The importance of social capital in higher education. A study of the Facebook fan pages

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to analyze the importance of social media in improving knowledge exchange, which may be reflected in improving the quality of higher education institutions. For this purpose, we study the relevance of three Spanish universities in Facebook. Although the importance of Facebook has been demonstrated in education, very few researches provide concrete evidence on its use as a mean of communication. Findings reveal that Facebook has an important role in terms of Social Capital by identifying communication strategies in order to achieve a higher efficiency, brand image and reputation.