results from the data collection. The guidelines that will be developed will emphasise the importance of protecting the rights of the patient to privacy, confidentiality, dignity and consent, as well as private, public, and professional life when using social networking, use of access control, digital footprint, and differentiating between acceptable and inappropriate posting on social networks.

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GUIDELINES, RECOMMENDATIONS, LIMITATIONS AND CONCLUSION 4.1 INTRODUCTION

In Chapter 1, an overview of the research study was presented and the problem statement, goals and objectives were described. In Chapter 2, an in-depth discussion of the research design and the method was given. Chapter 3 dealt with data collected during the interviews with the students and analysed under themes describing the perceptions of the nursing students regarding the use social media at the Nursing Education Institution (NEI) and in clinical practice In the present Chapter, 4, the researcher develops guidelines for the responsible use of social media at the NEI and in clinical practice. In addition to the guidelines, this chapter gives a summary of the findings, limitations, recommendations and the conclusion of the study.