The Impact of Social Influence on Twitter Adoption

This study involves the use of Twitter in performing various learning activities in an undergraduate marketing course at an Australian university. The students applied Twitter directly in learning about the subject content, primarily through the sharing and construction of dialogue within an environment of peer interaction. At the end of the semester, student feedback on the above activities was collected using an anonymous on-line survey to see the impact of these activities on student learning. The survey consisted of questions relating to the effectiveness of Twitter in performing the learning activities as well as students' intentions to use Twitter in future. This is followed by individual interviews with a selected group of students with the aim to consolidate survey results. This paper presents some preliminary findings of the study with key focus on the impact of peer influence on students' intentions to use Twitter, using an extended technology adoption model (TAM). The empirical findings confirm the significant impact of social influence on the Twitter usage in this study.