REGRESSION ANALYSIS OF ENGAGEMENT AND FOLLOWERS OF UNIVERSITIES ON SOCIAL NETWORKS

Previous investigations focused on web 2.0 communication in Spanish universities reach contradictory conclusions, although they agree on the existence of problems in their use of social networks. The present work delves into this field, expanding the limits of the number of universities, social networks and statistical analyses of prior studies. A descriptive quantitative research is carried out using multiple linear regression models with the aim of explaining and predicting the number of followers and reactions that universities obtain on social networks based on independent variables. Thereby, the communication of the 83 Spanish universities on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube is analysed for 14 weeks. The results show that the exposed regression models manage to predict a fundamental part of the followers that Spanish universities have on Facebook and Twitter networks, and a more discreet part on Instagram. Likewise, the regression models manage to predict a significant part of the weekly interaction that universities achieve on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Finally, they moderately explain the interaction per post on Instagram and Twitter. On YouTube the models do not work, so other variables should be investigated.