The Use of Social Media in Learning English Writing of Indonesian English Department Students

Social media is a product of information and communication technology that is used by many people around the world, ranging from children to adults. Although not created specifically for educational purposes, social media has drawn the attention of some educators, especially in the field of teaching and learning English. The objectives of this research were to find out the types of social media used by English department students in the fourth semester of UINSI Samarinda and the use of social media in learning English writing. This research was conducted by using a descriptive-qualitative design. The researcher used questionnaires, interviews, and documentation as instruments to collect the data. The primary data in this research was obtained from questionnaires and interviews with the students who were active in using social media in learning English writing. Then, the secondary data contained recordings and documentation obtained from the students as the subjects of this research. The data analysis techniques used were data condensation, data display, conclusion drawing, and verification. To test the validity of the data, the researcher used the credibility technique with the source triangulation method. The result of this research showed that there were seven types of social media used by the students in learning English writing, namely social networking sites (SNS), blogs, micro-blog, wiki, social bookmarking websites, media sharing sites, and RSS (Really Simple Syndication). The students mostly used social media in learning English writing by using some provided features, especially which allow them to interact with their peers, such as personal chat, group chat, comment section, caption, description, story, and bio. Additionally, they also used some of these social media as learning sources to help them in developing their English writing skill.


INTRODUCTION
Social media are examples of the products of information and communication technology. According to Hudson (2018), social media refer to websites and applications that are deliberately made to facilitate people to share content quickly, efficiently, and in real-time. As a form of technology used by most people around the world, social media is used by a variety of people ranging from children to adults. Zhu and Chen (2015) argued that social media have a profile base or content that is in one center and has four functions, namely: make people interconnected, allowing people to collaborate with each other, present identity, or express creativity. There are many impacts provided by social media, especially in terms of learning, including how to deliver information in the learning and teaching process, the way people share ideas, materials, news, and work together. They allow people to learn anywhere, anytime with no limitations. Moreover, students tend to rely on social media to keep in touch with their friends. This opens up great opportunities for social media to support the learning process. The form of social media themselves has three categories in general: (1) social networking site (SNS); (2) web sharing content and site settings, and; (3) content producing and editing websites. Those varieties of social media make students free to learn and understand foreign cultures and languages without having to be physically present in them.
Considering that the position of writing ability is important for students, there are several problems that may be faced. Among them are students having difficulty in exploring ideas for writing, finding partners who can provide corrections or feedback on their writing, or simply finding a comfortable place for them to write while still allowing them to interact with each other. Therefore, it is necessary to find solutions to these problems. Social media itself, although not created specifically for educational purposes, has drawn the attention of some educators, especially in the field of teaching and learning English. As evidence, several studies have been conducted to find out whether social media can be used in the process of learning English. Among these studies, one of them was conducted by Basoz (2016) who in his research concluded that social media provides a platform for students to support their learning process. Not only that, another research conducted by Sharma (as cited in Safitri, 2021) stated that social media allows students to concentrate on learning the necessary language skills. Therefore, a study on the use of social media in learning English writing by students is important to be investigated since both students and teachers or lecturers need to know how to overcome the previously mentioned difficulties.
In the past ten years, there are many studies that explore the use of social media for educational purposes. Al-Jarrah, Talafhah, and Mansor (2019) conducted similar research about the role of social media in developing English language writing skills. It tried to find out how students perceive social media and the correlations between the factors affecting them. Another similar research is also conducted by Anwas, Sugiarti, Permatasari, and Warsihna (2020) about social media usage in enhancing English language skills. Handayani, Syafei, and Utari (2020) conducted research about the use of social media in learning English. Two researchers also conducted similar research to this current study (Sari, 2020;Ubaedillah et al., 2021). Some other researchers conducted research on social media from different angles, such as language use on social media (Triana et al., 2022), and cohesion and coherence in social media writing (Latifah & Triyono, 2020). Meanwhile, others focused on doing research on the contents of youtube (Akmal et al., 2020;Shalekhah et al., 2020;Sari & Margana, 2019;Fakhruddin et al., 2020). Few research did focus on all types of social media implemented in the teaching and learning of English, and this research intended to fill the gap.
Based on the research background, the researcher has made two research problems that are listed as follows.
a. What are the types of social media used in learning English writing by English department students of UINSI Samarinda? b. How do the English department students of UINSI Samarinda use social media in learning English writing?

LITERATURE REVIEW
Social media are platforms that facilitate any forms of activities that can be done online such as creating and sharing information and exchanging ideas, interests, and thoughts. According to Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), social media is "a group of internetbased applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content". In other words, social media are social-based technology products that can be used to share anything in various forms of media. According to Golden (2011), social media tools are divided into two categories, namely those managed by companies or individuals (usually in the form of a web or blog), and those owned by third parties (such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn). On the other side, Faizi, et.al., (2013) stated that there are seven types of the most popular social media used by people around the world namely: social networking site (SNS), blog, micro-blog, wiki, social bookmarking website, media sharing site and RSS (Really Symple Syndication). With the various types of social media, users can freely choose the platform based on their needs, whether to communicate through spoken or written form.
According to Suyono and Hariyanto (as cited in Handayani, Syafei, & Utari, 2020), learning is a process to obtain knowledge, developing skills, and improving the behavior of students. Additionally, Brown (2010) stated that learning is when someone gets knowledge, skills, experiences, or instructions on certain subjects. Thus, it can be concluded that learning English writing is a process carried out by students and aimed to gain, improve or develop his/her knowledge and skills in the writing field. In addition, writing skills mastery in the context of learning English is important because through it students can express their ideas, thoughts, emotions, and feelings to others in writing. Writing is considered a difficult thing to do for students. This problem can be overcome by creating a strategy that can improve students' writing skills. The strategy can be represented through controlled exercises and activities that reflect real life. These two things, apart from being able to be done in the classroom, can also be done through social media. The writing rules contained on social media are informal, so they do not demand the users to have perfect expertise in English. In addition to learning vocabulary and grammar rules, through social media students can also improve their English writing skills with online writing methods. In addition, the use of social media also makes it easier for students to access content anytime and anywhere. In other words, the difficulty in following learning instructions can be minimalized (Ahmed, 2020). This illustrates how potential social media is to help students learn English, especially outside the classroom.

RESEARCH METHODS
In this research, the researcher used a descriptive-qualitative design in order to dig deeper into information about the types of social media used by students and the use of social media in learning English writing. The subjects of this research were the fourthsemester students of the English Department at UINSI Samarinda which consisted of 91 students in total. As for the instruments in this research, the researcher used three instruments. They are observation, interview, and documentation. After going through the identification process from questionnaire results, the researcher then selected two students who were active in using social media to learn English writing. Therefore, the data from this research was taken from two main sources. They were students' questionnaire results and interviews with the students. After the data collection activities are completed, the data then will be analyzed to make it easier to understand. In this study, the data to be analyzed is data from interviews. The researcher used credibility to determine the validity of the data. The type that was used is triangulation which was done by rechecking the data. Triangulation was carried out to increase the credibility and accuracy of the data. There are three strategies that can be done in this way, namely source triangulation, method triangulation, and time triangulation (Helaluddin & Wijaya, 2020). Furthermore, the researcher used source triangulation. Through source triangulation, the researcher seeks other information about the topic being studied from other sources or participants. In this case, the researcher seek information by conducting interviews with fourth-semester of English Department students who used social media in learning and practicing English writing.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
To find out the types of social media used by the fourth-semester students of the English Department of UINSI Samarinda, the researcher collected the data by conducting a questionnaire and gave it to the students. The questionnaire consisted of seven questions referring to the theory of the types of social media by Faizi, et., al (2013). Each question asked whether the students use these types of social media and what social media they used based on the types. The questionnaire result is presented in the table as follows: Overall, the most popular social media was YouTube which is categorized as a media sharing site whereas plurkandyoursay.id was the least favorite among those social media items. In addition to the data in the table above, the researcher also presents the data in the form of a bar chart to facilitate overall data analysis. The data is then contained in the bar chart below.
Of the number of the students, 78 of them used YouTube, also at the same time 23 students used Flickr, 62 students used Instagram and 34 students used SlideShare in learning English writing. In addition, most of the students used different types of social media such as social networking services (SNS) which was used by 83 students, a blog which was used by 58 students, micro-blog which was used by 47 students, wiki which was used by 81 students, social bookmarking websites which were used by 65 students and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) which was used by 26 students. In conclusion, media sharing sites were the most used social media type whereas RSS (Really Simple Syndication) was the least used social media type by English Department students in the fourth semester of UINSI Samarinda.
Regarding the data obtained from the interviews, the respondents use; Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Discord as parts of social networking sites (SNS); Blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr, Medium, and Edublogs as parts of the blog; Twitter as a part of microblog; Wikipedia and Kompasiana as parts of wiki; Pinterest and Reddit as parts of the social bookmarking website; and YouTube, Flickr, Instagram and SlideShare as parts of media sharing site in learning English writing. The latest data obtained through documentation finally supported the data from the previous instrument and proved that the students actually used social media in learning English writing. Hence, the most important finding of this research is, that among the seven types of social media proposed by Riduan Faizi, et.al., most of the students use all of these social media (Faizi, et.al., 2013). This means that there is a huge opportunity for other students to maximize the use of social media in learning English, especially in the writing aspect.
Among those social media types, the result of this research showed that the most used social media in learning English writing was YouTube, which was categorized as a media sharing site. One of the students said that he likes YouTube more than other social media because of its feature which provides diverse content in the form of video. This is in line with Sakkir, et.al. (2016) who stated that using YouTube in learning English allows students

Types of Social Media
Total to learn actively and interactively. Since students nowadays rely on the internet so much, learning will be more engaging if teachers or lecturers incorporate YouTube into their classrooms in accordance with the preferences and interests of the students. Furthermore, Almurashi (2016) asserted that using YouTube to teach English plays a key part in assisting students in understanding their English lessons. It can raise students' levels in English courses and improve their performance. In other words, YouTube had a significant impact on students' comprehension of English. Nasution (2019) also argued that video can help students in reducing cognitive load and is appealing to a variety of learning styles. It was stated that the usage of the video was beneficial because it is likely that students are familiar with YouTube, which can have a positive impact on their motivation. Alwehaibi (2016) even suggested that YouTube should be used as a valuable teaching resource in classrooms and as an efficient instructional tool for boosting topic learning for EFL college students. Therefore, using social media especially YouTube practically needed in order to help students in developing their English skills.
Students' responses to the interviews in this study indirectly indicated that they felt comfortable when learning English on social media, especially in writing. This is because social media is flexible so it can be used for a variety of different purposes. Not only that, but social media also provides social interaction, which is considered to reduce student anxiety because of the pleasant experiences provided by social media. As a result, students become more confident to learn and practice their English language skills anywhere and anytime. Therefore, various social media platforms continue to develop both in terms of quality and quantity so that they have the potential to be used as learning media. Pujiono (2021) in his research said that the use of social media which is currently very massive makes teachers have to be able to see various possibilities or opportunities for using social media in teaching. According to him, the presence of social media provides enormous support in the teaching and learning process, one of which is helping teachers to explain things that are difficult to explain. With the help of appropriate learning media, learning will become a process that attracts students' interest.

CONCLUSION
Based on the research findings, the researcher found that there were seven types of social media used by the students in learning English writing. They are social networking sites (SNS), blogs, micro-blog, wiki, social bookmarking websites, media sharing sites, and RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Meanwhile, the interview results showed that the students mostly used social media in learning English writing by using some provided features, especially which allow them to interact with their peers, such as personal chat, group chat, comment section, caption, description, story, and bio. However, they also use some of these social media as learning sources to help them in developing their English writing skill.
As for the implication of this research, the explanation of students' responses in this study can be used as information related to the use of social media in learning English writing, so that educators (lecturers, teachers, tutors) will have a better consideration of how to use social media in their English classes. For the students, this study is expected to give a description of what social media they can use in learning English writing so that they can determine what types of social media suits their needs and preferences. For the future researcher, the result of this research can be used as information that will become one of the references for the next researcher to conduct research related to the use of social media in learning English writing.