La comunicación digital y las herramientas virtuales en la Universidad Técnica de Ambato (UTA)

Abstract

The communication process has been extended to new frontiers in internet in the last decade, becoming digital. Digital media currently provide the space in which users search for information, interact and integrate a virtual ecosystem that allows them greater participation, unlike radio, television or press. Social networks offer through its tools as 'fan pages', 'hashtags', and' tweet's, the possibility of turning visitors into actors and share their ideas on platforms that spread information instantly. Other virtual tools such as streaming audio and video content in real time are used by organizations to share useful content to users that do not allocate their attention to traditional media and are immersed in the Internet. In Ecuador, digital communication is a recent phenomenon that goes hand in hand with increasing access of internet users, which stood at 50.5% of Ecuadorians in 2015, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INEC), which has allowed higher education institutions such as the Technical University of Ambato (UTA), use virtual tools such as social networks or blogs to communicate with their digital users. However, these tools are used by UTA without any digital communication support, therefore not appropriate messages are constructed to internet users, and has limited the use of digital tools to simply report on academic activities, works, projects without knowing how they users think and are looking for in social networks and digital media. Therefore, the overall objective of this research is to determine the incidence of virtual digital communication tools that UTA uses to communicate with his students, identify them and measure its scope, to finally propose a User Guide for the optimization of virtual tools that UTA uses for digital communication.