‘What’s happening?’: Students’ use of Twitter in a Social Media seminar

1. ‘What’s happening?’: Students’ use of Twitter in a Social Media seminar Nicola Pallitt PhD student (Centre for Film & Media Studies) Web content & communications (Centre for Open Learning) Survivor Social Media seminar facilitator July 2012

2. Twitter for teaching • Example of integration of social media in higher education (HE) • Discuss benefits & challenges RE integrating Twitter into HE teaching and learning activities. • Online classroom community • Twitter as ‘backchannel’ • Media education • challenge for educators who wish to develop Twitter as media practice and encourage its journalistic use

3. Appropriating Twitter • What is Twitter? • Twitter VS LMSs • Twitter is a public social media platform not intentionally designed for educational use • Can disrupt traditional models of teaching and learning in interesting ways

4. Twitter in the classroom • Uses of #hashtags • In class with tweet screen • See video of US History lecturer Dr Rankin using Twitter for class discussions • What if you don’t use a tweet screen? • Can it work with a smaller class? • Different subject? • Media Studies seminar = Using social media to teach social media...

5. Twitter for media students • Part of the modern journalist’s toolkit • Students can exercise their “writing rights” (Kress, 2004) • Good way for media students to practise writing lead sentences and headlines • Journos see it as an important skill that needs to be taught • VS disconnected lecturers

6. Twitter in the seminar... • 2nd year Media Studies students doing writing & editing in the media course • 21 students • 1x a week, 2 hours • 10% for tweeting about social media news and current events • Sharing ‘newsworthy’ information • Aim = reflexive practice: using social media to study social media

7. Methodology • TAGS script in Google spreadsheets for archival of tweets with class # • Also used Archivist & NodeXL • Ethical issue: harvesting tweets for research • This paper is based on student tweets for the first 6 weeks of the seminar • 668 tweets were coded – 8 categories • Interviewed students as a class

8. Methodology • Categories: • Social media:#FAM2000F Awesome infographic about which social media to use and when to use it http://t.co/rLQ7ptbK • Current events: Boys videotape horrific gang rape | News24 http://t.co/ErJtoGuz #FAM2000F • Entertainment news: Lady Gaga Attacked By Eating Disorder Association!Read more here ---> http://t.co/xZfjVJPu #FAM2000F

9. UCT news: via @GreenCampus_UCT: "Photography Competition (Green Week 2012)" Tomorrow from 01:00 to 04:00. Show us your skills and upload... #fam2000f • Interesting link or fact: Today's Google Doodle is a tribute to Eadweard J. Muybridge, one of the first film and motion picture pioneers. #FAM2000F • Seminar chatter: Busy with my presentation for #fam2000f , does anyone know if we have to make a power point with it? Or is it optional? • Self promotion: Fancy some MDNA? http://t.co/xdt6Lcrk via @wordpressdotcom new post up #FAM2000F • Personal: It’s funny how; The one person you'd take a bullet for...Tends to always be the one behind the gun.#fam2000f

10. Methodology • Tweets per code also calculated as degree using NodeXL • Centrality/degree helps calculate which code was most popular across ALL participants

11. Tweet summary:

12. Classroom as community: Seminar chatter • Students used Twitter to ask classmates for help, offer advice and maintain a sense of community. • From an educator’s perspective, these kinds of tweets helped me monitor the class’s questions and opinions. • During the interview with students, they pointed out that the course portal did not have a chatroom • Twitter for ‘just in time’ assistance from classmates & seminar facilitators

13. Self presentation and Twitter as a youth space • Students’ existing Twitter practices influenced their seminar tweeting • ‘Twitter and bbm are the only things parents haven’t ruined’ • ‘Branding’ one’s self on Twitter: tweets say something about you which creates a reputation to be upheld • Tweeting current events = ‘pretentious’ VS aspirational future career as journo • Gaming Twitter for followers and competing with friends over who has more followers as a marker of ‘coolness’ and popularity.

14. ‘Newsworthy’ tweets: What counts as ‘news’ on Twitter? • Old distinctions between hard and soft news blurred • Twitter users determine newsworthiness • depending on their personal interests and community of followers • ‘Current Events’ & ‘Entertainment News’ confusion • Fascination with overseas celebrities and news. • Default value of Twitter = entertainment • Few tweeted about current events in SA beyond the echelons of campus life. • Tweets related to local social issues and informed political engagement was a minority.

15. Conclusions RE Media Edu • Students need to develop an understanding of the kind of news being shared & how different genres of tweeting are used for particular communicative purposes. • Regarding content, entertainment news takes precedence over local current events. • Problematic to assume that students are apathetic, as they value their self-presentation. • Topics and genres of tweeting suggest different identities (such as the aspiring journalist) not celebrated in some students’ existing uses of the platform. • Genres of tweeting cannot be enforced, but students can be taught how to analyse as well as practice particular genres more efficiently.

16. Conclusions RE Higher Ed • Domestication of social networking sites and existing social media practices can be seen as a constraint • Social media are not de facto learning communities, they come with ‘baggage’. • Their default uses prioritise entertainment and sociality. • Weigh up whether the use of Twitter as a backchannel for student-centred activities outweighs the ‘baggage’

17. Conclusions RE Higher Ed • OR discuss preferred uses with students in the beginning of the class to cultivate a more informed use of the platform. • Continuing debate - educators trying to tame social media, bringing it in from the wilds of sociality and domesticating it for teaching and learning purposes. • this comes with challenges as well as potential benefits.

18. How do YOU see the use of social media in education?