"Malarkey", "Binders of Women", and debates on Twitter

Twitter lit up during the recent presidential and vice presidential debates with tweets about policy fighting for attention with tweets about candidates' gaffes. Often these gaffes morph into full-fledged internet memes. This has led even ardent Twitter fans to question the value of communicating substantive issues through 140 characters. However, formal debates are increasingly occurring through Twitter. 

One notable example is the Republican presidential candidates’ participation in a tweeted debate on July 20, 2012.  This debate was sponsored by TheTeaParty.net. It included six Presidential candidates: Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, Gary Johnson, Thaddeus McCotter, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich. 

Some scholars have begun to study tweeted debates.  For example, after studying a debate about the implementation of the European Union’s Data Retention Directive in Norway, Hallvard Moe (2012) found that Twitter facilitates direct engagement among adversaries. 

However, he also found that this technology might privilege the few.  In the case Moe studied, Twitter was used as a public debate arena for a small group of almost exclusively male experts. These core users engaged in direct discussions with adversaries but little evidence was found of new participants getting heard.

A screenshot of the Republican candidates' tweeted debate.

As the debate traffic on Twitter is sure to increase, it’s interesting to think about how this technology is going to be used.  Will it reproduce societal inequalities by privileging certain groups, as Moe found? 

Do you think that tweeting debates is a good idea?  A bad idea?  How would you like to see this technology used for debating?

Dr. Jennifer Novak Ladd is a TSMRI Fellow and Assistant Professor of English at Tarleton State University.  You can find her on Facebook.

Reference:

Moe, H. (2012 May 15). Who Participates and How? Twitter as an Arena for Public Debate about the Data Retention Directive in Norway. International Journal of Communication, 6, 1222-24.  Retrieved from http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/1107/756

Where Does Social Media "Go"?

We all know that social media outlets can be incredibly powerful. For example, the power of Twitter was made blatantly obvious in Egypt during January 2011 when political protests were organized online. 

However, a recent look into Egypt's uprising has revealed that some of this information has disappeared.  Hany M. SalahEldeen and Michael L. Nelson at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, conducted the research and revealed that the information from Egypt's 2011 protest and many other culturally significant events were missing from the Twitter's history of tweets.

Eldeen and Nelson reviewed tweets from June 2009 to March 2012 in search of information on 6 culturally significant events (Iranian elections, Michael Jackson's death, the H1N1 outbreak,  Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, the Egyptian revolution, and the recent Syrian uprising). Their research revealed a surprising end.

“Social media content has grown exponentially in the recent years and the role of social media has evolved from just narrating life events to actually shaping them. In this paper we explore how many resources shared in social media are still available on the live web or in public web archives. By analyzing six different event-centric datasets of resources shared in social media in the period from June 2009 to March 2012, we found about 11% lost and 20% archived after just a year and an average of 27% lost and 41% archived after two and a half years. Furthermore, we found a nearly linear relationship between time of sharing of the resource and the percentage lost, with a slightly less linear relationship between time of sharing and archiving coverage of the resource. From this model we conclude that after the first year of publishing, nearly 11% of shared resources will be lost and after that we will continue to lose 0.02% per day.”

The real mystery: to where do our social media posts "vanish"?
 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mystery_Men_Comics_L.jpg

We have all been led to believe that once something is put online, it forever leaves our technology fingerprint for generations to uncover. One key element of social media is that it can act as an archive for upcoming generations to obtain information.

On the other hand, some information shouldn't be disseminated at all, let alone archived. How this discovery change the way we communicate on sites such as Twitter? Is it a good thing that our words can be erased from the online archives?  Or is it a frightening to think our history will vanish from cyberspace?

What do you think?

Monica Pierce is the Head Intern of the Texas Social Media Research Institute based at Tarleton State University.  You can find her on Twitter as @MrsMonicaPierce.

References
Rosen, R.J. (2012). The Race to Preserve History as It Happens Online. The Atlantic. Retrieved
     from http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/the-race-to-preserve-history-as-it-
     happens-online/262689/

Skittish Social Media Use Sets Students Back

In today’s society, social media has permeated almost every aspect of our lives, yet many educators are still skeptical and skittish about the use of social media for teaching and learning and as a communication mechanism. Why?

Masseni (2011) gleaned answers to this question from a recent survey conducted to find out perceptions of school leaders in relation to social media.


First, school leaders may be unclear on the purpose and functionality of social media. Many people incorrectly associate social media with Facebook. These types of platforms are a hallmark of social media, but only one facet of the social media world. The essence of social media is using the internet to create, share and shape information. This can be via tools like blogs, wikis, microblogs like Twitter, texting, polling, tagging, etc.  
 Second, leaders may not fully understand content creation and writing for social media. They may mistakenly think that social media will take time that they just don’t have because of busy schedules, when in many cases, social media can actually save time and increase productivity. 
 Finally, the fear surrounding security and protection could impede the use of social media in school districts. News reports of online bullying have caused a knee-jerk reaction to restrict all social media use at school when what is really needed are campaigns to teach students social skills for online environments.

This word cloud was made with Worldle.com

So how will the perceptions and concerns, some of which are legitimate, and some of which are unfounded, impact education? So far, in many schools, it has meant that students enter a time-warp when it comes to their engagement. At school, they’re stuck in the previous century in terms of internet use, and are only able to passively find information instead of actively creating, shaping, and sharing information in a meaningful way. Not surprisingly, this hinders students’ ability to learn 21st century skills needed for their future careers. Similarly, potential parent engagement with the school is hindered when mainstream forms of communication (i.e. social media) are not being utilized for disseminating information. 

^{There are critical reasons why schools should begin incorporating social media into the educational culture}


For students, the use of social media to augment their education means they can interact with experts in the field doing the work they are learning about, connect and collaborate with each other on projects, have their work viewed by thousands (as opposed to one teacher) and thus take more ownership and buy-in to what they’re learning. 
 Teachers can utilize social media for knowledge acquisition, resource sharing, professional development, professional networking and mobilization for common causes that impact teachers, communication with students and parents, etc. 
 Finally, school district leaders can clearly benefit from social media in terms of communication with stakeholders, public relations, branding, and even for crisis management and resolution.

 

Strategic implementation is the key word when it comes to school districts’ using social media for both learning and public relations. Careful consideration should be taken to develop a customized social media policy that balances the need for access with the privacy laws applicable to public education. Professional development is key to successful implementation in terms of social media use for learning engagement. Finally, free analytical tools for monitoring like Social Mention or Google Alerts and can be extremely powerful for enterprise management of social media in a district.

Schools will only benefit from our social media-driven climate if they choose to harness the power of social media rather than stifle its use because of fear or uncertainty.

Dr. Credence Baker is a TSMRI Board Member and Assistant Professor of Educational Technology at Tarleton State University.  You can find her on Twitter as @drcbaker.


Reference:

Masseni, D. (2011). Why schools are spooked by social media. Sponsor-ed Group: Australia. Retrieved from <sup>http://www.sponsor-ed.com.au/imag/ayam/Why_schools_are_spooked_by_social_media.pdf.

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