Evaluation of the Fanpages of Spanish universities: public versus private institutions

Although the importance of Facebook in education has been proved repeatedly, it has been verified that few research works expose the usefulness of this social network as a means of communication. Likewise, it has been observed that the institutions that manage it in many cases do not know or do not master the instruments for making said communication efficient. By virtue of this context, the aim of this work is to learn how the Spanish universities use their Fanpages through the analysis of their content, visibility and interactivity. We shall also observe whether there are significant differences between public and private universities with regard to said items. For this purpose, we studied the importance of the main Spanish universities according to the Ranking Web of Spanish Universities—Webometrics—(three public and three private universities) in Facebook. The results reveal a professionalization in the use of these tools by the public universities. They create new opportunities, while the private universities fail to achieve this level.