Crossing the Finish Line: How Social Media Influences Success for Low-Income First-Generation College Students

• In Event: Digital College Access and Success Tools: Scholarly and Practitioner Perspectives on What's Working for Generation Z

Abstract

Our work focuses on engagement with social media among first-generation college students (FGCS), and is a follow up to a book published by our research group in 2018. We consider the important question of whether and how technology can be used to leverage “campus capital” to better promote success among first-generation college students to ensure they graduate from college.

Threading together knowledge on FGCS and student engagement, Web 2.0 technologies, and social capital acquisition theories, our manuscript uses a conceptual framework based on “campus capital” (author removed for blind submission, 2018). We offer the term, campus capital, as those forms of explicit and implicit social capital that are specific to a particular campus. In this way, campus capital is derived from a framing of FGCS’ experiential reality through critical standpoints and theories of social capital acquisition, and the relationship between online social networking and social capital acquisition.

Data for this paper derive from final interviews conducted in 2017 (post-book manuscript submission) as part of a larger five-year longitudinal case study. We focus on twelve students who participated in semi-structured interviews during the spring of each year in college. All of the students were FGCS, low-income, and/or historically marginalized racially or ethnically. Five students identified as female and seven students identified as male, and all were either 18 or 19 when they started college. Over 75% of the students identified as non-White. Qualitative data for this paper includes 48 individual student interviews over five years.

We found that the accessibility of technology promotes a sense of community, ensures engagement within campus life, and strengthens relationships with home (strong) ties. It also helps students make off-campus connections that they anticipate will help them transition to life after college.

FGCS uses social media to connect with family and close friends at home and thus maintain “strong” relational ties. These ties motivate, validate and support students’ identities, serving to secure their positions on campus and remind them of their reason for pursuing higher education. Students reported that these relationships helped students to make it to graduation, as these folks were a critical source of support that could counter negative or challenging experiences.

We also found that peer mentors were a key source of student success on campus. These relationships facilitated transitions to and progression through college for FGCS by disseminating campus capital through both weak and strong ties. Concurrently, former peer mentors were sources of emotional and social support and validation. Like campus capital circulated through strong ties, campus capital disseminated by former peer mentors was intended to shore up FGCS insecurities, self-doubt and anxiety about belonging on campus, and life after college. Students shared that they stayed connected with these peer mentors after they graduated and still receive advice about charting the future after graduation.

Authors

• Heather T. Rowan-Kenyon, Boston College

• Ana M. Martinez-Aleman, Boston College

• Mandy Savitz-Romer, Harvard University