Research Symposium

BIO

Hello, everyone. My name is Jenee Gray. I'm a sophomore studying International Affairs. Here at FSU, I participate in the Residential Conduct Board and the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program, where I research how potential first-generation students navigate social media to gain college information. In my spare time, you may find me forging new relationships by playing DND or dancing in J-POP-themed concert

Social Media's Role in Prospective First-Generation Students' College Decisions

Abstract

There is an overarching assumption that first-generation students, collegiate-educated students whose parents still need to complete four years of college, need more resources when deciding which college to attend. Due to this supposition, we analyze how social media might fill the knowledge gap and influence college decisions—in a previous study, Overcoming the Odds. Journal for Multicultural Education (2019), which examines a similar topic, utilized a limited sample, which inhibited them from concluding a legitimate correlation between experiences and college decisions, thus influencing our study to collect data from all races and ethnicities of first-generation students. We utilized thematic analysis and data coding from Brian and Clarke's Using Thematic Analysis to formulate two categories that depict the correlation between the usage of social media and a potential first-generation high school seniors' college decisions: the network, such as a person or organization that they follow on social media platforms, in which the students have the capability to talk to them, and the topic in which the students will learn about on social media platforms. Our finding indicates that college decisions are not altered due to the information that they acquire on social media but instead enforced. Our findings suggest that social media should be used in an educational setting as a tool for school administrators to use to help first-gen students.

Keywords: first-generation, education, social media,