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Scholars in an increasingly open and digital world: How do education professors and students use Twitter?
... Although researchers have examined the differential uses of X/Twitter in scholarly communication across a number of disciplines (e.g., Holmberg & Thelwall, 2014;Malik et al., 2019;Sugimoto et al., 2017;Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2016), applied linguistics was not identified as one of the disciplines. While the benefits of X/Twitter in promoting second language (L2) learning and the development of online L2 learning communities have been recognized (Lomicka, 2017), a comparison of X/Twitter use by applied linguists and other members of the TESOL community remains to be explored. ...
... Zheng et al. (2022) indicated that X/Twitter allowed health educators to engage in effective weekly online synchronous professional development using the hashtag #MedEdChat. X/Twitter has also been used by educational researchers to examine backchanneling by conference attendees (Greenhow et al., 2019;Lemay et al., 2019); to disseminate surveys (Visser et al., 2014); to build digital identities (Li & Greenhow, 2015); to share professionallyrelevant ideas, information, resources, media, and professional events (Veletsianos, 2012;Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2016); to publicize university activities and events (Knight & Kaye, 2016); to seek answers to education-related questions (Holmberg & Thelwall, 2014); and to engage in self-directed PLD . ...
... In a similar study of 42 college and university professors' posts/tweets, Veletsianos (2012) reported that sharing information, media and resources was the most frequent purpose (39%). Veletsianos and Kimmons (2016) also suggested that "many scholars use Twitter to share their work with a broader audience" (p. 9). ...
A lack of dialogue and collaboration between researchers and practitioners has been recognized in the field of second language education. Social media platforms such as X/Twitter have potential for connecting professionals in the teaching of English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) community and supporting professional learning and research; however, studies of TESOL professionals’ uses of X/Twitter have only examined posts/tweets from a limited number of communities marked by hashtags/ keywords. This study identifies 23 hashtags relevant to TESOL instruction for adults in the Canadian context and used them as search parameters to extract a data set of 4,833 posts/tweets. Eighty-two North American university professors who had published in the field of TESOL, were selected and searched for on X/Twitter. Upon locating 15 X/Twitter professor accounts, all 272 posts/tweets posted over the one-year period, were extracted. Two content analyses were conducted to infer the purpose of the posts/ tweets and identify the hashtags used by the professors. Results reveal considerable variation in the professors’ and other TESOL community members’ uses of X/Twitter and suggest that the two groups participate in rather separate X/Twitter communities. Recommendations for maximizing X/Twitter as a tool for professional learning and research and fostering the research-practice link are provided.
... Geyser (2022) states that as of 2022, fashion is ranked 7 th in the most popular categories on TikTok with 27 billion views within the videos posted under fashion-related content. According to Veletsianos and Kimmons (2016), the hashtag metric was found to be a powerful tool to connect users to content on platforms. Resultantly, niche fashion sub-cultures can be explored and discovered through the TikTok hashtag, while users seek gratification. ...
... Resultantly, niche fashion sub-cultures can be explored and discovered through the TikTok hashtag, while users seek gratification. Furthermore, Veletsianos and Kimmons (2016) are of the view that metrics such as followers, likes and other engagement tools can be useful metrics of success for businesses in general. Such findings suggest that the volume of engagement proves to be enticing or authoritative. ...
... It usually just comes up on my explore page", although, later in the interview Participant 4 acknowledged seeing repetitive hashtags within the caption or comment section of the fashion content displayed on their "for you page". A similar study by Veletsianos and Kimmons (2016) found that many users utilised the hashtag metric to share their work with those who were looking or searching for homogenous content to reach a broader audience and obtain a larger following. In the study by Veletsianos and Kimmons's (2016), the designated #aera14 hashtag was explored and was found to be a powerful tool to connect users to the relevant content on X, for example. ...
The effect of TikTok globally has resulted in an increase in literature pertaining to the platform. Despite wide acknowledgment in social media, TikTok metrics and how they formulate fashion sub-cultures remains underexplored. This study explored TikTok metrics that resultantly formulate fashion subculture amongst Generation Z (Gen Z) TikTok users. The proposed conceptual framework was developed to assist marketing managers explore fashion subculture interest via various TikTok metrics. This research followed a qualitative approach. Data was collected through structured interviews, using convenience sampling among five Gen Z participants. Thematic analysis procedure was adopted and findings revealed that engagement metrics indicate strong potential in enabling fashion subculture among TikTok users. Furthermore, metrics enabled Gen Z users to discover fashion subculture content through hashtags, engagement in social exchanges through likes and comments, store digital fashion inspiration through saves and spread information through shares. These findings also allow for future studies to explore the limitation(s) phenomenon highlighted in this study. Recommendations were provided for fashion brands and practitioners. As this research suggests, can result in more refined trend analysis procedures as well as applicable direct marketing strategies through TikTok.
... Online harassment of academics, politicians, and media professionals Although many Internet users are targeted with online harassment regardless of their occupation (Coyne & Farley, 2018;Pew Research Center, 2014, members of certain professions face increased risk of experiencing abuse online. Academics, politicians, and media professionals are commonly encouraged or even required to maintain a public presence and engage with various audiences in both traditional media and the online sphere (Barlow & Awan, 2016;Chen & Pain, 2017;Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2016). Such visibility has been previously tied to increased risk of online harassment (Gorrell et al., 2020;Lewis et al., 2020;Pew Research Center, 2014. ...
... Self-censorship refers to efforts aimed at avoiding harassment, such as reducing public participation or, more broadly, refraining from voicing one's opinions and speaking out on controversial topics (Barlow & Awan, 2016;Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2016). Specifically, self-censorship can be understood using two main dimensions. ...
... The way that individuals perform self-censorship will likely depend on many factors associated with their professional life and routines. Various factors such as job tasks and goals, structure of the organization and individual's position in it, the expected degree and types of public participation, alter the perception of what self-censoring measures are perceived as appropriate for avoiding future harassment (Barlow & Awan, 2016;Bodrunova et al., 2021;Sobieraj, 2020;Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2016). At the same time, we expect major similarities across the studied professions are present when it comes to self-censorship. ...
Online harassment of professionals with public visibility has many potentially harmful societal consequences, including its probable silencing effect. Targeted individuals may refrain from voicing their opinion, which can negatively affect their professional and personal lives, but also the quality of public debate. This study examined the effect of perceived social support at work and perceived organizational support on self-censorship in response to work-related online harassment. We collected survey data based on representative samples from Finnish academics (N = 2,492), local politicians (N = 510), and media professionals (N = 695). We found that 64% of politicians, 58% of media professionals, and 30% of academics had experienced work-related online harassment. Among university staff, perceived social support from colleagues was negatively associated with self-censorship, and perceived social support from the closest supervisor had similar association among media professionals and politicians. Additionally, the frequency and severity of the harassment, as well as the target’s public visibility and female gender as predicted, along with other sociodemographic characteristics, were associated with self-censorship in response to online harassment. The results suggest that characteristics of the harassment and the target’s work environment influence the silencing effect of work-related online harassment and that perceived social support at work constitutes an important resource in dealing with harassment and its potential consequences.
... The adoption of digital scholarship platforms in an institution ensures adequate storage and protection of institution's grey literature [2]. According to [26], this makes it possible for easy accessibility, widely disseminated and making it have a greater impact. Digital scholarship platforms have a new trend for institutions to communicate, collaborate, and disseminate their research [2]. ...
... From the findings of this study, it appeared that students have adequate knowledge level and understanding of the nature of social media as a key component of digital scholarship. In fact, [26] put it succinctly that scholars are part of a complex techno-cultural system that is ever changing in response to both internal and external stimuli therefore they are expected to have an appreciable level of knowledge in the use of social media to match up dynamics in technological innovations, political and economic climates, and dominant cultural values. As a critical element of the key findings from this study, the above average level of knowledge implied that students have fair idea as to what social media entails, its nature as well as relevance to their academic work. ...
... The finding from this study indicated that students generally use some social media for digital scholarly activities. This finding contradicted and deviated from hitherto perception of cyber loafing activities among university students and employees [26]. Specifically, the findings revealed that students use social media platforms for digital scholarship activities such as creating personal learning environments, sharing content, upload presentation, supporting student review, feedback and evaluation. ...
Albeit the increasing relevance of digital scholarship in contemporary educational settings, the onset of global pandemics like COVID-19 has necessitated the need for academic institutions to rely on social media for digital scholarship. Digital native students are leveraging on social media for digital scholarship to enhance communication and information dissemination. However, a study from higher institution in a developing country is missing from the global discussion on leveraging social media for digital scholarship. This study seeks to examine students’ knowledge level in the use of social media for digital scholarship and the challenges associated with the use The study adopted stratified and non-probability voluntary response sampling methods because of the flexibility of these techniques. Data was collected from both undergraduate and postgraduate students of University of Cape Coast in Ghana. Students possess more than the average knowledge in social media for digital scholarship activities. However, students use of social media was for video presentations, online class, information sharing, publication of articles, search for academic related information, building proficiency in the search for information and making connections with individuals. Additionally, the conventional notion still holds that social media as a digital scholarship is susceptible to poor internet connection, jamming of digital systems and lack of adequate information on how to use digital scholarly platforms. The information literacy department of higher institutions are recommended to revise the content of their curriculum and incorporate mechanisms to leverage social media for digital scholarship to efficient disseminate scholarly outputs.
... Social media as one of the digital technology products has now become an inseparable part of student life, and has even been used as a learning support medium (Greenhow & Lewin, 2016). Platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are increasingly being used to deliver educational content informally (Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2015). In the midst of this phenomenon, a new role has emerged in the learning ecosystem, namely micro-influencers-individuals who have influence in limited communities and are trusted by their followers (Abidin, 2016). ...
... In terms of using social media as an alternative learning space, articles from Greenhow & Lewin (2016) and Veletsianos & Kimmons (2015) show that platforms such as Instagram and Twitter can serve as an extension of the classroom that is not bound by time and place. ...
This research aims to explore the role of micro-influencers in increasing student engagement through social media-based learning. In today's digital era, social media has become the dominant platform in students' daily lives, including in the learning process. Micro-influencers, who have a relatively small number of followers but have a high level of closeness and trust from their audience, have the potential to be agents of change in building more active and meaningful learning engagement. This study uses a qualitative approach with the literature study method (library research) as the basis for data collection. Data was obtained from a variety of scientific sources, such as journals, books, and academic articles relevant to the topic of micro-influencers, social media, and student engagement in the context of higher education. The results of the study show that micro-influencers can function as effective educational communication intermediaries, create more personalized and authentic interactions with students, and be able to build collaborative learning communities. In addition, the existence of micro-influencers in social media has also been proven to be able to increase learning motivation, active participation, and students' positive perception of learning materials. Thus, the integration of the role of micro-influencers in social media-based learning strategies is a promising potential in optimizing student engagement in the digital era. This study recommends the need to develop policies and pedagogical approaches that support the use of micro-influencers in the higher education ecosystem.
... When it comes to the use of digital social networks by scholars in institutions of higher education, research related to networked scholarship by Veletsianos and Kimmons (2016) stated that academics tend to have varied or low participation in digital social networks such as Twitter (now referred to as X). Additionally, past research stated that academics are more hesitant than their students to actively partake in digital social networking for professional purposes (Zachos, Paraskevopoulou-Kollia & Anagnostopoulos 2018). ...
... These interactions tend to center around academics' roles related to research, service, teaching, and professional development. For example, research suggests that academics use eventbased hashtags to connect during professional conferences as part of backchannel exchanges; however, their participation tends to decrease after these events end (Veletsianos & Kimmons 2016). In addition, some academics use these digital social networks to post information about college life, including upcoming events as well as to share information about new programs (Masele & Rwehikiza 2021). ...
Scholars' engagement with digital social networks is complex, warranting a comprehensive understanding of their use and participation. Current research has not yet grasped the motivators, gratification, and challenges that academics encounter across multiple digital social networks. With this in mind, this study surveyed scholars who purposely participate in digital social networks for professional endeavors. The theoretical frameworks guiding this research are the Uses and Gratification framework and the networked participatory scholarship conceptualization. A total of 307 higher education scholars completed an electronic survey with closed and open-ended questions. Data analysis included descriptive statistics and a team-coding approach for qualitative data. The results of this investigation highlight specific motivators for using digital social networks to support the scholar's teaching, research, and professional development. The results of this investigation suggest that scholars are constantly navigating challenges and trading them off against the benefits. The results of this investigation also helped determine the imagined audiences that scholars perceive as potential spectators when using digital social networks for their scholarly efforts. The results illustrate the many reasons provided by scholars, which aligned with the self-presentation and impression management theory.
... To face the new digital era, both personally and professionally, and to address the new generations of students, teachers need competencies related to ICT, its organizational and social dimensions, the semantic web, augmented reality, and PLEs [7,23,[27][28][29][30][31]. ...
... The results of this study indicate that presenting a PLE approach in a course contributes to the improvement and implementation of the students' own PLE, significantly impacting their learning. Introducing and emphasizing PLE usage in a classroom from the outset requires a coach or 'Network Sherpa' [24], and the facilitator must possess adequate digital competencies [23,[27][28][29][30][31]41]. ...
Personal learning environments or their acronym PLEs are understood as a set of tools, resources, connections, and activities that each person regularly uses for learning. This study examines the PLE approach in a university setting, evaluating its impact on student learning in a university subject within an education master’s program. The effect is assessed from two perspectives: a quantitative one based on the ‘PLE test’—administered at the beginning and end of the course—and a qualitative one based on the assessment provided by the students themselves regarding the impact of training in digital tools and competencies on their PLE, at the beginning and end of the course. The ‘PLE test’ measures four factors: time organization, creation–editing, searching–investigating, and collaborating–contact networks. In all four factors, by the end of the course, there is a significant increase in usage scores, especially in the last two. The students’ assessments of the evolution of their PLEs reflect the evident impact of this approach as a strategy for more effective and self-managed learning.
... Gleason, 2016;Romero-Hall, 2018;Trust et al., 2016). For example, Veletsianos and Kimmons (2016) used Twitter's Application Programming Interface (API) to programmatically (using code) identify all of accounts that posted one or more tweets to the hashtag for the 2014 American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual meeting. Then, the authors accessed the most recent 3,500 tweets from all those individuals. ...
... There are examples of research on other platforms that do this (cf. Carpenter et al., 2020;Staudt Willet, 2019;Staudt Willet & Carpenter, 2020;Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2016). Knowledge-sharing practices in affinity spaces and interest groups on Facebook, as studied in other social networks (Sharma & Land, 2019), are another fruitful avenue to leverage public Facebook data to study the platform's educational merits. ...
Facebook is widely used and researched. However, though the data generated by educational technology tools and social media platforms other than Facebook have been used for research purposes, very little research has used Facebook posts as a data source—with most studies relying on self-report studies. While it has historically been impractical (or impossible) to use Facebook as a data source, the CrowdTangle platform allows academic researchers to freely access the massive collection of posts on public Facebook pages and groups. In this paper, we first outline how interactions and textual features in these public Facebook data in concert with established methods from educational data mining and learning analytics can be used to scrutinize educational discourse and knowledge sharing at scale. We then provide a primer that offers considerations for researchers before collecting these data (i.e., conducting research ethically and framing the study). The tutorial also covers matters directly pertaining to using CrowdTangle: accessing the CrowdTangle platform, uploading or identifying pages (or groups), and downloading historical data and it includes code using the statistical software and programming language R. We conclude with ideas for future directions for using Facebook posts as data with a focus on how educational researchers can leverage the scale of the available data and the time periods for which data is available to study educational affairs (i.e., issues or topics) and individuals (i.e., people or organizations) and to scrutinize how Facebook itself is used.
... Smith, 2015), staying up-to-date about current research trends (e.g. Côté and Darling, 2018;Veletsianos and Kimmons, 2016), and reaching global audiences (e.g. Thelwall et al., 2013). ...
... Scientists seem more prone to use links in their tweets than other users (Schmitt and Jäschke, 2017); they also often mention others and/or use hashtags (e.g. Veletsianos and Kimmons, 2016). We propose, therefore, a second research question: ...
Scientists increasingly use Twitter for communication about science. The microblogging service has been heralded for its potential to foster public engagement with science; thus, measuring how engaging, that is dialogue-oriented, tweet content is, has become a relevant research object. Tweet content designed in an engaging, dialogue-oriented way is also supposed to link to user interaction (e.g. liking, retweeting). The present study analyzed content-related and functional indicators of engagement in scientists’ tweet content, applying content analysis to original tweets (n = 2884) of 212 communication scholars. Findings show that communication scholars tweet mostly about scientific topics, with, however, low levels of engagement. User interaction, nevertheless, correlated with content-related and functional indicators of engagement. The findings are discussed in light of their implications for public engagement with science.
... According to Veletsianos and Kimmons (2016), social media fosters professional learning communities among educators by providing networking, resource-sharing, and peer support opportunities. Additionally, teachers demonstrate competency in composing and sending messages via messenger applications (M = 3.85, SD = 0.43), reflecting their ability to engage in digital communication effectively. ...
Integrating technology into education is essential in today’s digital world. This study examines the digital competence and instructional practices of Araling Panlipunan teachers in the Tantangan District to inform program development. Using a descriptive and correlational research design, the study compares digital competence with instructional practices. The total sample consisted of seventy-nine elementary school teachers, sixteen school heads, and sixteen school ICT coordinators. Statistical tools such as mean, standard deviation, Pearson-r, and regression analysis were used to analyze the data. Findings indicate that teachers generally possess high digital proficiency but face challenges in creating original content and customizing instructional materials. Regression analysis showed that length of service had a significant negative relationship with digital competence, suggesting that teachers with longer service years tend to have lower digital skills. However, factors such as age, gender, and educational attainment did not significantly impact digital competence, implying that digital literacy training is accessible to all teachers regardless of background. A strong positive correlation was found between digital competence and instructional practices, meaning teachers with higher digital skills implement more effective teaching strategies. This underscores the importance of professional development programs to enhance digital literacy and pedagogical skills. To support teachers, capacity-building initiatives should be prioritized to improve instructional strategies, student engagement, and learning outcomes. Schools and policymakers must implement structured digital literacy programs to equip teachers with the necessary skills for 21st-century education. Strengthening digital competence will ultimately enhance the quality of teaching and learning in Araling Panlipunan and other subjects.
... The Internet and the Web have forged a new collaboration between researchers worldwide. The world's interconnectedness through social media and other technologies has enhanced global participation in knowledge production and authorship (Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2016). Now, researchers from rich and poor countries can connect and have access to the same material resources, increasing the diversity of contributions and enhancing the democratization of knowledge. ...
Introduction. The information professions encompass a range of interconnected disciplines that contribute to the effective creation, processing, management, dissemination, and preservation of information and knowledge in diverse formats and contexts. Major technological innovations of the 20th century, combined with the rise of open access, open educational resources, and digital publishing, have greatly impacted public engagement with information and changed how people learn, communicate, and participate in civic society. This paper examines the impact of open access and digital publishing on information science education and the broader digital transformation of the information professions. Method. The study adopts a historical and thematic analysis of major technological innovations and the emergence of open access (OA), Open Educational Resources (OER) and digital publishing platforms, focusing on pioneering initiatives in the information science field such as Information Research, First Monday, and the Journal of Digital Information (JoDI). Results. Early open access and digital publishing pioneering initiatives served as catalysts for democratizing information access and reshaping the information field professional identities. Open access dismantled traditional barriers, facilitating global participation and promoting pedagogical innovation and resource sharing. Conclusion. The study highlights the pivotal role of open access and digital publishing in the digital transformation of the information profession. It underscores the ongoing evolution of the information professions by positioning information professionals at the forefront of a global movement for equitable access to information and knowledge.
... Meanwhile, social platforms like Twitter and Journal of Informatics Education and Research ISSN: 1526-4726 Vol 5 Issue 2 (2025) http://jier.orgLinkedIn have started playing roles in academic discussion(Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2016). ...
This study explores how postgraduate management students seek and gather academic information in a world where smart devices like smartphones dominate learning. Since smartphones have become integral part in higher education, especially in business programs, the study looks at how these devices affect students’ research habits, platform choices, and overall learning effectiveness. A survey of 73 management students from Mumbai was conducted using structured questionnaire. The survey focused on how students use smartphones for learning, their preferred digital platforms, how they check information accuracy, and their perceived learning outcomes. The results show that students widely use smartphones for tasks such as completing assignments, preparing for tests, and engaging in online learning. Platforms like YouTube, ChatGPT, and Google Scholar were the most popular platforms, reflecting a shift toward interactive and AI-powered tools. While many students verify the authenticity of information, some do not, this increases the risk of misinformation. Common challenges included distractions, eye strain, and difficulties in verifying the credibility of sources. The study concludes that although smartphones provide flexibility and easy access to information, their effectiveness depends on how well students apply critical thinking and digital literacy. These findings emphasize the need for institutions to provide better support and targeted digital education to maximize the benefits of smartphone-assisted learning.
... This suggests that social media attention positively contributes to researchers' academic prestige stratification. Furthermore, Veletsianos argued that academic identity is no longer confined to traditional scholarly outputs but is increasingly defined by online engagement, making social media a crucial component of academic identity formation [270]. Highly visible researchers utilize social media to share expertise, curate their digital persona, and enhance the visibility and attractiveness of their academic profile [271]. ...
This project targets the structural barrier of entrenched scientific stratification—a longstanding yet inadequately addressed issue. The core idea is to systematically explore and dismantle the deeply rooted hierarchical divisions within academia, symbolized as the invisible wall of scientific stratification. Such stratification manifests through monopolized academic authority, widespread nepotism, and significant barriers faced by junior researchers in gaining proper recognition for their achievements. This research innovatively proposes and empirically validates the notion of social media as a supplementary mechanism to traditional scientific stratification processes. It systematically analyzes internal and external mechanisms affecting academic stratification and applies the Scientific Activities Theory framework to the context of social media. Internally, the study examines researchers' social media engagement; externally, it investigates the social media attention researchers receive. A novel attention-based quantitative metric is developed to precisely measure researchers’ social media influence and academic visibility, highlighting the potential of social media to enhance junior scholars’ scientific recognition and resource acquisition capabilities. Empirical findings demonstrate that social media significantly increases junior researchers' academic visibility, alleviating academia's entrenched “Matthew Effect,” while also acknowledging social media’s current limitations in challenging established power structures within traditional academic communities.
本项目锁定科学社会分层固化这一长期被诟病却缺乏可操作解决方案的结构性壁垒。核心思想旨在系统性地探讨和破解当前学术界根深蒂固的科学社会分层问题——推倒科学社会分层的无形之墙。这种分层体现为学术权威垄断、学术近亲繁殖现象突出，以及年轻科研人员研究成果难以获得有效关注。研究首次创新性地提出并验证了社交媒体作为传统科学社会分层的补充机制的观点，深入对比、分析了影响科研人员科学社会分层的内外因机制，并通过科学活动理论将其带入到社交媒体场域当中。内因层面关注科研人员社交媒体的参与度，外因层面则考察科研人员在社交媒体上的关注度。研究创新性地构建了一套基于注意力机制的量化指标，用以准确测度科研人员在社交媒体上的影响力和学术可见度，揭示了社交媒体在提升青年学者科学承认和资源获取能力方面的潜力。实证结果表明，社交媒体能够有效提高年轻科研人员的学术可见度并缓解学界的 “马太效应”，但同时也指出社交媒体在撼动传统学术共同体内部权力结构方面尚存在局限性。
... However, with the increasing popularity of social scholarly platforms like ResearchGate, things are rapidly changing. Veletsianos and Kimmons [115] have presented an analysis of scholars' engagement and usage patterns on Twitter. The relevance of such studies in measuring scholarly impact needs to be explored. ...
With the shifting focus of organizations and governments towards digitization of academic and technical documents, there has been an increasing need to use this reserve of scholarly documents for developing applications that can facilitate and aid in better management of research. In addition to this, the evolving nature of research problems has made them essentially interdisciplinary. As a result, there is a growing need for scholarly applications like collaborator discovery, expert finding and research recommendation systems. This research paper reviews the current trends and identifies the challenges existing in the architecture, services and applications of big scholarly data platform with a specific focus on directions for future research.
... The pervasive use of social media around the globe 1 (Kemp, 2021) indicates that these issues are highly relevant in the global context. While distinct regional features and policies derive from educators and institutions with unique lived experiences, the extent to which social media has become part of so many educators' everyday lives in a personal and professional capacity Damico & Krutka, 2018;Donelan, 2016;Fox & Bird, 2017;Greenhalgh et al., 2021;Kelly & Antonio, 2016;Mackenzie, 2016;Robson, 2018;Schroeder et al., 2019;Staudt Willet & Carpenter, 2020;Veletsianos, 2013;Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2016;2024, 19(2), pp.1-10. ©Author(s), Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) licence http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/JCIE ...
... Grouping users into students and non-students has applications ranging from professional networking (He et al., 2016) to understanding these users' role in the spread of misinformation, and by extension, the role that education plays in their online behaviors (Chen et al., 2015). Previous studies of students' social media interactions have obtained student samples using relatively low-yield, lowaccuracy, or low-coverage techniques such as surveying individuals, analyzing geographic proximity to educational institutions, or manually annotating users one by one (Chen et al., 2015;Miller and Melton, 2014;Moreno et al., 2016;Veletsianos and Kimmons, 2016;Hanson et al., 2013). Research into automatic demographic prediction of student users could facilitate such student-based studies. ...
... These new dynamics require the deployment of novel skills by research staff as well as changes in the processes of scientific dissemination [16,17,18]. Collectively, this process has modified the way they perform their work, but also, the perception of the impact that having a good digital profile and knowing how to use it can have on their careers is evident [19,20,21]. ...
In recent years, there has been a notable increase in the use of digital platforms in higher education and science. This tendency has impacted how knowledge is produced, accessed, and disseminated, considering the internet and social media strategies. This study seeks to investigate the attitudes and practices of educational researchers when it comes to sharing science on social media. An online survey (N=487) was used to measure participants' motivations for using or not social media, frequency of use, attitudes, and practices for sharing scientific research and sociodemographic characteristics. Overall, findings reveal that there is high support for the use of social media for academic purposes. Most researchers prefer to publish full results over partial results. The researcher's perception of the importance of social media is greater than the actual use of them. Finally, we identify some of the main reasons that facilitate or limit the academic use of social media, thus contributing a contextualized reflection on such use.
... From the above understanding, the increasing importance of ICT in the affairs of humanity across social, economic and political spheres demonstrates a connection between technologies and sustainable human development [4,12]. To this end, it cannot be denied that ICT has had an impact on human development [58]. Its impact has been experienced in how education and learning were delivered before, during and in the post-covid 19 era [47]. ...
Focusing on citizens’ awareness of cyber-security, this paper contributes to debates on ICTs and their contribution towards human development. The paper philosophically argues for the importance of cyber-security and cybercrime awareness in fostering sustainable human development through the responsible and meaningful use of ICT. Using the overarching values of the human development framework (empowerment, participation and sustainability), the paper assesses government ICT policy documents and subsequent initiatives such as the establishment of community information centres and integration of ICT in the education sector. This was done to establish the extent to which citizens have been provided with prerequisite knowledge and skills to deal with cyber-crime. It emerged from the study that regardless of the effort by the Government of Zimbabwe (GoZ) to enforce a law which encourage a cyber-security culture, awareness about cyber-security remains far below what can be expected in a cyber-world. As a result, if citizens’ lack cyber knowledge their freedom to be and do what they reasonably value on the Internet is continually threatened. The paper, thus, suggests the introduction of rigorous citizens’ awareness campaigns on cyber-crime and security to enable them to deal with unfounded fears and experiences that potentially limit their ability to deliberate, transact or act to be and freely do what they reasonably value.
... According to studies (Al-Daihani et al., 2018, Elsayed, 2016, the majority of academic members used ResearchGate as their platform of preference. Moreover, according to Veletsianos and Kimmons (2013), the usage of social media for scholarship indicates that academics have only looked into a small number of scholars' online activities, possibly ignoring other aspects of an online presence. ...
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the use of social networking sites (SNS) by researchers and their behaviours when conducting research-related activities by applying the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) theory.
Design/methodology/approach
An online survey was distributed. This study’s design is derived from the UTAUT framework’s questionnaire items. The sample of this study comprised 216 respondents from 40 universities in the United Kingdom. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data.
Findings
Respondents revealed a positive relationship between the four constructs of the UTAUT framework (performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating condition) associated with their intention to use SNS.
Research limitations/implications
Most of the respondents were from the University of Strathclyde, so the authors cannot generalize the findings to other universities.
Practical implications
The findings will offer an extensive understanding of the value of SNSs, which will aid researchers to increase their visibility, and research activities online.
Originality/value
The results will provide an in-depth knowledge of the importance of SNSs, helping scholars to become more visible and engage in online research. A number of factors impacted how researchers behaved on SNSs and what they intended to use for research-related activity. School administrators, experts and other sponsors could take action to promote the use of SNSs in educational settings based on the findings. The study’s findings offer insightful knowledge to those who create SNS websites. By using this information, they will be able to improve these sites for research and study and gain a better understanding of the demands of SNS users.
... Holmberg & Thelwall (2014) investigated Twitter use by researchers in different disciplines and showed that biochemists retweeted the most, that economists shared the most links, and that the use of Twitter for scholarly communication was marginal in disciplines such as economics and sociology as compared to other disciplines like biochemistry, astrophysics, and digital humanities. Other studies focused on specific disciplines investigated the use of Twitter by instructors and students in education (Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2016), astrophysicists , physics (Webb, 2016) and biomedicine . Sugimoto et al. (2017) noted a lack of consensus in the literature regarding disciplinary differences in social media use, with findings varying based on population and field delineation. ...
The last decade of altmetrics research has demonstrated that altmetrics have a low to moderate correlation with citations, depending on the platform and the discipline, among other factors. Most past studies used academic works as their unit of analysis to determine whether the attention they received on Twitter was a good predictor of academic engagement. Our work revisits the relationship between tweets and citations where the tweet itself is the unit of analysis, and the question is to determine if, at the individual level, the act of tweeting an academic work can shed light on the likelihood of the act of citing that same work. We model this relationship by considering the research activity of the tweeter and its relationship to the tweeted work. Results show that tweeters are more likely to cite works affiliated with their same institution, works published in journals in which they also have published, and works in which they hold authorship. It finds that the older the academic age of a tweeter the less likely they are to cite what they tweet, though there is a positive relationship between citations and the number of works they have published and references they have accumulated over time.
Peer Review
https://www.webofscience.com/api/gateway/wos/peer-review/10.1162/qss_a_00296
... Being an academic has become more intertwined with the use of digital media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Academia.edu or LinkedIn (George Veletsianos and Royce Kimmons 2016;Robert Kozinets 2016). Often encouraged by their institution, scholars use the digital environment to disseminate research findings, for teaching and networking purposes, for building collaborations, and for public engagement. ...
... Therefore, mining and analysis of Tweets for understanding the underlying patterns of public disclosure have been very popular with researchers from different disciplines, as can be seen from recent works that focused on the analysis of Tweets related to emerging technologies, matters of global interest, and topics of global concern such as ChatGPT [13,14], the Russia-Ukraine war, [15,16] cryptocurrency markets [17,18], virtual assistants [19], abortions [20,21], loneliness [22,23], housing needs [24,25], fake news [26,27], religion [28,29], early detection of health-related problems [30,31], elections [32,33], education [34,35], pregnancy [36,37], food insufficiency [38,39], and virus outbreaks such as MPox [40,41], flu [42,43], H1N1 [44,45] and COVID-19 [46,47]. At the same time, researchers in this field have also focused on the analysis of tweets about various industries (discussed in Section 3 2.1). ...
The work of this paper presents multiple novel findings from a comprehensive analysis of about 150,000 tweets about exoskeletons posted between May 2017 and May 2023. First, findings from content analysis and temporal analysis of these tweets reveal the specific months per year when a significantly higher volume of Tweets was posted and the time windows when the highest number of tweets, the lowest number of tweets, tweets with the highest number of hashtags, and tweets with the highest number of user mentions were posted. Second, the paper shows that there are statistically significant correlations between the number of tweets posted per hour and different characteristics of these tweets. Third, the paper presents a multiple linear regression model to predict the number of tweets posted per hour in terms of these characteristics of tweets. The R2 score of this model was observed to be 0.9540. Fourth, the paper reports that the 10 most popular hashtags were #exoskeleton, #robotics, #iot, #technology, #tech #innovation, #ai, #sci, #construction and #news. Fifth, sentiment analysis of these tweets was performed using VADER and the DistilRoBERTa-base library. The results show that the percentage of positive, neutral, and negative tweets were 46.8%, 33.1%, and 20.1%, respectively. The results also show that in the tweets that did not express a neutral sentiment, the sentiment of surprise was the most common sentiment. It was followed by the sentiments of joy, disgust, sadness, fear, and anger. Furthermore, analysis of hashtag-specific sentiments revealed several novel insights, for instance, for almost all the months in 2022, the usage of #ai in tweets about exoskeletons was mainly associated with a positive sentiment. Sixth, text processing-based approaches were used to detect possibly sarcastic tweets and tweets that contained news. Finally, a comparison of positive tweets, negative tweets, neutral tweets, possibly sarcastic tweets, and tweets that contained news, in terms of different characteristic properties of these tweets are presented. The findings reveal multiple novel insights, for instance, the average number of hashtags used in tweets that contained news has considerably increased since January 2022.
... Faculty also tend to prefer traditional modes of communication (email and office visits) over Twitter, as extant research finds that a majority of faculty members have no plans to incorporate social media-including Twitter-into their classes, yet faculty members and instructors who did use Twitter in their classes reported a having a positive experience (Jacquemin, Smelser, & Bernot, 2014). Furthermore, Veletsianos' (2012) study found that higher education scholars (n=45) frequently and primarily use Twitter to share information related to their professional interests and about their students and courses, with a later study finding that higher education scholars (n=237) participation on Twitter varies wildly from person to person and professors are more likely to use Twitter as a social justice and personal scholarship platform than graduate students who primarily share information relevant to the graduate student experience (Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2016). ...
No extant research examines fraternity and sorority use of social media. This study examines official Twitter accounts of national fraternities and sororities (n=135) and their Twitter usage from July 2016 - July 2017 (n=47,705 tweets). Findings reveal fraternities are less likely to use hashtags, user tags, and URLs to engage their followers than sororities, while both fraternities and sororities rarely release official statements promoting positive behavior of their members or condemning negative behavior of their members, potentially contributing to a sense of “constant media scrutiny” suffered by Greek organizations (Kingkade, 2015). Implications for advisors and future research are addressed.
... Los FPM señalan 48 cuentas distintas, la distribución de los datos es bastante dispersa, con una razón de variación de 0.9 y con solo ocho cuentas mencionadas por más de tres parejas (@edusadeci, @pbeltranp, @SergioMJGR, @AnaBayes, @picanumeros, @mike_mates, @QuantumFracture y @3blue1brown). La dispersión puede deberse a que los FPM todavía no hacen un uso habitual orientado al ámbito educativo (Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2016). ...
Diversos estudios señalan a Twitter como una red social interesante en el ámbito educativo. Numerosos usuarios comparten contenido, como recursos o actividades de aula, al mismo tiempo que se debate en torno a diversos temas. Así mismo, algunos autores sugieren que Twitter contribuye a la creación y desarrollo de comunidades de aprendizaje que repercuten positivamente en el desarrollo profesional del profesorado. Este artículo se plantea como objetivo explorar las percepciones de futuros profesores de matemáticas acerca del uso de Twitter como herramienta formativa. Para ello, se realiza una investigación con una muestra de 35 estudiantes de Máster de Profesorado de Educación Secundaria y Bachillerato de la especialidad de matemáticas. En primer lugar, se identifica mediante un cuestionario hasta qué punto los estudiantes son usuarios de esta red y, si lo hacen, con qué propósito. Posteriormente, se analizan los informes escritos elaborados por los estudiantes cuando se les solicita que describan dos hilos sobre un tema específico (probabilidad) y que analicen de forma argumentada su utilidad formativa. Finalmente, los participantes deben indicar qué cuentas consideran relevantes para su formación y por qué. Los resultados revelan que los participantes distinguen la diferente naturaleza de los hilos propuestos, pero prácticamente se limitan a mencionar aspectos epistémicos, cuando la diferencia radica en que un hilo versa sobre otras facetas del conocimiento didáctico-matemático. Además, observamos que siguen cuentas relacionadas con la materia, aduciendo motivos relacionados con la obtención de recursos educativos en torno a temas de divulgación matemática, conocimiento matemático escolar y del conocimiento didáctico-matemático.
... First, extant research has demonstrated that Twitter is very popular among academics (Deeken et al., 2020). This may be especially true for those from marginalized communities whose concerns often go beyond academia and extend to current events such as Black Lives Matter movement and the "Don't Say Gay" bill (Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2016). Second, research findings suggest that many academics use Twitter to share their research, as well as build and maintain social networks and informal learning processes (Chugh et al., 2021). ...
Psychology has a long history of perpetuating scientific racism and pathologizing gender and sexually diverse individuals. The field has been criticized for the reproduction of racism, sexism, cissexism, and other social inequities. This intersectional epistemological exclusion has led to a lack of appreciation for the work of Black sexual and gender diverse (SGD) scholars within the field of psychology. To highlight and center the contributions of Black SGD scholars in the field, we conducted an in-depth literature search of the work of 62 Black SGD scholars whose names and curricula vitae were obtained through email listservs, Twitter, and snowball sampling. In analyzing the work of the scholars, a total of 34 Black SGD scholars met inclusion criteria and had their research included in our review. We summarize their major contributions to the field of psychology in this article. Implications of these scholars’ works and their potential to help address the lack of visibility of Black SGD scholars in mainstream psychology journals are discussed.
... Their investigation of Twitter use by researchers in different disciplines showed that biochemists retweeted the most, that economists shared the most links, and that the use of Twitter for scholarly communication was marginal in disciplines such as economics and sociology as compared to other disciplines like biochemistry, astrophysics, and digital humanities. Other studies focused on specific disciplines investigated the use of Twitter by instructors and students in education (Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2016), astrophysicists , physics (Webb, 2016) and biomedicine . Sugimoto et al. (2017) noted a lack of consensus in the literature regarding disciplinary differences in social media use, with findings varying based on population and field delineation. ...
The last decade of altmetrics research has demonstrated that altmetrics have a low to moderate correlation with citations, depending on the platform and the discipline, among other factors. Most past studies used academic works as their unit of analysis to determine whether the attention they received on Twitter was a good predictor of academic engagement. Our work revisits the relationship between tweets and citations where the tweet itself is the unit of analysis, and the question is to determine if, at the individual level, the act of tweeting an academic work can shed light on the likelihood of the act of citing that same work. We model this relationship by considering the research activity of the tweeter and its relationship to the tweeted work. Results show that tweeters are more likely to cite works affiliated with their same institution, works published in journals in which they also have published, and works in which they hold authorship. It finds that the older the academic age of a tweeter the less likely they are to cite what they tweet, though there is a positive relationship between citations and the number of works they have published and references they have accumulated over time.
... En este sentido, es fundamental comprender cómo se realiza la divulgación científica a través de los medios sociales, el uso que hacen los científicos de estas y los posibles beneficios que podrían obtener en su carrera. Este papel de los científicos en los medios sociales y su impacto en sus carreras no se ha sido completamente explorado, y los principales estudios son muy recientes Veletsianos y Kimmons, 2016). Lo que sí se ha observado es que las trasformaciones digitales han cambiado radicalmente las relaciones entre los actores de la comunicación de la ciencia, siendo un aspecto fundamental la posibilidad de los científicos de ser protagonistas del proceso comunicativo (Brossard, 2013;Grand et al., 2016). ...
El presente libro recopila las reflexiones iniciales generados en el marco del proyecto Comunicación y diseminación científica, en materia educativa en España, a través de las redes sociales - Comscienciaeduspain (FCT-20-15761), ejecutado con la colaboración de la Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología - Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.
... is also not strictly a product of one's content, but is influenced by factors such as race, gender, aesthetic, and number of accounts they themselves follow (e.g., Bishop, 2018;MSL Staff, 2021;Pham, 2016;Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2016). In other words, network popularity is often a privilege for particular groups, and contracting with instructors largely on network popularity given the commercial necessity of drawing on network effects for profit reduces the possibility of diverse courses, diverse perspectives, and diverse instructor subjectivities. ...
The educational technology industry includes numerous learning providers and platforms offering cohort-based courses. In this paper, we examine, analyze, and critique one such platform called Maven. We focus our analysis on Maven because this specific platform describes itself as building ‘the university of the future’ and has recently received significant attention and funding, making it a compelling case study to better understand the potential roles and risks associated with education platforms operating outside of and alongside more traditional higher education institutions today and into the future. We highlight specific concerns about cohort-based platforms like Maven, including lack of transparency, risk of surveillance, lack of adequate financial support for learners, and over-reliance on social media networks as signifiers of educator/instructor qualification. Suggested benefits include adaptability, suitability to changing skills needs, and responsiveness to changing environmental scenarios.
... Más recientemente, Twitter se está abarcando como una herramienta de comunicación académica aumentada para el aprendizaje formal e informal. Los estudiantes, académicos y profesionales de numerosos dominios académicos utilizan la red para conectarse e interactuar con sus pares y el público para compartir información específica de la disciplina y otra información relevante con el objetivo de perseguir sus intereses y objetivos académicos (Holmberg & Thelwall, 2014;Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2016). Varios estudios recientes también han demostrado el valor, el impacto y la aceptación de Twitter en el contexto de la educación. ...
La presencia de la industria extractivista en América Latina se ha convertido en la principal fuente de conflicto en el continente. Las políticas desarrollistas impulsadas desde gobiernos de distintas tendencias ideológicas se han traducido en la amenaza constante en comunidades y territorios, el asesinato de líderes ambientales, la aparición de actores armados legales e ilegales y el desplazamiento de poblaciones. Desde una perspectiva de género, el impacto ambiental de los proyectos supone el incremento de la vulnerabilidad de las mujeres que se ven afectadas por la militarización de los territorios y la pérdida de las formas de vida tradicionales.
En un contexto de despojo caracterizado por la interrelación entre patriarcado, capitalismo y colonialismo, emergen estrategias en defensa del territorio y la vida con protagonismo de mujeres lideresas en las que la comunicación adquiere un papel relevante. Asociados a los conflictos ambientales que se suceden en el continente, es posible identificar, a su vez, prácticas comunicativas lideradas por mujeres activistas que se enmarcan en las estrategias de resistencia y de lucha por la defensa del territorio y la vida.
El objetivo de este trabajo es llevar a cabo una aproximación a las prácticas comunicativas realizadas por mujeres en contextos de conflictos ambientales en América Latina. Para ello, se toman como referencia experiencias de algunos de los países con mayores tasas de violencia, como son Colombia y Honduras. Esta aproximación se construye a partir de dos ejes: por un lado, el de las prácticas comunicativas populares en el contexto de la comunicación para el cambio social y, por otro, las prácticas comunicativas realizadas por mujeres en defensa del territorio que aquí son enmarcadas en la corriente del ecofeminismo.
En un momento histórico del capital denominado como “acumulación por despojo” por David Harvey, las autoras identifican las prácticas comunicativas analizadas como formas de disputa en diversos aspectos. En primera instancia, como disputa a la comunicación hegemónica, desde experiencias que pueden considerarse alternativas y contrahegemónicas y que persiguen una “comunicación otra”; y, en segundo lugar, como estrategia de denuncia, resistencia y organización desde el ecofeminismo en defensa de la centralidad de la vida y los bienes comunes.
... Consequently, research networks developed through informal digital socialisation are often found to be deeper and more sustainable than formal encounters. 44 Proponents of digital social scholarship are also of the view that scholarly use of social media platforms can expand the reach and impact of scholarship and can foster the development of transparent, efficient, effective and equitable scholarship processes. 43 Another powerful networking activity is participating in national and international conferences. ...
This chapter provides an introduction for those who are considering or who have started to engage in research in the field of education, and specifically, health professions education (HPE). It is structured around three questions: Why are health professions education researchers doing research? Why are they doing this research? And Where are they doing research? HPE research is part of a complex landscape of people, organisations and governments that have an interest in educating healthcare workers. Many studies in HPE originate from problems that are experienced or observed in educational or healthcare practice, particularly by researchers who simultaneously hold teaching or clinical positions. Professional development occurs through both formal and informal activities and engagements, and at both individual and group levels. Professional development activities designed to advance researchers' skills and expertise lead to a culture of ‘extended researcher professionality’ cultivated by analytical and reflective practices.
... Descriptive statistics revealed that users exhibited a highly positive skew in their posting activities. This behavior was expected given previous studies carried out on Twitter data [23]. Based on the positive skew, van Mierlo's [24] 90-9-1 Principle was selected to classify users in each affinity space into relative activity groups. ...
Background
Few studies have systematically analyzed information regarding chronic medical conditions and available treatments on social media. Celiac disease (CD) is an exemplar of the need to investigate web-based educational sources. CD is an autoimmune condition wherein the ingestion of gluten causes intestinal damage and, if left untreated by a strict gluten-free diet (GFD), can result in significant nutritional deficiencies leading to cancer, bone disease, and death. Adherence to the GFD can be difficult owing to cost and negative stigma, including misinformation about what gluten is and who should avoid it. Given the significant impact that negative stigma and common misunderstandings have on the treatment of CD, this condition was chosen to systematically investigate the scope and nature of sources and information distributed through social media.
Objective
To address concerns related to educational social media sources, this study explored trends on the social media platform Twitter about CD and the GFD to identify primary influencers and the type of information disseminated by these influencers.
Methods
This cross-sectional study used data mining to collect tweets and users who used the hashtags #celiac and #glutenfree from an 8-month time frame. Tweets were then analyzed to describe who is disseminating information via this platform and the content, source, and frequency of such information.
Results
More content was posted for #glutenfree (1501.8 tweets per day) than for #celiac (69 tweets per day). A substantial proportion of the content was produced by a small percentage of contributors (ie, “Superuser”), who could be categorized as self-promotors (eg, bloggers, writers, authors; 13.9% of #glutenfree tweets and 22.7% of #celiac tweets), self-identified female family members (eg, mother; 4.3% of #glutenfree tweets and 8% of #celiac tweets), or commercial entities (eg, restaurants and bakeries). On the other hand, relatively few self-identified scientific, nonprofit, and medical provider users made substantial contributions on Twitter related to the GFD or CD (1% of #glutenfree tweets and 3.1% of #celiac tweets, respectively).
Conclusions
Most material on Twitter was provided by self-promoters, commercial entities, or self-identified female family members, which may not have been supported by current medical and scientific practices. Researchers and medical providers could potentially benefit from contributing more to this space to enhance the web-based resources for patients and families.
... Dragseth, 2020;Rutherford, 2010;Vahedi et al., 2019). Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms for scholars, which may partly explain why it has been used for educational purposes (Lupton, 2014;Manca & Ranieri, 2016b;Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2016). Twitter is a microblogging platform that enables individuals to send and receive in real time information, which can be accessed using a mobile phone or a personal computer. ...
Scholars are aware of the power of social media to capture the attention of students, notably during lectures. Far from banning them, some teachers have considered using them to improve the motivation of students. One of the most popular social media platforms for that purpose is Twitter. It has been widely used in educational settings as a tool for collaboration and communication, but studies using Twitter as a tool to help students remember course concepts and stimulate their motivation to learn are scarce. In the present study, we conducted a three-year study in a ‘naturalistic’ educational setting using Twitter to remind students of course concepts, and asking questions every week during one semester. Comparing the groups of user and non-user students showed that this Twitter-based method elicited higher intrinsic motivation and interest in the course throughout the semester; importantly, it also reduced amotivation. Some benefits of using Twitter were also observed on learning and academic outcomes. We discuss the benefits and the limits of repurposing social networks for pedagogical activities.
... Career transitions, such as a new position or promotion, were occasions to increase social media use. This was consistent with prior studies that found social media use patters were related to academics' work schedules and professional events such as conference attendance (Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2016;Veletsianos, Kimmons, Belikov, & Johnson, 2018). These findings suggested that academics increase their social media use at such times to take advantage of the professional networking capabilities discussed in the previous section. ...
The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how academics in the United States described their social media self-presentations (SMSPs) in the context of imagined surveillance. Moral Reasoning Theory drove two RQs: (1) How do academics describe construction of SMSPs in the context of imagined surveillance? (2) How do academics describe the influence of imagined surveillance on their personal SMSPs? 106 academics from across the U.S. were recruited by convenience sampling from two scholarly associations. Data were collected from closed-/open-ended questionnaires (n=102) and semi-structured interviews (n=20). Data analysis applied a six-phased Reflexive Thematic Analysis procedure of inductive coding to generate five themes and 14 subthemes. Academics described SMSP construction as negotiating (1) promises and perils of in/visibility, including (a) unspoken rules, (b) overlapping identities, (c) social support, and (d) personal opinion-sharing, which was profoundly shaped by (2) the rise of cancel culture, or an (a) enforced ideology, (b) activist subgroup, and (c) pressure to signal support. Imagined surveillance influenced SMSPs toward (3) protection over participation by (a) withdrawal from social media, viewing (b) tenure as insufficient, and (c) safe social media strategies; (4) trepidation while teaching due to (a) classroom recording prompted (b) strategic instruction; and (5) resistance and rebellion to (a) push back on cancel culture with a (b) duty to speak out. This study advanced understanding of social media surveillance as a normalizing force on speech and behavior. Findings may be applied to policy and practice regarding social media use in education and other professional settings.
... But not all posts connected to a professional meeting have equal effect or influence. Veletsianos and Kimmons (2016) studied the use of Twitter during American Educational Research Association's 2014 annual conference and found that the most influential accounts were those of professors from elite universities. In addition to the uses of social media noted earlier, clinicians (e.g., educational and clinical psychologists) may also use social media as a method of self-promotion to find clients (Sultan et al., 2021). ...
Twitter is a valuable resource for research because of its potential to provide insight into public opinion as well as to identify the most influential sources of information. Mixed-methods exploratory analysis was used to evaluate the discourse on Twitter regarding gifted education. The results of the quantitative analysis of the matrix of connections using NodeXL Pro indicate that gifted education Twitter is a cohesive network and that the top influencers are organizations and educational consultants. Sentiment analysis using Linguistics Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC2015, Pennebaker et al., 2015) software indicates that tweets related to gifted education have a mix of positive and negative emotive tone. The qualitative analyses suggest that gifted education professionals and parents engage in Twitter in similar ways to what has been described in past research: to share interesting articles and videos, to discuss current issues, promote one's ideas, and seek opportunities.
Penelitian ini mengevaluasi penggunaan Twitter sebagai media pembelajaran untuk meningkatkan keterampilan menulis siswa kelas 8 di SMP Negeri di kota Y, dalam konteks Kurikulum Merdeka Belajar. Dengan metode penelitian tindakan kelas, penelitian melibatkan 30 siswa yang dipilih secara acak dan dilakukan dalam tiga siklus tindakan: perencanaan, pelaksanaan, observasi, dan refleksi. Setiap siklus memberikan wawasan tentang strategi pengajaran yang efektif dan tantangan yang dihadapi. Data dikumpulkan melalui tes menulis, wawancara mendalam, dan observasi partisipatif, dianalisis menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif dan kuantitatif. Hasil menunjukkan peningkatan signifikan dalam keterampilan menulis siswa, terutama dalam kreativitas, struktur argumentasi, dan variasi penggunaan bahasa, dengan peningkatan rata-rata skor sebesar 25%. Penelitian ini juga mengidentifikasi tantangan signifikan, seperti keterbatasan akses internet dan kebutuhan pelatihan lebih lanjut untuk guru. Rekomendasi untuk mengatasi tantangan ini termasuk peningkatan infrastruktur jaringan sekolah dan pelatihan intensif bagi pendidik. Dengan demikian, Twitter dapat menjadi alat pembelajaran yang efektif dan inovatif dalam mendukung Kurikulum Merdeka Belajar, asalkan ada dukungan infrastruktur dan pelatihan yang memadai. Penelitian ini menawarkan panduan praktis untuk guru dalam mengintegrasikan media sosial ke dalam kurikulum secara efektif.
This paper studied the United Arab Emirates universities’ social media branding strategies based on an investigation of their performances on Twitter. Content analysis was conducted to examine universities’ tweet topics, image subjects, languages, and engagement features. The effectiveness of strategies is investigated by analyzing audience engagement metrics. We also compared social media strategies between private and public universities. Results indicated a discrepancy between universities’ branding efforts, audience preferences on social media, and different strategies between public and private universities. The study offered insights into how academic institutions can optimize the use of social media platforms in building their reputation amid intense competition locally and globally.
The COVID-19 pandemic and its many disruptions to teaching and learning around the world have forced countries and professionals to rethink the way professional development happens. In this chapter, the authors reviewed the role of Open Educational Resources (OER) in supporting social and professional networking and the advantages of the use of open resources. In particular, Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS), such as Moodle, can provide an essential means to improve social and professional networking among academics in developing countries where video conferencing is severely hampered by limited access to the Internet (due to, among others, low bandwidth, connection prices). Using proprietary applications, like Zoom, can have an important disadvantage: they are sometimes free to use for a while, but afterwards the higher education institutions often have to pay for them. Using an exploratory literature review as our main research method allowed us to examine the advantages and disadvantages as well as reasons why universities, such as the University of Eswatini and its Institute of Distance Education proceeded with Moodle, WhatsApp and other Free and Open-Source Software when it comes to teaching, learning and professional development. The chapter concludes with a proposal towards utilizing the most appropriate online applications for teaching and learning, networking, professional development and research in a developing nation such as Eswatini. Moodle has been adopted and continues to be the preferred LMS, based on the fact that it is open source, that it allows a variety of plug-ins which, in turn, make “personalization” of teaching and learning, networking and professional development possible.KeywordsProfessional networksFree and Open-Source SoftwareEswatiniMoodle
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to propose a research model based on the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model to explore whether social media affordances and media richness as environmental stimuli to learners’ involvement elicited by massive open online courses (MOOCs) can affect their learning persistence in MOOCs and, in turn, their learning outcomes in MOOCs. This study further examines whether demographic variables can moderate the relationship between learners’ learning persistence in MOOCs and their learning outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
Sample data for this study were collected from learners who had experience in taking MOOCs provided by the MOOCs platform launched by a well-known university in Taiwan, and 396 usable questionnaires were analyzed using structural equation modeling.
Findings
This study proved that learners’ perceived social media affordances and media richness in MOOCs positively influenced their cognitive involvement and affective involvement elicited by MOOCs, which concurrently expounded their learning persistence in MOOCs and, in turn, uplifted their learning outcomes in MOOCs. The results support all proposed hypotheses and the research model, respectively, explains 70.5% and 61.8% of the variance in learners’ learning persistence in MOOCs and learning outcomes. Besides, this study showed that learners’ usage experience moderated the relationship between learners’ learning persistence in MOOCs and their learning outcomes.
Originality/value
This study uses the S-O-R model as a theoretical groundwork to construct learners’ learning outcomes in MOOCs as a series of the psychological process, which is affected by social media affordances and media richness. Noteworthily, while the S-O-R model has been extensively used in previous literature, little research uses the S-O-R model to explain the media antecedents of learners’ learning persistence and learning outcomes in MOOCs. Hence, this study enriches the research for understanding how learners value their learning gains via using media features to support them in MOOCs.
This chapter will showcase two practitioners' experiences in using technology tools to promote student engagement in learning in high school and college classroom contexts. A review of the characteristics of technology tools used and the suitable theoretical background of the use of their chosen technology tools will be presented respectively. This is followed by an overview of two failed instructional experimentations to integrate technology tools into existing teaching formats. The chapter will present a series of reflections on the suitability of educational incentives that technology can offer and provide some pedagogical insight for teachers who are thinking of using technology tools as a means to support student learning. This chapter will contribute to conducting successful research and development that can advance the effective use of technology to support teaching and learning.
This chapter presents the conclusions of the book Data Cultures in Higher Education: Current Practices and Emergent Challenges. It is divided in three parts. The first part introduces the contributions of the initial chapters in the book, highlighting the idea of complexity in the current landscape of data practices. It also reviews the cases introduced along the several chapters, placing them in a symbolic space which highlights the tensions between reactive and proactive data epistemologies. The second part characterises “the challenge ahead”, basing the reflections on the conceptual lens of data cultures. In fact, building on cultural-historical activity theory, we purport the need for a dynamic approach to data cultures in higher education. This idea is further explored through examples and a case study. To conclude, the third part of the chapter makes some final remarks for future practice and research, emphasising the relevant role of academics’ professionalism, participation and activism to build fair data cultures in higher education.
This chapter complements the introduction to the book “Data Cultures in Higher Education: Emerging Practices and the challenges ahead”. This chapter explores policy-making areas that impact higher education directly or indirectly. These areas are (a) transformation of higher education (from discourses of modernisation to the problem of managerialism, (b) open science and data connected to research practices and (c) the evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In our view, the aforementioned areas support the initial theoretical assumption that data practices are based on several perspectives on how data are produced and used; hence, they encompass complexity. Moreover, this complexity sets the basis for different reactions from Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), which shape their situated institutional data cultures. Through the evidence of concrete evolution of policy-making around data in society and in education, our goal is to provide a frame to understand the relevance of the cases and proposals presented in each of the following chapters.
This chapter introduces the book “Data Cultures in Higher Education: Emerging Practices and the Challenges Ahead”. It is based on four sections that frame several chapters’ work and present it. In the first section, we briefly explain the problem of data and datafication in our contemporary society. To offer conceptual lenses, the idea of complexity is applied to the entropic and chaotic way with which datafication appears in several areas of higher education, triggering fragmented responses, ambiguity, and in the worst cases, harm. Hence, we offer the idea of higher education institutions’ data culture as potential apparatus to explore and understand the above-mentioned complexity. Data cultures characterise an institution and its tradition, people, narratives, and symbols around data and datafication. We purport here that awareness about their existence is crucial to engage in transformation to achieve fairness, equity, and even justice, beyond the subtle manipulation embedded in many of the assumptions behind data-intensive practices. Over these bases, we present the twelve central chapters composing this book, highlighting their perspectives and the way they contribute to study, act, and change data cultures. Finally, space is left to the book’s conclusions and the afterword by invited scholars as a point of arrival for the reader. Several threads conjoin in a web that will hopefully inspire future research and practice.
bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Background:
Building a reputable network on Twitter is viewed as impactful in several scholarly disciplines, but little is known about the professional and interdisciplinary human-computer interaction (HCI) community. This study combined two approaches from scholarly communication and technical communication to capture the static and dynamic features of the HCI scholar Twitter network.
Literature review:
Related studies that described the scholarly reputation built through Twitter and social networking in the field of HCI were reviewed and discussed.
Research questions:
1. In which countries are HCI scholars more likely to follow their peers in the same country? 2. What are the characteristics (country, reputation) and actions (reciprocity) of HCI scholars who are more likely to build HCI scholarly network profiles on Twitter?
Research methodology:
The network analysis method of the exponential random graph model (ERGM) was adopted to trace and visualize current follower networks on Twitter.
Results and discussion:
We found that 22.9% of HCI scholars use Twitter and that reciprocity and country of current employment best drive the Twitter connections of scholars. Characteristics of HCI scholars’ tie formation online are also illustrated and discussed.
Implications for practice:
This study contributes to field studies of professional networks by identifying the structural properties and factors that influence scholars’ search for professional development on Twitter. The empirical findings should be a helpful reference for HCI professional societies and individual scholars in operating online professional networks.
Resumen Twitter se ha constituido en un espacio virtual de encuentro y afinidad de docentes que permite la generación de comunidades de aprendizaje informal en línea. A través del análisis de un total de 22.897 tuits que incluyeron el #Claustrovirtual, distribuidos entre los meses de marzo de 2020 a enero de 2022, hemos analizado la frecuencia y distribución temporal de publicación. Mediante el programa Graphext hemos realizado un análisis de redes sociales, concretando el grado de centralidad y centralidad de intermediación, lo que nos ha permitido conocer los roles de liderazgo que asumen los docentes más activos en el hashtag. A través del análisis realizado, hemos identificado, siguiendo la literatura de investigación existente, cuatro roles en las redes sociales: emisores, transmisores, difusores e intermediadores. Para analizar de manera descriptiva por qué y para qué utilizan los docentes el #Claustrovirtual diseñamos un instrumento compuesto por 8 dimensiones que fue respondido por 81 docentes con un alto nivel de participación en el #Claustrovirtual. Entre los resultados obtenidos, encontramos que estos docentes hacen uso de hashtag en sus publicaciones tanto para localizar y recurrir a docentes con más experiencia, como para plantear dudas y preguntas a la comunidad o pedir apoyo a la misma. Abstract Twitter has become a virtual meeting and affinity space for teachers that allows the generation of online informal learning communities. Through the analysis of a total of 22,897 tweets that included the #Claustrovirtual distributed between the months of March 2020 and January 2022, we have analyzed the frequency and temporal distribution of publication. Through the Graphext program we have carried out an analysis of social networks, specifying the degree of centrality and betweenness centrality, which has allowed us to know the leadership roles assumed by the most active teachers in the hashtag. Through the analysis carried out, we have identified four roles in social networks: transceivers, transmitters, transcenders and traders. To descriptively analyze why and for what teachers use the #Claustrovirtual, we designed an instrument composed of 8 dimensions that was answered by 81 teachers with a high level of participation in the #Claustrovirtual. Among the results obtained, we found that these teachers use the hashtag in their publications both to locate and turn to teachers with more experience, as well as to raise doubts and questions to the community or ask for support from it.
The fabric of digital literacy learning and the measurement of digital competence in Canadian faculties of education is multi-colored and multi-textured. The threads connecting these digital literacy practices and research are loosely stitched together into a national tapestry, full of holes and imperfections. Yet, just as Canadian singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen suggests, these cracks allow the light to shine through. By reviewing research from across the country, this chapter illuminates distinctive patterns in teaching, learning, and research into digital literacies and digital competencies in faculties of education. Singular threads reveal trends that enhance digital literacy learning and digital competency development. Research into digital readiness, a digital competence profile, and self-study scholarship reveals the patchy nature of measurement of digital literacies in Canadian faculties of education. This chapter concludes with insights into contextual factors that impact teaching and learning in faculties of education in Canada. This chapter illuminates limitations and barriers, the cracks in the development of digital literacies in teacher education programs, which allow individual lights of innovation to shine across this vast and diverse country.
Understanding the affordances, effectiveness and applicability of new media in multiple contexts is usually a slow and evolving process with many failed applications, false starts and blind trails. As result, effective applications are usually much slower to arise than the technology itself. The global network based on ubiquitous Internet connectivity and its uneven application in both formal education and informal learning contexts demonstrates the challenges of effective use of new media. In this chapter the authors attempt to explicate the effective use of the Net for learning and teaching by differentiating three modes of networked social organization. These are defined as the Group, the Network and the Collective. The chapter explores the consequences of this perspective, observing that each has both strengths and weaknesses in different contexts and when used for different applications.
Purpose: This study shows that there were differences in the use of Twitter
by professors at universities in the Association of American Universities
(AAU). Affordance use differed between the personal and professional tweets of
professors. Framing behaviors were described that could impact the
interpretation of tweets by audience members. Design/methodology/approach: A
three phase research design was used that included surveys of professors,
categorization of tweets by Amazon's Mechanical Turk workers (i.e., turkers),
and categorization of tweets by active professors on Twitter. Findings: There
were significant differences found between professors that reported having a
Twitter account, significant differences found between types of Twitter
accounts (personal, professional, or both), and significant differences in the
affordances used in personal and professional tweets. Framing behaviors were
described that may assist altmetric researchers in distinguishing between
personal and professional tweets. Research limitations/implications (if
applicable): The study is limited by the sample population, survey instrument,
low survey response rate, and low Cohen's kappa. Practical implications (if
applicable): An overview of various affordances found in Twitter is provided
and a novel use of Amazon's Mechanical Turk for the categorization of tweets is
described that can be applied to future altmetric studies. Originality/value:
This work utilizes a socio-technical framework integrating social and
psychological theories to interpret results from the tweeting behavior of
professors and the interpretation of tweets by workers in Amazon's Mechanical
Turk.
Purpose
– To date, few studies have been undertaken to make explicit how microblogging technologies are used by and can benefit scholars. This paper aims to investigate the use of Twitter by an academic community in various conference settings, and to pose the following questions: Does the use of a Twitter‐enabled backchannel enhance the conference experience, collaboration and the co‐construction of knowledge? and How is microblogging used within academic conferences, and can one articulate the benefits it may bring to a discipline?
Design/methodology/approach
– This paper considers the use of Twitter as a digital backchannel by the Digital Humanities (DH) community, taking as its focus postings to Twitter during three different international 2009 conferences. The resulting archive of 4,574 “Tweets” was analysed using various quantitative and qualitative methods, including a qualitative categorisation of Twitter posts by open coded analysis, a quantitative examination of user conventions, and text analysis tools. Prominent Tweeters were identified and a small qualitative survey was undertaken to ascertain individuals' attitudes towards a Twitter‐enabled backchannel.
Findings
– Conference hashtagged Twitter activity does not constitute a single distributed conversation, but rather multiple monologues with a few intermittent, discontinuous, loosely joined dialogues between users. The digital backchannel constitutes a multidirectional complex space in which the users make notes, share resources, hold discussions and ask questions as well as establishing a clear individual online presence. The use of Twitter as a conference platform enables the community to expand communication and participation in events amongst its members. The analysis revealed the close‐knit nature of the DH researcher community, which may be somewhat intimidating for those new to the field or conference.
Practical implications
– This study has indicated that, given that Twitter is becoming increasingly important for academic communities, new, dedicated methodologies for the analysis and understanding of Tweet‐based corpora are necessary. Routinely used textual analysis tools cannot be applied to corpora of Tweets in a straightforward manner, due to the creative and fragmentary nature of language used within microblogging. In this paper, a method has been suggested to categorise Tweets using open coded analysis to facilitate understanding of Tweet‐based corpora, which could be adopted elsewhere.
Originality/value
– This paper is the first known exhaustive study that concentrates on how microblogging technologies such as Twitter are used by and can benefit scholars. This data set both provides a valuable insight into the prevalence of a variety of Twitter practices within the constraints of a conference setting, and highlights the need for methodologies to be developed to analyse social media streams such as Twitter feeds. It also provides a bibliography of other research into microblogging.
p>Researchers, educators, policymakers, and other education stakeholders hope and anticipate that openness and open scholarship will generate positive outcomes for education and scholarship. Given the emerging nature of open practices, educators and scholars are finding themselves in a position in which they can shape and/or be shaped by openness. The intention of this paper is (a) to identify the assumptions of the open scholarship movement and (b) to highlight challenges associated with the movement’s aspirations of broadening access to education and knowledge. Through a critique of technology use in education, an understanding of educational technology narratives and their unfulfilled potential, and an appreciation of the negotiated implementation of technology use, we hope that this paper helps spark a conversation for a more critical, equitable, and effective future for education and open scholarship.
</p
In the era of social media there are now many different ways that a scientist can build their public profile; the publication of high-quality scientific papers being just one. While social media is a valuable tool for outreach and the sharing of ideas, there is a danger that this form of communication is gaining too high a value and that we are losing sight of key metrics of scientific value, such as citation indices. To help quantify this, I propose the 'Kardashian Index', a measure of discrepancy between a scientist's social media profile and publication record based on the direct comparison of numbers of citations and Twitter followers.
Digital technologies carry the promise of transforming science and opening up the research process. We interviewed researchers from a variety of backgrounds about their attitudes towards and experiences with openness in their research practices. We observe a considerable discrepancy between the concept of open science and scholarly reality. While many researchers support open science in theory, the individual researcher is confronted with various difficulties when putting open science into practice. We analyse the major obstacles to open science and group them into two main categories: individual obstacles and systemic obstacles. We argue that the phenomenon of open science can be seen through the prism of a social dilemma: what is in the collective best interest of the scientific community is not necessarily in the best interest of the individual scientist. We discuss the possibilities of transferring theoretical solutions to social dilemma problems to the realm of open science.
Social networking sites (SNS) have been used to support educational and professional endeavors. However, little research has been done to understand the relationship between educator identity and participation in SNS or to examine the implications that institutional regulation of such media may have upon educator identity. Using grounded theory, in this study we developed a framework for understanding how a group of teacher education students viewed their developing identities within social networking sites as they began the life transition to becoming educators. The theory that emerged from this study proposes that educator identity consists of a constellation of interconnected acceptable identity fragments, which are each intentional, authentic, transitional, necessarily incomplete, and socially-constructed and -responsive. This view of educator identity contrasts sharply with previous views of identity by highlighting the complicated, negotiated, and recursive relationship that exists between educator participation in SNS and educator identity. Additionally, this perspective suggests that educator participation in SNS is neither fully representative of authentic identity (as prominent SNS models imply) nor dramaturgical. These findings yield important implications for educators, researchers, educational institutions, lawmakers, and SNS developers alike, because they lead to a more sophisticated understanding of identity and online participation that is essential for developing mechanisms to support moral and legal judgments, professionalism, and social interactions relative to SNS.
Altmetric measurements derived from the social web are increasingly advocated and used as early indicators of article impact and usefulness. Nevertheless, there is a lack of systematic scientific evidence that altmetrics are valid proxies of either impact or utility although a few case studies have reported medium correlations between specific altmetrics and citation rates for individual journals or fields. To fill this gap, this study compares 11 altmetrics with Web of Science citations for 76 to 208,739 PubMed articles with at least one altmetric mention in each case and up to 1,891 journals per metric. It also introduces a simple sign test to overcome biases caused by different citation and usage windows. Statistically significant associations were found between higher metric scores and higher citations for articles with positive altmetric scores in all cases with sufficient evidence (Twitter, Facebook wall posts, research highlights, blogs, mainstream media and forums) except perhaps for Google+ posts. Evidence was insufficient for LinkedIn, Pinterest, question and answer sites, and Reddit, and no conclusions should be drawn about articles with zero altmetric scores or the strength of any correlation between altmetrics and citations. Nevertheless, comparisons between citations and metric values for articles published at different times, even within the same year, can remove or reverse this association and so publishers and scientometricians should consider the effect of time when using altmetrics to rank articles. Finally, the coverage of all the altmetrics except for Twitter seems to be low and so it is not clear if they are prevalent enough to be useful in practice.
The paper reports on a major international survey, covering 2,000 researchers, which investigated the use of social media in the research workflow. The topic is the second to emerge from the Charleston Observatory, the research adjunct of the popular annual Charleston Conference (http://www.katina.info/conference/). The study shows that social media have found serious application at all points of the research lifecycle, from identifying research opportunities to disseminating findings at the end. The three most popular social media tools in a research setting were those for collaborative authoring, conferencing, and scheduling meetings. The most popular brands used tend to be mainstream anchor technologies or 'household brands', such as Twitter. Age is a poor predictor of social media use in a research context, and humanities and social science scholars avail themselves most of social media. Journals, conference proceedings, and edited books remain the core traditional means of disseminating research, with institutional repositories highly valued as well, but social media have become important complementary channels for disseminating and discovering research.
We analyze the online response to the preprint publication of a cohort of 4,606 scientific articles submitted to the preprint database arXiv.org between October 2010 and May 2011. We study three forms of responses to these preprints: downloads on the arXiv.org site, mentions on the social media site Twitter, and early citations in the scholarly record. We perform two analyses. First, we analyze the delay and time span of article downloads and Twitter mentions following submission, to understand the temporal configuration of these reactions and whether one precedes or follows the other. Second, we run regression and correlation tests to investigate the relationship between Twitter mentions, arXiv downloads, and article citations. We find that Twitter mentions and arXiv downloads of scholarly articles follow two distinct temporal patterns of activity, with Twitter mentions having shorter delays and narrower time spans than arXiv downloads. We also find that the volume of Twitter mentions is statistically correlated with arXiv downloads and early citations just months after the publication of a preprint, with a possible bias that favors highly mentioned articles.
Web-based and mobile health interventions (also called "Internet interventions" or "ehealth/mhealth interventions") are tools or treatments, typically behaviorally based, that are operationalized and transformed for delivery via the Internet or mobile platforms. These include electronic tools for patients, informal caregivers, healthy consumers, and health care providers. The "Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials" (CONSORT) was developed to improve the suboptimal reporting of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). While broadly the CONSORT statement can be applied to provide guidance on how ehealth and mhealth trials should be reported, RCTs of web-based interventions pose very specific issues and challenges, in particular related to reporting sufficient details of the intervention to allow replication and theory-building.
To develop a checklist, dubbed CONSORT-EHEALTH (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials of Electronic and Mobile HEalth Applications and onLine TeleHealth), as an extension of the CONSORT statement that provides guidance for authors of ehealth and mhealth interventions.
A literature review was conducted, followed by a survey among ehealth experts and a workshop.
An instrument and checklist was constructed as an extension of the CONSORT statement. The instrument has been adopted by the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) and authors of ehealth RCTs are required to submit an electronic checklist explaining how they addressed each subitem.
CONSORT-EHEALTH has the potential to improve reporting and provides a basis for evaluating the validity and applicability of ehealth trials. Subitems describing how the intervention should be reported can also be used for non-RCT evaluation reports. As part of the development process, an evaluation component is essential, therefore feedback from authors will be solicited, and a before-after study will evaluate whether reporting has been improved.
Social media technologies let people connect by creating and sharing content. We examine the use of Twitter by famous people to conceptualize celebrity as a practice. On Twitter, celebrity is practiced through the appearance and performance of 'backstage' access. Celebrity practitioners reveal what appears to be personal information to create a sense of intimacy between participant and follower, publicly acknowledge fans, and use language and cultural references to create affiliations with followers. Interactions with other celebrity practitioners and personalities give the impression of candid, uncensored looks at the people behind the personas. But the indeterminate 'authenticity' of these performances appeals to some audiences, who enjoy the game playing intrinsic to gossip consumption. While celebrity practice is theoretically open to all, it is not an equalizer or democratizing discourse. Indeed, in order to successfully practice celebrity, fans must recognize the power differentials intrinsic to the relationship.
Despite the widespread use of social media by students and its increased use by instructors, very little empirical evidence is available concerning the impact of social media use on student learning and engagement. This paper describes our semester-long experimental study to determine if using Twitter – the microblogging and social networking platform most amenable to ongoing, public dialogue – for educationally relevant purposes can impact college student engagement and grades. A total of 125 students taking a first year seminar course for pre-health professional majors participated in this study (70 in the experimental group and 55 in the control group). With the experimental group, Twitter was used for various types of academic and co-curricular discussions. Engagement was quantified by using a 19-item scale based on the National Survey of Student Engagement. To assess differences in engagement and grades, we used mixed effects analysis of variance (ANOVA) models, with class sections nested within treatment groups. We also conducted content analyses of samples of Twitter exchanges. The ANOVA results showed that the experimental group had a significantly greater increase in engagement than the control group, as well as higher semester grade point averages. Analyses of Twitter communications showed that students and faculty were both highly engaged in the learning process in ways that transcended traditional classroom activities. This study provides experimental evidence that Twitter can be used as an educational tool to help engage students and to mobilize faculty into a more active and participatory role.
The microblogging service Twitter is in the process of being appropriated for conversational interaction and is starting to be used for collaboration, as well. In an attempt to determine how well Twitter supports user-to-user exchanges, what people are using Twitter for, and what usage or design modifications would make it (more) usable as a tool for collaboration, this study analyzes a corpus of naturally-occurring public Twitter messages (tweets), focusing on the functions and uses of the @ sign and the coherence of exchanges. The findings reveal a surprising degree of conversationality, facilitated especially by the use of @ as a marker of addressivity, and shed light on the limitations of Twitter's current design for collaborative use.
Twitter - a microblogging service that enables users to post messages ("tweets") of up to 140 characters - supports a variety of communicative practices; participants use Twitter to converse with individuals, groups, and the public at large, so when conversations emerge, they are often experienced by broader audiences than just the interlocutors. This paper examines the practice of retweeting as a way by which participants can be "in a conversation." While retweeting has become a convention inside Twitter, participants retweet using different styles and for diverse reasons. We highlight how authorship, attribution, and communicative fidelity are negotiated in diverse ways. Using a series of case studies and empirical data, this paper maps out retweeting as a conversational practice.
An analysis of article-level metrics of 27,856 PLOS ONE articles reveals that the number of tweets was weakly associated with the number of citations (β = 0.10), and weakly negatively associated with citations when the number of article views was held constant (β = −0.06). The number of tweets was predictive of other social media activity (β = 0.34 for Mendeley and β = 0.41 for Facebook), but not of the number of article views on PubMed Central (β = 0.01). It is concluded that the scientific citation process acts relatively independently of the social dynamics on Twitter.
Most members of the American public will never read this article. Instead, they will obtain much of their information about education from the news media. Yet little academic research has examined the type or quality of education research and expertise they will find there. Through the lens of gatekeeping theory, this mixed-methods study aims to address that gap by examining the prevalence of news media citations of evidence that has undergone the quality-control measure of peer review and expertise associated with academics generally required to have expertise in their fields. Results suggest that, unlike science or medical journalists, education writers virtually never cite peer-reviewed research. Nor do they use the American Educational Research Association as a resource. Academic experts are also underrepresented in news media coverage, especially when compared to government officials. Barriers between the news media and academia include structural differences between research on education and the medical or life sciences as well as journalists’ lack of knowledge of the definition and value of peer review and tendency to apply and misapply news values to social science research and expertise.
Social media are fundamentally changing core practices in various industries. Although surveys indicate that social media are impacting social scientists, we know little about how education scholars, specifically, use social media for their work or professional learning. This article explores how educational scholars incorporated the social media, Twitter, as a conference backchannel. Using qualitative interview data collected from members of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and considering previous analysis of AERA conference tweet data, we describe participants’ purposes and practices and their perceptions of how using this social media impacts participation in the conference community. We discuss implications for those concerned with research dissemination, faculty professional development, and academic identity.
How do university researchers consider attributes such as ‘digital’ and ‘open’ as regards to their research practices? This article reports a small–scale interview project carried out at the University of Milan, aiming to probe whether and to what extent actual digital research practices are affecting cultures of sharing in different subject areas and are prompting emergent approaches such as open publishing, open data, open education and open boundary between academia and society. Most of the 14 interviewed researchers seem not to see any clear benefit to move to further technological means or new open practices and call for institutional support and rules. However, a few profiles of ‘digital, networked and open’ researchers stand out and show both a self–legitimating approach to new modes of knowledge production and distribution and a particular sensitiveness towards values and perspectives driven by ‘openness’ in digital networks.
This paper investigates disciplinary differences in how researchers use the microblogging site Twitter. Tweets from selected researchers in ten disciplines (astrophysics, biochemistry, digital humanities, economics, history of science, cheminformatics, cognitive science, drug discovery, social network analysis, and sociology) were collected and analyzed both statistically and qualitatively. The researchers tended to share more links and retweet more than the average Twitter users in earlier research and there were clear disciplinary differences in how they used Twitter. Biochemists retweeted substantially more than researchers in the other disciplines. Researchers in digital humanities and cognitive science used Twitter more for conversations, while researchers in economics shared the most links. Finally, whilst researchers in biochemistry, astrophysics, cheminformatics and digital humanities seemed to use Twitter for scholarly communication, scientific use of Twitter in economics, sociology and history of science appeared to be marginal.
Giant academic social networks have taken off to a degree that no one expected even a few years ago. A Nature survey explores why.
Academics are increasingly being urged to blog in order to expand their audiences, create networks and to learn to write in more reader friendly style. This paper holds this advocacy up to empirical scrutiny. A content analysis of 100 academic blogs suggests that academics most commonly write about academic work conditions and policy contexts, share information and provide advice; the intended audience for this work is other higher education staff. We contend that academic blogging may constitute a community of practice in which a hybrid public/private academic operates in a ‘gift economy’. We note however that academic blogging is increasingly of interest to institutions and this may challenge some of the current practices we have recorded. We conclude that there is still much to learn about academic blogging practices.
Data collected by social media platforms have recently been introduced as a
new source for indicators to help measure the impact of scholarly research in
ways that are complementary to traditional citation-based indicators. Data
generated from social media activities related to scholarly content can be used
to reflect broad types of impact. This paper aims to provide systematic
evidence regarding how often Twitter is used to diffuse journal articles in the
biomedical and life sciences. The analysis is based on a set of 1.4 million
documents covered by both PubMed and Web of Science (WoS) and published between
2010 and 2012. The number of tweets containing links to these documents was
analyzed to evaluate the degree to which certain journals, disciplines, and
specialties were represented on Twitter. It is shown that, with less than 10%
of PubMed articles mentioned on Twitter, its uptake is low in general. The
relationship between tweets and WoS citations was examined for each document at
the level of journals and specialties. The results show that tweeting behavior
varies between journals and specialties and correlations between tweets and
citations are low, implying that impact metrics based on tweets are different
from those based on citations. A framework utilizing the coverage of articles
and the correlation between Twitter mentions and citations is proposed to
facilitate the evaluation of novel social-media based metrics and to shed light
on the question in how far the number of tweets is a valid metric to measure
research impact.
Since Windschitl first outlined a research agenda for the World Wide Web and classroom research, significant shifts have occurred in the nature of the Web and the conceptualization of classrooms. Such shifts have affected constructs of learning and instruction, and paths for future research. This article discusses the characteristics of Web 2.0 that differentiate it from the Web of the 1990s, describes the contextual conditions in which students use the Web today, and examines how Web 2.0's unique capabilities and youth's proclivities in using it influence learning and teaching. Two important themes, "learner participation and creativity and online identity formation," emerged from this analysis and support a new wave of research questions. A stronger research focus on students' everyday use of Web 2.0 technologies and their learning with Web 2.0 both in and outside of classrooms is needed. Finally, insights on how educational scholarship might be transformed with Web 2.0 in light of these themes are discussed.
Scholars participate in online social networks for professional purposes. In such networks, learning takes the form of participation and identity formation through engagement in and contribution to networked practices. While current literature describes the possible benefits of online participation, empirical research on scholars' use of online social networks in the educational technology literature is negligible. The purpose of this paper is to understand scholars' naturalistic practices in social networks in general, and on Twitter in particular. Tweets from 45 scholars were analysed qualitatively to arrive at dominant themes describing online social network practice. Findings indicate that scholars participating on Twitter (1) shared information, resources, and media relating to their professional practice; (2) shared information about their classroom and their students; (3) requested assistance from and offered suggestions to others; (4) engaged in social commentary; (5) engaged in digital identity and impression management; (6) sought to network and make connections with others; and (7) highlighted their participation in online networks other than Twitter. These findings assist the field in understanding the emerging practice of scholarly participation in online networks.
Social Networking Sites (SNSs) such as Facebook are one of the latest examples of communications technologies that have been widely-adopted by students and, consequently, have the potential to become a valuable resource to support their educational communications and collaborations with faculty. However, faculty members have a track record of prohibiting classroom uses of technologies that are frequently used by students. To determine how likely higher education faculty are to use Facebook for either personal or educational purposes, higher education faculty (n = 62) and students (n = 120) at a mid-sized southern university were surveyed on their use of Facebook and email technologies. A comparison of faculty and student responses indicate that students are much more likely than faculty to use Facebook and are significantly more open to the possibility of using Facebook and similar technologies to support classroom work. Faculty members are more likely to use more “traditional” technologies such as email.
The growing flood of scholarly literature is exposing the weaknesses of current, citation-based methods of evaluating and filtering articles. A novel and promising approach is to examine the use and citation of articles in a new forum: Web 2.0 services like social bookmarking and microblogging. Metrics based on this data could build a Scientometics 2.0, supporting richer and more timely pictures of articles' impact. This paper develops the most comprehensive list of these services to date, assessing the potential value and availability of data from each. We also suggest the next steps toward building and validating metrics drawn from the social Web.
Blogs and tweets are ripping papers apart within days of publication,
leaving researchers unsure how to react.
Many teaching practices implicitly assume that conceptual knowledge can be abstracted from the situations in which it is learned and used. This article argues that this assumption inevitably limits the effectiveness of such practices. Drawing on recent research into cognition as it is manifest in everyday activity, the authors argue that knowledge is situated, being in part a product of the activity, context, and culture in which it is developed and used. They discuss how this view of knowledge affects our understanding of learning, and they note that conventional schooling too often ignores the influence of school culture on what is learned in school. As an alternative to conventional practices, they propose cognitive apprenticeship (Collins, Brown, & Newman, in press), which honors the situated nature of knowledge. They examine two examples of mathematics instruction that exhibit certain key features of this approach to teaching.
Emergent forms of technology-influenced scholarship
- R Kimmons
Kimmons, R. (2014). Emergent forms of technology-influenced scholarship. In M. Khosrow-Pour (Ed.), Encyclopedia of information science and technology (pp. 2481-2488) (3rd
ed.). IGI Global.
Feeling better connected': Academics' use of social media. Canberra: news & media research centre
- D A Lupton
Lupton, D.A. (2014). Feeling better connected': Academics' use of social media. Canberra:
news & media research centre (Retrieved on November 2014 from http://www.
canberra.edu.au/about-uc/faculties/arts-design/attachments2/pdf/n-and-mrc/Feeling-Better-Connected-report-final.pdf).
Twitter in scholarly communication
- M Mahrt
- K Weller
- I Peters
Mahrt, M., Weller, K., & Peters, I. (2014). Twitter in scholarly communication. In K. Weller, A.
Bruns, J. Burgess, M. Mahrt, & C. Puschmann (Eds.), Twitter and society (pp. 399-410).
New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Big questions for social media big data: Representativeness, validity and other methodological pitfalls
- Z Tufecki
Tufecki, Z. (2014). Big questions for social media big data: Representativeness, validity
and other methodological pitfalls. Proceedings of the Eight International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media. MI: Ann Arbor.