The topic of the doctoral thesis of doctoral student Tihana Babić is entitled Changing the Communication Paradigm in Higher Education under the Influence of Social Media. This doctoral dissertation was created as a part of the research of media theory and mass communication and the development of mass communication media, such as social media. In this doctoral dissertation, social media are approached by dealing in more detail and depth with their use in higher education institutions. The notion of social media is an unavoidable part of everyday life today, and the networking of individuals and new ways of communication and interaction have their reach in academic world as well. Social media are not just a tool for disseminating information, but more than any other existing medium they provide a multitude of communication possibilities. They are often discussed, but most often at the level of what is already known they enable, and very rarely about their potential and what else they could enable. The theoretical part of this paper presents the current state of the communication paradigm in higher education under the influence of social media through a review of the literature and previous research. The purpose of the theoretical part of the doctoral thesis was to examine and describe in detail the reasons and forms of social media use so far, from the point of view of the higher education process, and to detect basic assumptions and determinants of the existing communication paradigm in higher education under the influence of social media. The aim of the research was to understand the possibilities of using and future development of social media in higher education, to discover anomalies of the existing communication paradigm in higher education under the influence of social media, to determine the factors that will change the existing paradigm based on predictions at the higher level, and to shape the guidelines of the new communication paradigm through social media for the needs of higher education. The introductory part of the dissertation presents an overview of the development of information technologies that enabled the communication-media paradigm of social media, explains the basic concepts of communication-media paradigm and aspects of ethical challenges facing the information society, and basic concepts and theoretical framework of social media. After that, the relationship between higher education and educational technology as a context of the use of social media for the needs of higher education is presented, as well as an overview of previous research on the use of social media in the higher education process. This is followed by presentations of preliminary research on students and teachers use of social media for higher education purposes. The research questions cover the development of technology that will drive social media in the near future, the preconditions that need to be met in order to use the communication potential of social media for higher education, the factors influencing the integration of social media in the higher education process, the factors influencing the attitudes of higher education institutions, teachers and students towards social media and the ways in which the potentials of social media could be used to improve communication in higher education. For the answers to the mentioned research questions, the Delphi study was used, ie the qualitative and quantitative approach. A survey was conducted in 2020 in the Republic of Croatia on a sample of 37 significant businessmen with many years of experience in the IT field, prominent scientists and researchers in the field of IT and leading experts in the field of IT education. The research was conducted in four rounds, last of which refers to the presentation of the results of the Delphi study to the research participants. The research approach to processing and analyzing the answers obtained in the first three rounds of the Delphi study was methodological triangulation, based on which 12 key factors of communication paradigm in higher education under the influence of social media and their rank according to the degrees of importance were determined by experts. In conclusion, recommendations for a new communication paradigm through social media in higher education have been formulated, which will provide guidelines for education professionals to improve the quality of educational policies, curricula and programs in order to use the communication potential of social media for higher education purposes. The scientific contribution of this dissertation is in the field of information and communication sciences, ie the scientific contribution in the theory of communication, specifically in the issue of shaping a new communication paradigm through social media in the context of higher education. The original insight into the issue, with a specific contribution of the assessment of the development direction in shaping the new communication paradigm, was achieved by applying the Delphi method, which will achieve multidimensional and critical foundation of the new communication paradigm in higher education under the influence of social media. A further contribution of this doctoral dissertation are the guidelines for the new communication paradigm of using social media in higher education, which will be the guidelines for education professionals to improve the quality of educational policies, curricula and programs to use the communication potential of social media for higher education. This is the first scientific paper in the Republic of Croatia that deals with the communication paradigm in higher education under the influence of social media.