Microstudies of Microblogging | A White Paper

8/6/2019 Microstudies of Microblogging | A White Paper

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[ @ ]MICROSTUDIES OF

MICROBLOGGING

[ The #9ine Collaborative ]Rhetoric and Composition Doctoral Program

Professional Writing + Emerging MediaEmerging Media Initiative

http://tinyurl.com/3ol4uog

http://tinyurl.com/43yy9w8

http://cms.bsu.edu/Academics/CentersandInstitutes/EmergingMedia.aspx

http://tinyurl.com/43yy9w8

http://cms.bsu.edu/Academics/CentersandInstitutes/EmergingMedia.aspx

http://tinyurl.com/3ol4uog



[ EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ]

“Practice is always dynamic, arising as a way to mediate between processes and the circumstances inwhich they are enacted. The reason to study practice is to understand how this dynamic mediation takesplace.”

~ Dourish, 2001

What follows are studies of embodied, everyday practices—public, sociotechnical writing practices.

This collaborative white paper includes four brief qualitative case studies— microstudies —from researchersin the Rhetoric and Composition doctoral program and the Professional Writing + Emerging Mediaundergraduate program at Ball State University.

One of the primary aims of these microstudies is to increase attention to the ways in which writing technologies are situated in the lived practices of the everyday—in web browsers, on smart phones, and via SMS. All of the studies take a microanalytical approach to examine a specic writing technology:microblogging. Looking at rather than through this technology (Haas, 1996), we examine individual,particular cases to learn more about the ways that writing and/as technology function(s) in peoples’

everyday lives. Our ndings shed light on the specic ways that users position themselves online—in theclassroom, in relationships, and in the world. Deliberately small in scale, these studies introduce a starting point for further research into pervasive forms of writing work, hopefully raising some interesting questions for ongoing scholarship of dynamic mediation in practice.

Emily CristBrian McNely Jason ParksStephanie HedgeMelissa Ditty

Sarah Luttenbacher

To cite this White Paper : Crist, E., McNely, B., Parks, J., Hedge, S., Ditty, M., & Luttenbacher, S. (2011). Microstudies of Microblogging. Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana.

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[ TABLE OF CONTENTS ]

Introduction“Microstudies of Microblogging”…………………………………………………….….4

Study 1“Temporality in the Twitterverse”……………………………………………………….6

Study 2“A Twitter Identity”……………………………………………………………………..10

Study 3“A Tale of Two Twitters”……………………………………………………………….14

Study 4

“Education Redened: Twitter Use in the Classroom”…………………………………21

Future Directions …………………………………………………………………………….25

Annotated Bibliography……………………………………………………………………..26

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[ Microstudies of Microblogging ]

In an April 2011 blog post about the kinds of intelligent interaction one might expect to see on Facebook,Nicholas Carr, frequent proponent of the distraction trope, cited a study suggesting that the world’s mostpopular social networking site (SNS) might be “geared to dullards.” It’s an interesting study, one thatexplores “the associations between SNS and personality traits,” and it’s certainly an area that warrantsdetailed consideration from researchers in a variety of elds. But as Carr tells it, the study relies exclusivelyon survey data—436 surveys of college students in 2010. Moreover, the study doesn’t explicitly probeFacebook use at all; Carr says parenthetically that “Given what we know about college students’ socialnetworking in 2010, it can be assumed that the bulk of the [SNS] activity consisted of Facebook use.”

This is perhaps a commonsense assumption, but it’s a troubling assumption nonetheless. I wonder howmuch more we might understand about students’ personality traits and their SNS use by actually following them around for a while, by developing much richer instruments for gauging how and why they useparticular social network sites (Facebook et al.). Might we learn more about their personality this way?More than we might from a survey alone?

Currently, many of the most cited articles about SNS activity are similar in scope and method to the studythat Carr describes in his post. In particular, approaches to studying Twitter frequently deploy quantitativemethods for understanding practices and trends in microblogging (see, for example: Naaman, Becker, andGravano, 2011; Starbird, Palen, Hughes, and Vieweg, 2010; Naaman, Boase, and Lai, 2010; Leskovec,Backstrom, and Kleinberg, 2009; and Kwak, Lee, Park, and Moon 2010).

While these studies are tremendously valuable for revealing general patterns in large samples of Twitteractivity, they are far less successful in providing the kind of rich detail called for by Kaptelinin and Nardi(2006) and other researchers taking phenomenological, activity theory approaches (see, for example, Nardiand O’Day, 1999; Dourish, 2001; and Spinuzzi, 2003, 2008). These studies consider “the doing of theactivity in a rich social matrix of people and artifacts,” grounding complex analyses of people acting withtechnology in meaningful, often idiosyncratic ways (Kaptelinin and Nardi, 2006, p. 9). In order to developthick descriptions of how people actually use social network sites in their everyday lives, we need richly

detailed and varied studies conducted with well-triangulated qualitative methods that explore peopleacting with technology in situ.

We need microstudies of micropractices —the small, sometimes ephemeral and interstitial movements thatpeople make—often through writing —many times each day in social networking sites.

Of course, such approaches to the often mundane, everyday activity of human life are nothing new.Design rm IDEO is well known for hiring anthropologists as part of human-centered design teams thatstudy how people actually use the objects produced by their clients. Their approaches are frequentlyethnographic, with team members keenly observing and interacting with subjects to better understandeveryday contexts of use and practice. Beyer and Holtzblatt (1998) developed a methodology calledcontextual inquiry for doing similar kinds of work in organizations.

These approaches may be especially appropriate for studies of SNS activity. For example, Stacey Pigg’s recently defended doctoral work is a notable example of this kind of rich, in situ research. Among thebenets of qualitative methods of studying SNS activity include a better understanding of localizedpractices—how real people perform ad hoc, often idiosyncratic interstitial writing work , the stuff that’shard to track and understand when using only survey instruments or when scraping millions of random,public tweets using the Twitter rehose. Everyday practices are often phatic and affective, sentiments thatcan only truly be gauged and understood by interacting with actual users in rich contexts.

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http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/info.shtml


http://www.buzzmachine.com/2011/02/24/the-distraction-trope/

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2011/04/is_facebook_gea.php

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1951356

http://www.ideo.com/


http://twitter.com/pidoubleg


http://5000.blogspot.com/2011/04/interstitial-writing-work.html


http://blog.twitter.com/2010/03/enabling-rush-of-innovation.html





http://www.buzzmachine.com/2011/02/24/the-distraction-trope/

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2011/04/is_facebook_gea.php









Here at Ball State University, in the Rhetoric and Composition Doctoral Program and the undergraduateprogram in Professional Writing and Emerging Media, we’re conducting microstudies of microblogging and other forms of networked writing, using qualitative and mixed-methods approaches to data collectionand analysis in order to develop rich proles of SNS activity. Our 2011 #9ine Collaborative is comprisedof undergraduate, graduate, and faculty researchers interested in exploring the fascinating micropractices of everyday SNS use. Microstudies may be short—like the four detailed in this white paper—but they may

also be in-depth, longitudinal studies that generate conceptual structures about writing activity andhuman-computer interaction by closely following the networked writing activity of participants in theireveryday environments.

The rst three explorations that follow may be considered pilot studies; graduate students in our programcarried out microstudies of microblogging by focusing rst and foremost on building conceptual structuresabout Twitter activity—coding and analyzing manageable, often comparative samples of tweets. JasonParks considers themes of movement, temporality, and narrative while examining a small corpus of tweetsfrom a select group of users. Emily Crist and Stephanie Hedge each explore themes of identity andmicroblogging; Crist looks at the relationship between prole building and the enactment of that prole inpractice, while Hedge’s approach is autoethnographic, describing in detail the differences betweenprofessional and more personal Twitter identities. Melissa Ditty and Sarah Luttenbacher, undergraduate

researchers in our Professional Writing program, conducted a small-scale qualitative study of Twitter usein the classroom.

Emily Crist concludes this white paper with some thoughts on the value of microstudies in SNS; she alsooffers an annotated bibliography of sources that might be useful to researchers embarking on their ownmicrostudies of microblogging.

We welcome your feedback, and we eagerly look forward to more microstudies of SNS activity…

Brian J. McNely, [email protected]

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http://cms.bsu.edu/Academics/CollegesandDepartments/English/Academics/Programs/Doctoral/English/RhetoricComp.aspx



http://cms.bsu.edu/Academics/CollegesandDepartments/English/Academics/Programs/Minors/ProfessionalWriting.aspx



http://www.brianjmcnely.com/

mailto:[email protected]



http://www.brianjmcnely.com/




[ Temporality in the Twitterverse ]

The following study will consider the affordances and constraints of Twitter as a writing technology inrelation to theories of temporality and narrative, particularly the work of Paul Ricoeur. In particular, I aminterested in exploring the design of the Twitter website and the ow of content in individual user tweetsin order to understand how users perceive, enact, and construct time in the Twitterverse. By exploring thetemporalities of Twitter, researchers may be able to better explain how writers and readers interact withthis emerging technology. In fact, if we are able to understand how time is constructed and represented onTwitter, we may also be able to answer larger questions about how emerging writing technologies areaffecting human consciousness. These studies also have application, I believe, for students of narrativetheory. While this short study cannot fully explain the relationship between Ricoeur’s theories of time andnarrative, and the way that time functions on Twitter (and in the minds of its users), I hope to raise somequestions and avenues for further research.

Background

Unlike other print and digital writing technologies, Twitter—and its users—are always in motion.Depending on the number of people or organizations one follows, and the frequency of those person’stweets, one may encounter a very disorienting digital vertigo, at least initially. Every few seconds, newtweets pop up, altering what information is visible and, depending on the content of the tweet, the moodof the entire page. At any given moment, one may receive a silly joke about puppies and, in the nexttweet, learn about an atrocious crime that was just committed in Darfur. Hence, readers must constantlymake a choice about which tweet to consider and when to respond. While the emotional vertigo is not themain concern of this study, I sense that the juxtaposition and speed at which tweets appear and disappearon the page is incredibly important to how our minds negotiate with this information overload toconstruct cogent narratives.

As Ricoeur (1980) states, “Narrativity and temporality are closely related. . .a language game, and a formof life” (p. 169). Hence, one way of examining Twitter and temporality is to think of a series of tweets as

an emerging narrative. Whether we consciously choose to see tweets this way, the design of the medium— particularly the linear timekeeping enacted on the website—forces readers to consider the temporalunfolding of a series of tweets. Thus, I’d like to consider an inversion of Ricoeur’s statement and proposethat temporality is closely related to narrativity as well. So, as we examine twitter’s temporalities, we mustalso see the narratives that emerge as a result of the design.

When I rst started using Twitter, I followed a variety of users, including humanitarian organizations,professional athletes, journalists, and scholars. The ood of information, however, was overwhelming. Forexample, one organization I decided to follow, New Congo News, posted 56 tweets in a four-hour period. What I soon realized was that this organization had pulled a variety of feeds and links from various placeson the web and then channeled them into Twitter. Although this case was the most extreme, it caused a lotof problems as I tried to sift through the information and scroll down to Tweets from individual users.

So, I quickly reduced my list and tried to be more selective about my choices of whom to follow. Eventhen, however, it took me a while to understand what might be important, whose tweets to respond to, andhow and when I should respond. One of the most confusing parts was trying to gure out whether Ishould take time to formulate replies, or just reply to whatever information was on the screen at thatinstant. Now, six weeks later, I’m still trying to get a handle on the speed of information.

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Designing Time

One way I’ve started to understand Twitter is by looking more closely at its design. Particularly, I havebeen paying more attention to the visual feedback that twitter offers its users to help them know when atweet has been posted, which, in turn, helps to signal the beginnings and endings of various conversations.Each of these conversations may also be considered mini narratives.

In The Design of Everyday Things, Donald Norman describes the relationship between design and memory.In chapter three, “Knowledge in the Head and In the World,” Norman offers an overview of the basicpsychological understanding of how memory functions and the way that knowledge “in the world” and“in the head” helps us perform everyday tasks (p. 79). Through its design, Twitter offers its users a numberof “in the world” options for managing the constant stream of information; and, as a result, leads us toorganize this information in a space of hyper-awareness of temporality.

One way that Twitter provides “external storage” is through the way that it draws readers attention totime. One of the most direct ways that Twitter projects a linear model of time is through the verticalstacking of tweets. The vertical design allows the most recent tweet to be at the top of the list, helping (leading) readers to discern when tweets were written, and, thus, providing a visual representation of when

the events also occurred. Appropriately enough, the tab at the top of your current tweet list is called theTimeline.

A problem with this representation; however, is that the size of the text box is always the same, and,regardless of the time between tweets, the separation from one tweet to the next is also always identical.I’m not sure exactly how the time between tweets might be construed differently, but this current designmakes it impossible to differentiate the time between tweets in a visual manner, which, according toNorman, would be a major weakness in the design.

Another way that tweets indicate time is via a time indicator at the bottom of each tweet. Every individualtweet includes a time indicator just beneath the text of the tweet. These indicators are always updated andbased upon the present moment in which one is using Twitter, unless, of course, the tweets are more than

a day old. Then, they get archived according to date.

Ten Minutes Ago? Might as well be ten years ago?

Journalist Nicholas Kristof ’s tweet tells readers exactlywhen he shared this information on Twitter. Thus, one isgiven a signal as to whether his comments are ripe forresponse, or if he has already moved on to something completely different.

If the tweet does seem to be “outdated,” which, in my

understanding of Twitter, means that it has been posted for more than an hour or two, then I also havethe option of marking the tweet as a favorite, where it will be stored for as long as I want in a separatelocation, which I can then reconsider at a later time.

Having the ability to mark a tweet as a favorite is quite signicant. In particular, it allows you to pause apotential conversation, stopping time. Once a tweet is marked as a favorite, users still have the option of retweeting or replying to that tweet at a later time as well. When you do retweet, however, the originaltweet is now reintroduced into the real time stream. Thus, we have a recursive experience of reentering apast event (tweet) back into the present timeline for our followers and ourselves.

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TEMPORAL TWEETS

Aside from the vertical stack of boxes (the Timeline) and the time indicator, time is also constantlyacknowledged and recorded by Twitter users in their tweets. Despite the fact that Twitter provides thetime indicator, many users tend to use tweets to report to readers their locations and various times of theday and week in which they are tweeting. I have decided to call these tweets “temporal tweets.”

Three examples of “temporal tweets” include when someone:

a) reports on his/her current location (CL)

b) announces the time of day or an event that indicates the time of day (i.e dinner, tv show, bed time) (TD)

c) comments on the day or time of someone else’s tweet (OT)

After coding a series of tweets from four avid users that I follow, I have collected samples, grouped, andlabeled each of these tweets below:

CURRENT LOCATIONS (CL)

Now boarding ight to Dallas. Bye DC. –Clay Spinuzzi (CL)

I got here ok in Edinburgh!!! Just chilling out the hotel befor dinner... Yeeeeezzzzzzz!! –Mo Farah (CL)

At the airport waiting for my food in Cafe Rouge... We were too late for eggs benedict! – MO Farah (CL)

On the bus. I don't recognize the driver, but he is very friendly. –Clay Spinuzzi (CL)

TIME OF DAY (TD)

Thanks everyone for wishing me good luck tomorrow!! Off 2 bed now! Its still snowing out there..!! Goodnight!! Yeeezzzz” –Mo Farah (TD)

Laughing at Modern Family. –Elizabeth Imafuji (TD)

Sunrise today 7:43am (I'm a little behind) –Noelle Pullium (TD)

COMMENTS ON TIME OF TWEETS (OT)

That was a late post. Ouch! –Elizabeth Imafuji (OT)

Oh my days bro..... What u doin up this time?????!!!!!! –Mo Farah@Colin Nell (OT)

Conclusion

What each of the tweets in this sample reveals is a hyperconsciousness of temporality on twitter. In part,this is engendered by the design. Twitter pages change rapidly, presenting readers with new information

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often before they have time to process the present information. Furthermore, every aspect of a Twitterpage is centered around constantly repositioning ideas (tweets) from one place to another, whether that isin the form of a retweet, a favorite, or simply watching old tweets disappear into archives while new onespop up.

Based on some emerging trends in the content of tweets, it seems that Twitter makes its readers constantly

aware of intersecting narratives. We are made aware of events as they happen, in multiple locations, andwe are encouraged to react and respond immediately. While we do have the option of saving tweets in afavorites folder for later replies, the ratio of tweets to favorites is immensely skewed. Of the thousands of tweets that have crossed through my timeline in the past six weeks, I’ve added merely a handful to myfavorites.

If you’re going to use Twitter, it seems, you have to be ready to keep up with the pace. While I’m stilltrying to get a handle on all of the temporalities of Twitter, I’m curious to see how it will impact my ownawareness of time. In particular, I’m curious to see if I will start marking and forming my sense of temporality around the conversations and interactions I have within the Twitterverse.

While this short study of four Twitter users over the course of three weeks may not reveal any substantial

evidence yet, I believe that more research on the temporalities of Twitter needs to be done. In fact, bystudying the temporalities of Twitter, I believe that narrative theory as well as rhetorical studies couldbenet immensely.

Jason Parks [email protected]

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[ a twitter identity ]

Technology vastly inuences the ways in which humans interact with each other, themselves, and theexternal world. In Writing Technologies (1996), Haas explains the ways in which technologies “saturate theworld of everyday activity” and argues that “[i]t is vital to understand the technologies and artifacts usedin any human practice—from navigation to shopping to engineering—because the heritage of any givenpractice is carried in its technologies” (p. 45). Put simply, fully examining, or looking at, a technologysurrounding an activity lets us more fully understand two things: the way the practice is shaped bytechnology and the way that technology is shaped by the practice. With an emphasis on how humansengage with these technologies, it is important to “consider the human use of technology within a widercontext of human interaction with the world: an interaction mediated by technology (Kaptelinin & Nardi,2006, p. 74). Technology, then, does not provide a transparent space, simplifying but not changing humanactivity, nor does it solely account for change in an action. Rather, both the practice and the technologyshape and change human interaction and processes.

A relatively recent writing technology, Twitter has quickly become widely implemented throughout theworld, constantly and conveniently allowing for the human practices of communication and self-expression. As a public domain, Twitter also shapes the ways that users go about these practices. As

humans act with this technology based upon its design, their behaviors further conclude how the systemfunctions within their daily life. Dourish (2001) argues that “systems come to be ‘appropriated’ by theirusers and are put to work within particular patterns of practice” and suggests that the importance of asystem lies not in “what the system can do, but rather, what it really does do for people in the course of doing their work” (p. 133). While a technology’s affordances and constraints set the preliminary stages forinteraction with it, a full understanding of this action cannot be complete without actual user contact.

Users appropriate these systems in ways consistent with their desired outcomes. The public nature of social networking systems requires users to act with the technology based on the ways in which they desireto represent themselves in social situations. In this study, I am particularly interested in looking at the waysin which the technology and its affordances shape user interaction and persona.

In 160 characters or less

Although I have been a memberof Facebook for quite a few years,I never joined Twitter. I rarelyposted Facebook status updatesand saw Twitter as a gloriedoffshoot of Facebook’s Wall.Because I did not engage withFacebook in this way, I assumed Iwould have no interest in Twitter.

Upon eventually joining Twitter, much of my typical behavior remained unchanged. I fully interactedwith the technology, following different people and organizations, regularly reading what they would post.Yet as much as I enjoyed following the remarks of others, I rarely posted myself. Suddenly I realized myonline persona was lacking. In fact, it was downright boring.

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So, I decided to attempt achange. To begin, I wouldcreate a prole. This could bedone, like the posts themselves,through a predeterminedcharacter limit set by the

network’s design. Describing oneself in this limited space of 160 characters provedsomewhat difcult. As I began

to formulate my own prole, I realized how carefully I decided what information to include. BecauseTwitter only allowed a description of 160 characters, it was essential to pick and choose identicationinformation with care. As I created my Bio, I had to think about the way in which I wanted to representmyself in this online community. I knew who followed me and thought about the types of material that Icommunicated to these people. Therefore, my persona was physically shaped in length by Twitter’smaterial constraints while formatted around Twitter’s environment and the ways in which I chose tointeract with it.

Affordances: the Bigger Picture

As the previous process shows, much of the way in which we interact with a technology is determined bythe technology itself. Norman (1988) describes the affordances of a design as “the perceived and actualproperties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing couldpossibly be used” (p. 9). These affordances, which allow certain types of behavior, are then inuenced byan object’s constraints. Norman distinguishes these constraints as natural constraints that physically limitoperations and cultural constraints that socially inuence behaviors (p. 55).

The study

In applying this theory to the design of Twitter, I began to look the ways these constraints affected theproles of other users. Because user’s proles were constrained to 160 characters and were created solelyfor their Twitter interactions, I wanted to examine what users chose to include in their proles and how/if these choices were reected in their tweets. Did the choices made in their prole shape their Twitterpersona? How did the technology, its affordances and its constraints inuence the ways in which userscreated an identity?

To begin, I examined the proles and tweets of three Twitter users: one, a fellow student whom I chose tofollow; two, a professor and researcher who was suggested for me to follow; and three, a celebrity whom Ichose to follow. These specic users all included information on their proles and tweeted regularly. Inchoosing individuals from three different social groups, I hoped to see distinctive and perhaps

individualized engagement with Twitter. Was it for pleasure, professional development, branding? Didtheir proles support these interactions?

Codes, codes, and more codes

After viewing the users’ proles, I created categories for each element within the prole, a “combination”category for tweets that fell in between two areas and an “other” category for all tweets that I could notplace in an exact section. Then, using these categories, I coded all tweets from February 1 until February

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22. I found the following results:

USER 1

User 1 included seven different categories within herTwitter prole and had a total of forty-eight tweets. Of

these forty-eight, twenty were clearly related to her prole.Of the remaining twenty-eight tweets, many dealt with herwork as a graduate student. Although I knew that many of these comments involved reading and writing, I placedthem in the ‘Other’ category, as she did not specicallyinclude ‘Student’ as a part of her prole. This user clearlyused Twitter for many different things, but mostly as asocial, communicative tool. When she did tweet aboutprofessional issues, they were generally in conversational

ways to friends or colleagues. She seemed comfortable tweeting about her family, hobbies, and activities inthis network.

USER 2

User 2 identied himself as a professor in his prole andexplicitly stated that he tweets about research, technologyand his bus rides. His tweets totaled 404, and 185 of theseclearly fell into his prole persona. As I coded this data, Irealized that many of his @replies may have revolvedaround these categories, but if they did not explicitlymention so, I placed them in the ‘Other’ category. Although I feel this inuenced my numbers, it was still very

clear that this user acts with Twitter to build his persona within his professional eld. Although he did

include information about his daily activities, such as his bus rides, the majority of this information stilldealt with his profession and his research interests. More personal tweets included day-to-day observationsand preferences, such as music choices, but did not discuss family or more private emotions.

USER 3

User 3, the celebrity, included only two categories in hisprole: chef and native New Yorker. He had a total of thirty-two tweets and twenty-six of them clearly matchedhis prole. Interestingly enough, he had no tweetsreferencing his identity as a New Yorker. As a vast majority

of his tweets revolved around his profession as a chef, User3 clearly uses Twitter to promote himself as a celebrity chef and his restaurants around the country. Nopersonal information that did not involve his profession was included.

Conclusions

Upon examining my data, I found that 42% of User 1’s tweets, 46% of User 2’s tweets, and 81% of User3’s tweets clearly matched the categories that they created within their proles.

PROFILE CATEGORY TWEETS Wife 2

Mother 2Reader 2

Writer 1Professor 7

Gardener 2Coffee Drinker 2

Combination 2Other 28

PROFILE CATEGORY TWEETSProfessor 22

Research 23Technology 73

Bus Rides 61Combination 6

Other 219

PROFILE CATEGORY TWEETS

Chef 21New Yorker 0

Combination 5Other 6

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While these ndings do suggest that a good portion of their interactions with Twitter support their createdpersona, I feel that my data was inuenced by several factors. I experienced difculties coding many of the@replies into their appropriate category because I could not clearly tell what they were referencing. When this happened, I placed them in the ‘Other’ category, which may have adversely affected mynumerical results. If I were to enlarge this study, I would take the time to produce more intricate codes

that could help me to include many of these comments into their specic categories.

Despite these coding issues, this study clearly demonstrates that the constraints of Twitter do indeedinuence users’ interactions with it. In creating a prole of 160 characters, users must create an identityaffected by both natural and, as this is a public medium, social constraints. This online persona revealsintentions of users to interact with the technology in a certain way. What they choose to include withinthis prole plays a substantial role in the type of information that they communicate through Twitter. As awriting technology, Twitter clearly provides a framework within which users shape their writtencommunication in a certain way.

Emily [email protected]

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[ A Tale of Two Twitters ]It was the best of tweets, it was the worst of tweets...

Systems and Networks: Situating Twitter Between Public and Private

In Writing Technology (1996), Haas says “a technology is not an object, but rather a vital system that isbound to the world of time and space” (p. xii). Haas here is arguing for an investigation of writing as/andtechnology that situates technologies in lived contexts and as parts of complex systems. She points to theneed to investigate technologies as they are embodied, saying “[q]uestions of technology always andinescapably return to the material, embodied reality of literate practice” (p. xv). Haas points out thattechnologies are embedded in systems that are instituted in lived practices, and investigations of writing and technology should start with this embodied practice.

Twitter, as a writing technology is always already situated in complex systems and networks while itsimultaneously supports and creates those networks. Twitter is interesting because of the ways that itcollapses boundaries between public and private, and the ways the networks it is enmeshed within affordthis collapse.

As danah boyd (2009) points out, the rise of social media technologies has led to a “blurring of public andprivate. These distinctions are normally structured around audience and context... These distinctions aremuch harder to manage when you have to contend with the shifts in how the environment isorganized”(p.7). The binary between public and private is shifting and hard and fast distinctions betweenwhat is considered public and what is private are increasingly difcult to make. The networks in whichTwitter is entrenched allow for and engage with this collapse between public and private, and I investigatehere some of the ways that Twitter affords this collapse.

This brief paper investigates the ways I, as a Twitter user, move between two Twitter proles, and theaffordances of Twitter as a writing technology, unpacking public vs private communication throughnotions of audience and networked communication. This paper situates myself as both researcher anduser in the centre of activity, looking at my own engagement with and interpretation of a six week stretch

on Twitter, engaging in what Haas calls “embodied practice” (p. 37) through looking at Twitter in use.

Evolution of a Twitter Prole

A Brief History

My rst Twitter prole, @PopCulture1 was created in January 2009 as a way to follow several actors I wasinterested in at the time. It took me several weeks to send my rst tweet, and it wasn’t until I posted myTwitter name on my LiveJournal account that I gained any followers. At that point, I began to engage insome back and forth conversation with several of my friends across media. Unlike LiveJournal, whichsupports long-form blogging, Twitter allowed my friends and I to have back and forth conversations that

could be asynchronous, which allowed for less time commitment than a synchronous chat.

I slowly began to follow other sites where I was a consistent commenter, linking, for example, my proleon avclub.com to my Twitter account. I began to follow both the writers of sites I followed, likeToplessRobot.com, as well as following other commenters that I frequently communicated with. Although

1 I spent some time thinking about whether or not I was going to share my alternate Twitter name, and decidedagainst it. As you’ll see, I view my @PopCulture Twitter prole as private and would like my information to remainso. Therefore, I’ll be using @PopCulture to refer to that Twitter account.

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I would consider many of the people I talk to through this Twitter prole to be friends, I have not met very many of them in person.

Despite the fact that my Twitter prole is linked to my other proles across varied web-spaces, it is notconnected to my real name or any accounts that connect back to my “real life”.

I rst received tweets via iPhone, but when I moved to the States my phone was incompatible with American networks, and I ended up with a cheap pay-as-you-go phone that doesn’t support posting toTwitter. Although I still get tweets sent to my phone, any conversation takes place entirely on mycomputer. I use Tweet-Deck occasionally, although given my web habits it makes more sense for me tokeep a tab in Firefox perpetually open to my prole.

My second Twitter prole, @slhedge was created January 13 th 2011 specically for a Writing Technologiesclass. I was initially uncertain as to whether or not I wanted to use the @PopCulture Twitter for the class,but I decided that I wanted to create a “professional” Twitter - one that would support academic pursuitsand would avoid crossover from my private identity into my academic one. I decided to use my real name

in my username, using the same combination that myBSU email address does to promote crossover. I use my

full name and actual location and my prole mentionsthat I am graduate student at BSU.

There is very little crossover between the two proles.The only identifying feature the two share is the avatar- a cartoon of a Bat-Penguin.

At rst, I had trouble navigating between my twoTwitter proles. I would have one open at a time on mycomputer, and at rst would post similar kinds of things to either Twitter. For example, on January 18th Isent 4 tweets responding to the show Million Dollar

Money Drop from my @slhedge prole, as that was theprole I had open at the time. This is the kind of

activity typically posted to the @PopCulture Twitter. However, shortly after that date I began keeping separate browsers open with a Twitter prole open in each.

Follow(ers)(ing)

@PopCulture follows people/ websites/ groups that discuss pop culture almost exclusively. Even the fewfollowers I have on that prole that I have met in real life, I met online rst through discussion boards,communities or chat centered around discussion of pop culture. Some examples of people I follow on thisprole are @avclub and all of the writers at The AV Club, @cracked and all of the columnists forCracked.com, @neilhimself (author Neil Gaiman), @wilw (actor Wil Wheaton), @God-Damned_Batman

and other “joke accounts that post in character, @netix_instant, an account that posts new titles thathave been added to Netix Instant, and @Stephenathome, Stephen Colbert’s account.

The people that follow me tend to be friends that I know from other social spaces like LiveJournal. Weoften carry over conversations from one place to another - for example, many of us will have back andforth conversations about the show Supernatural while it is airing, then we will move to LiveJournal to postlonger episode reviews. I often engage with the writers on my favorite sites; for example, I have frequentdiscussions with a writer for a pop culture website about bad movies, and our conversations sometimescontinue in the comment sections of his reviews.

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Just the Facts:

The six weeks that make up this brief studyspan January 13th 2011 to Feburary 21st 2011at 4pm.

In those six weeks, I sent 889 tweets from@PopCulture and 250 from @slhedge. My@slhedge prole has 26 followers and isfollowing 52 people. My @PopCulture prolehas sent a total of 22, 434 tweets, has 126followers and is following 187 people.



@slhedge follows people that I either know personally ina professional, academic capacity, people in the eld, orother groups/ people related to BSU or teaching.Examples of people that I follow include faculty andclassmates at BSU, @spinuzzi, @rmhoward (Comp/Rhet

scholar Rebecca Moore Howard), @zephoria (danaboyd), @designrelated, @ProfHacker and @bsuenglish(the account for the BSU English department).

The people that have followed me back tend to be peopleI know in person already, like faculty or colleagues. Theconversations that I have tend to be with people I knowin meat-space - for example, while I have back and forthconversations with actors on my @PopCulture account, Irarely @reply anyone from @slhedge unless I knowthem.

Although Twitter has the capability to list the people Ifollow and therefore allow me to separate the pop culturepeople and the academic, my tweets and conversations would still be visible to all of my followers. Adding academic followers to my pop culture Twitter would mean that my tweets would be public to all followers.

Private vs. Public

The rest of this paper will investigate the ways Twitter is both public and private, and my ownunderstanding of the ways my proles are both public and private. As boyd says, the binary betweenpublic and private is collapsing with the rise of social media, and I will look at the ways Twitter as awriting technology affords this collapse.

The largest difference I see between my two accounts is the way I view the @PopCulture prole asprivate, despite the fact that both proles are set to the same privacy setting. All of my tweets go out to theInternet in the same way, and both proles have the same level of security. However, the disconnectbetween my “real life” identity and my @PopCulture prole mean that I view those tweets as private. Although they may be viewed by any number of audiences, they cannot be connected back to my livedexperiences and therefore seem less public. Conversely, my @slhedge prole was created to be explicitlypublic. It is connected to my real name and institutional afliation, and my tweets are to both fellowstudents and other scholars in my eld. There is a distinct difference between the public nature of the twoproles in my head, which inuences the writing I do for each.

The Grid of Intimacy

In a 2010 interview with Salon.com, Shirky discusses the “grid of intimacy”, pointing to the fact that “thedesire for intimacy in a largely dissociated environment... created a demand that made the Internet.”Shirky says that networked TV managed to create a grid of intimacy that encompassed 10 million viewers- everyone watching the same thing and creating shared social experiences. This intimacy is thefundamental difference I see between the two Twitter accounts I use: one is predicated on a personalintimacy with the people I know and work with while being situated in a scholastic context that defraysintimacy. The other account attempts to create an intimacy with strangers/ the Internet at large throughshared social experiences - for example, tweeting throughout an episode of a show.

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Comics:

A brief example to highlight differencebetween the two proles would be my

engagement with comics across the twoproles.

@PopCulture follows 8 different proles whoare all producers of webcomics.

@slhedge follows @scottmccloud, one of thegerminal thinkers on comics theory.

The difference between the two is thedifference between consumption anddiscussion of pop culture and the explicitacademics and theorizing of the same.



Twitter and the Information Network

Hashtags

One of the ways that Twitter maintains and creates networks is through the use of hashtags. Users add aword or words after a #, which makes all tweets on a particular topic immediately searchable. Hashtags

are a way of making tweets public to a larger audience beyond those already following you.

My use of hashtags varies widely across the two accounts, which demonstrates the differences between theaudiences of my two proles and the ways that I choose to interact between them.

I rarely use hashtags in my @PopCulture prole. Of 46 hashtags used, 37 of them are #Supernatural, thehashtag for a show I watch on Friday nights. 25 of those were sent in a single night when myself andseveral other Twitter users decided to see if we could make #Supernatural a trending topic. Although Ifrequently discuss the show, I rarely use the hashtag, as I am not attempting to be part of a largerconversation. I don’t care if my tweets can be found by others beyond my list of followers - most of mytweets are specically to the people I know on my list. The other 9 hashtags were used stylistically toemphasize a point. For example, I use

the tag #stilloncampus whencomplaining about long hours kept oncampus, and not as a way to connectwith a larger audience.

Conversely, my @slhedge prole is farmore invested in joining largerconversations. I sent 15 tweets thatincluded hashtags, 12 of whichreferenced the hashtag of our #9inecollaborative. There was a much lowerincidence of “joke” tags, including

one when working on a classassignment (#grumpy). Although thehigher numbers of using a hashtag that speaks to a large group is due inpart to the stipulations of the class andthe necessity of using Twitter, I am farmore invested in the ways that mytweets reach a larger audience.

The ways I use hashtags to engagewith a larger system/ network demonstrates some of the ways

Twitter as a technology challenges thebinary between public and privatespace. @replies and conversation

Much of my chatter on Twitter - onboth proles - is in the form of conversation and @replies. For example, of the total 250 tweets sent from @slhedge, 159 of them were

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Direct Messaging

I found that I was using the Direct Messaging function far moreoften on my academic Twitter. In the six weeks, there were 58DM’s from @slhedge to 6 different people (a signicantpercentage of my mutual followers), whereas my @Popcultureprole had 6 DM’s to only two different people.

The direct messages from @PopCulture were both sending myphone number to people I was meeting up with so they couldtext/call, as my phone doesn’t support tweeting. However, theDM’s from @slhedge were much more broad, typically

commenting on events in class that we didn’t want everyone to beable to read.

As my @PopCulture prole is not connected to my lived identity,I nd that I am far freer in the types of comments I amcomfortable making - I don’t care if comments about my sex life,for example, are made public because those comments cannot beconnected back to Stephanie Hedge. However, I am wary of thekinds of comments that are made on my @slhedge prole, andwary of who is watching that prole. For example, a fellowclassmate and I were discussing comments made by anothermember of our pedagogy class and we wanted to keep ourthoughts private. I am less concerned about who is watching my@PopCulture prole, and therefore rarely use the DM function.

As Twitter straddles the line between public and private, I foundthat the affordances of direct messaging became more importantthe more public I felt my prole to be - it is one way that Twittercan be both private and public and collapses that binary.



@replies, and several of those were sent to more than one person.

Twitter affords back and forth communication like this in two ways: the rst is in the design, wherehovering over a tweet gives the user an option to reply. Posting a response is as simple as pushing a button- as Shirky (2008) would say, the cost of sharing and communication is low (p. 48-9). The other way thatTwitter affords conversation is through feedback that can be both synchronous and asynchronous. Posting

to Twitter can create immediate back and forth conversation, like those my colleagues and I engage induring class time. Unlike chat programs that also support synchronous communication, tweets stay liveand users can respond to them even after hours have passed, providing more opportunities for feedback and replies. Users do not have to be in the same place or on Twitter at the same time to engage in long conversations.

Feedback

As Norman (2008) points out, feedback is necessary to any good design (p. 27), as users need to know thattheir actions have had an impact on the world. Twitter provides for this feedback in the form of the@reply and back and forth conversation. Our words are not simply shouted into a void, but rather arealways already situated into meaningful contexts and networks. Twitter hashtags, which I discussed above,

are one way of providing for that feedback, as are @reply conversations. Twitter as a technology isdesigned to support the kinds of feedback that are required for meaningful interaction with technologyand situate users in complex networks and ecologies. This cycle of feedback is a part of what makesTwitter compelling as a writing technology, and also what situates Twitter between public and private. Alltweets are sent into the public sphere, as boyd says, but the responses may be private.

Tweeting in Place

I have discovered that the vast majority of my Tweets occur when I am engaged in doing something. Although some of my tweets are the kind of “I’m bored” shouting into the emptiness of the Internet,most of them are driven by what I am doing at any given time, and are generally seeking validation forwhat I am doing.

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A study In Capslock

One immediately noticeable difference between my two proles is my overall tone, which is demonstratedthrough the prevalence of capslock.

@PopCulture had 181 tweets that were entirely in capslock.

@slhedge had only 24 tweets which contained one or more words in capslock, and only 4 tweets writtenentirely in capslock.

Clearly there is a huge difference in the ways I use capslock between the two proles. My tendancy to capslock seems to be tied to subject matter - the times that my tweets are entirely Capslock in my professional prole are

related to pop culture. For example, my rst capslock tweet is sharing the link for the new Game of Thronestrailer, and subsequent capslock tweets are related to the shows Cupcake Wars and Million Dollar Money Drop. Asthere is far less pop culture discussion on my academic prole, there is far less capslocking.



The difference between the two proles is what I amusually doing when I tweet in either one and where Iam when I tweet. The vast majority of my @slhedgetweets are from when I am on campus, either inclass or in my ofce doing readings for class. Tweetsabout the readings or back and forth conversations

between myself and colleagues are centered aroundschool, while I am physically on campus. Only 20 of 250 tweets were sent on a weekend, and the bulk of the tweets were sent on Tuesday/ Thursday—thedays that I have classes.

Conversely, my @PopCulture account sees the mostuse when I am sitting on my couch. The vastmajority of the tweets are sent during evenings andweekends, generally when I am watching TV orengaging in conversation on other spaces. Forexample, on Friday, February 4th, new episodes of

Supernatural returned and I sent 106 tweets in thespan of two hours, from 9:00pm - 11:00pm,discussing the new episode with different people.These tweets all looked different - capslockyexcitement with other fans of the show, measuredcritique with AVClub.com critics and othercommenters, and excited comments to my own feed.However, an hour after the episode had ended, myfriends came over for drinks, and my tweets stopped.Once I was no longer engaged in the episode and,perhaps more importantly, sitting on my couch, Ilost the desire to tweet. All it took was movement

from the couch to the kitchen to stop my tweets,even though my laptop moved with me.

One of the key affordances of Twitter is that it supports this kind of movement when tweeting - I am ableto tweet from anywhere that I have my laptop (and previously, my phone). Of course, not having myphone limits the kinds of conversation I can have - I am unable to engage in “bus tweets”, like @Spinuzzi,for example. The conversation is constrained and dened by space specically - where I am denes what Iwill tweet.

My ‘private’ prole, @PopCulture feels private partly because I am in private, generally, when I send thetweets. I am in my house and on my couch, engaged in personal conversations inscrutable to those whoare not “in the know”. My ‘public’ prole feels that way because I am generally tweeting in public spaces

and to public ends.

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“Things...” A Brief Study

Interestingly, there is one type of tweet that Iconsistently make across both Twitter proles,which is a stylized way of giving an update on whatI am doing/ have done. The tweets always start

with “Things” and although they are phraseddifferently, they always relate to my activities. Forexample, I posted the following tweets to mydifferent Twitter feeds on February 3rd:

@PopCulture: Things I don't want to be doing:Reading for class; going to class; sitting on campus;thinking; discussing discourse communities.

@PopCulture: Things I am doing: See below.

@slhedge: Things I did today: WatchedSupernatural; ate toast. Things I did not do today:Readings for class. : (

Despite the acknowledged differences betweenaudience and purpose across the two proles, I stillmake some of the same rhetorical moves and usesome of the same language. I suspect that this isbased on the affordances of Twitter and the factthat the character count is so limited - with only 140characters to work with, I have found particularlanguage patterns that make arguments succinctlyand effectively, contributing to stylistic tics that staywith me despite very different purposes across mytwo proles.



Backchannel Communication

The bulk of my Tweets in my@slhedge prole are from when I wasin class, or reading books for class.For example, on February 3rd

between 5:00 and 6:15pm I sent 11tweets to a classmate who was absentfrom class, including her in theconversation. However, these tweetswere not simply reporting on thediscussion in class, but addedcommentary and inside jokes to theconversation. Although the tweetswere made publicly, they weredirected specically at my colleagueand were separate from and privateto the larger conversation in the class.

There is further investigation intotweeting as backchannel

communication here, but I wanted to point out the ways that tweeting during class is both public andprivate conversation - my conversations are public and open to anyone watching as well as other membersof the class, but they are private in the sense that they are “silent” discussion of classroom activity - aprivate back and forth between students.

Conclusion

The elasticity of Twitter as a medium allows for this movement between types of intimacy, allowing thesame user to navigate between levels of intimacy and privacy. As danah boyd (2009) says, “the culture of

Twitter is all about participation in a large public square” (p. 5), but the ways that interaction takes placeshifts between constructed social networks. Public does not necessarily mean public to everyone, and userscan customize the Twitter experience to reect and engage in differently public networks, as I have done.

This brief study only begins to look at some of the data collected over six weeks. There was far more datathan could be discussed here, and there is lots of room for further investigation of Twitter as a writing technology. For example, this paper has focused on the tweets that I have sent, largely ignoring the tweetssent by other people. Further study should investigate @mentions of either account by other people, forexample, or retweets as part of the network. I hope that this paper has suggested where conversationsabout Twitter can begin and opens the door to further reections on Twitter as a writing technologyembodied in networks that straddle public and private binaries.

Stephanie [email protected]

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Drunk Tweets

One thing I have been very careful to limit to my personal Twitter isthe incidence of “drunk tweets” - tweets sent while drinking or outsocially with friends. Despite the fact that both of my Twitter prolesare public, publishing “drunk tweets” to my academic prole feels like

making my personal life public in the wrong way. Conversely, many of my friends will tweet together while we are out socially on my privateprole.

For example, on January 29th, the friends I was with and I all postedthe same tweet: @PopCulture: BUT WHY IS ALL THE RUMGONE? ...SHIT. THE TEQUILA TOO. We then retweeted eachother, so that friends who followed all three of us had the samemessage pop up on their lists 9 times in a row. This is an example of the kinds of social grooming that I avoid on my academic Twitter -partly because I wouldn’t want faculty or future employers to seeunprofessional behaviour, but mostly because the genre of the drunk tweet is not one that has the same social cache among my academicfollowers.





[ Education Redefined; Twitter Use in the Classroom ]

Twitter is the most popular microblogging site, and it is often used as a listening and publishing tool forpublic use. Twitter’s structure may serve as a tool for public discourse; this structure can aid the primaryresearch of other users. One of the most recent trends in Twitter usage is how Twitter promotes the well-being of student collaboration in a classroom setting.

Introduction and Outside Research

Gabriela Grosseck and Carmen Holotescu (2008) dene Twitter as the most popular microblogging application/social network in modern education. Twitter helps students see education in a fun new ways,they argue. They also claim that Twitter fosters cognitive trials and encourages reective editing.

Many studies of Twitter’s use in the classroom have discussed how Twitter is a grammatical tool utilizing both listening and publishing. Contemporary uses of Twitter have expanded beyond simple status updatesand have clearly exceeded the expectations of its founders.

This study contributes to the ongoing research of Twitter use in the classroom. It relies primarily onsurvey data and interviews regarding the Twitter usage of participants to improve the understanding of Twitter use in the classroom.

Social network sites are changing the way the world communicates. Twitter initially began as a listening tool and has since merged into a publishing tool. ‘Listening’ involves following a user just to gaininformation, such as following a news source like CNN; ‘publishing,’ however, involves posting content in various forms of media.

Twitter also has affordances as a collaborative tool that allows educators to create accounts for bothgroups and individuals. One study by Kuroneko (2009) examines how students can post responses to aquestion on Twitter that can then be read by their peers, allowing for immediate feedback.

Grosseck and Holotescu (2008) discuss how Twitter contributes to the classroom community, and theauthors talk in detail about Twitter’s capabilities to help students explore collaborative writing and receivereader response in an informal setting. It is suggested that for students to become fully engaged inclassroom collaboration, they need to not only publish their thoughts, but listen to their classmates as well.

According to a study completed by researchers at the University of New Hampshire, eighty percent of faculty use social media for some aspect of their course (McHugh, 2011). Although, just how much of the‘social media’ they describe is attributable to Twitter is unnoted.

Twitter usage seems to be rising in popularity when one ries through all the research explaining how touse Twitter in the classroom. Online communities, such as OnlineColleges.net, offer instructive guidelines

for professors looking to implement these platforms. Although purely a guidance tool for a Twitter user,this site obviously regards Twitter’s format as both a listening and publishing tool. It suggests that studentscan “[c]ollaborate on projects,” and that professors can, “[m]ake announcements” about classroom eventsor procedures (“50 Ways to Use Twitter in the College Classroom,” 2009).

Twitter is often misunderstood, as it is seen to serve the same purposes as Facebook, where games andinstant click video links are the norm. It is easy for most to understand why Facebook is so popular, butTwitter doesn’t seem so accepting to rst time users. This is true for David Parry, an assistant professor of Emerging Media and Communications at the University of Texas at Dallas. Jeff Young (2008) explains

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that Parry did not understand Twitter and only made a Twitter account to encourage studentcollaboration. One could say that he wanted to listen, but once he fully grasped how publishing quick 140character notes could be listened to in real time, he became hooked to the network (Young, 2008).

Monica Rankin, another professor from the University of Texas at Dallas, conducted an experiment withTwitter in her classroom, trying to determine its usefulness to both students and herself. While she found

that it was useful to collaborate with the entire student body of a classroom, Twitter was limiting in its 140character posts. However, she noted that “it encouraged students to engage who otherwise would not,”and she discusses how students could listen to multiple streams while publishing to others at the same time(Rankin, 2011).

Methods

In our own research, we sought to further examine Twitter’s utilization in the classroom. We began ourdata collection by conducting an online survey that was sent randomly to students at Ball State University via email and social network sites, acquiring participation from twelve respondents. They were askedquestions regarding their Twitter use in the classroom and their feelings as to its affect on their educational

experience. We designed open-ended questions to allow for the study participants to add any informationthat could be further coded, helping us to derive additional insights inductively from their individualresponses.

We conducted an in-depth semi-structured interview with a journalism professor about his strategy forusing Twitter in his classes. We began our interview by asking the same questions that we asked onlinesurvey respondents, but we left room for follow-up questions that emerged during our conversation.

Findings

In the beginning, we thought that our data would reect similar ndings as the research we explored

before beginning the study. We were surprised to nd that research at our local site did not correlate withthese previous ndings.

As mentioned above, eighty percent of the faculty at the University of New Hampshire uses socialnetwork sites in their curriculum. However, we found very few students at Ball State University who usedTwitter in a classroom setting, and only two professors that encouraged Twitter usage. We also found thatout of the respondents using Twitter in the classroom, only thirty-three percent utilized hashtags to helporganize their classroom discussions. This was rather surprising because hashtags are a seemingly simpleway of organizing social interaction.

Although the majority of the respondents had not used Twitter in the classroom, they still had opinionsabout its potential usage. When the respondents were asked if they thought that Twitter would help

facilitate discussion in the classroom, only thirty-three percent answered in the afrmative. The rest of therespondents were neutral on the subject or did not think Twitter could be used in this way.

The respondents were also asked if they thought Twitter affected classroom collaboration in a positive ornegative way. Fifty-four percent felt that it was positive. One of the respondents elaborated on thisstatement by noting the backchannel of relevant discussion running parallel to the formal lecture, therebyhelping students to more fully grasp classroom concepts. The respondent also thought that Twitterpositively affected classroom collaboration because it provides a space where students and teachers alikecan quickly share and receive information.

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Along these lines, when asked why they thought Twitter is a tool being used in the classroom, therespondents mentioned its capabilities for quick and effective communication. Another respondent alsomentioned that Twitter is a tool that builds community among students, making for a better educationalexperience overall.

Most respondents thought Twitter was an effective tool to build relationships with their classmates andliked how Twitter could foster a sense of community. They used Twitter to easily keep in contact withclassmates in order to share class information or learn about each other to build friendships outside of theclassroom.

We were also interested to nd whom the respondents were following on Twitter, especially if they werefollowing anyone specically for a class, such as an academic or business source. We found that only a fewof the respondents followed specic users for a class. The majority of the respondents were just following news organizations, their friends, or celebrities. One respondent only wrote, ‘Justin Bieber.’

Discussion

It was in ENG 431—Rhetoric, Writing and Emerging Media—now known primarily by its hashtag,#4E1, that we were rst introduced to Twitter’s usefulness in a classroom setting. In our previousexperience, Twitter usage was frowned upon during classroom discussion time. This was not the case for#4E1, however, where the professor asked each student to create a Twitter account and encouragedstudents to not only follow classmates, but also people they were interested in. The professor created the#4E1 hash tag for the class to help organize pertinent information. Whenever the professor or a studentwanted to post something that was of interest to class discussion, all they had to do was add #4E1 to theend of their posts. In this particular class, the use of the hashtag allowed students to contribute to classdiscussion, even if it was not verbally, or even in the classroom.

This activity sparked our interest on the subject of Twitter, and hence, the current study. Was Twitter use

in the classroom normal for a classroom setting, or was this one of those freak classes where you create aweb blog that you never really use and are unsure of why you created it? This was quickly answered asTwitter blew up with tweets from fellow classmates, and before we could fully grasp what was happening,Twitter had become the place for collaboration in and outside of the classroom.

Our study began with the simple question of how and why this happened. What aspect of human agencycaused our classmates to nd Twitter so useful for a class like #4E1? After paying attention to the subjectsthat our classmates tweeted about, we conducted some research to see if other professors or classrooms ingeneral used Twitter as a source of collaboration.

Because of the small response rate for surveys, and because of the need to triangulate our survey results,we turned to professors that use Twitter in the classroom. After all, it was suggested by a previous study

that eighty percent of professors at one institution use social media for some aspect in their classes.Therefore, we interviewed a journalism professor who we hoped would provide us with some insights.

The professor seemed to suggest that Twitter was a tool aiding in listening as well as publishing. Thisthought was interesting when compared to our survey response where many respondents admitted tofollowing people, but never tweeting. According to what this professor suggested, these users were missing out on part of Twitter’s function. After the interview with the professor, we re-examined our data only tond that further on in the survey, these respondents stated that they were unclear about Twitter’s overallpurpose. This was exactly in line with what the professor had claimed. This insight provided a new

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breakthrough for us; our circles were nally coming to ends.

One of the recurring themes in our research was respondents’ uncertainty regarding Twitter’s potentialfunction in the classroom. Most of the responses that were recorded tended to take a neutral or unsurestance on the questions that were being asked. From this data, combined with insights from our interview,we inferred that these respondents had not experienced Twitter in a classroom setting or they had not yet

come to realize Twitter’s full potential to enhance the classroom experience, as we had in #4E1.

The time period for this IRB approved study was limited, which in turn narrowed our data collectionperiod. The low response rate to our survey was disappointing, and with more time, we would have lovedto nd more participants. We also would have liked to include more input from other professors oncampus. Unfortunately, busy schedules and time constraints did not allow for this. Despite these setbacks,we feel that the study was an overall success. It was interesting to nd out how Twitter use in the classroomdiffers at Ball State University compared to other universities where similar studies have been conducted.

We have personally had positive experiences with our use of Twitter in the classroom. It has enabled us toform relationships with people that might not have occurred without this medium. Twitter itself aided inthe completion of this study, and we feel that it positively impacts the educational process.

Melissa [email protected]

Sarah [email protected]

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[ Future Directions ]

The basis of these microstudies lies in a qualitative approach as dened by Creswell (2009), to incorporate“research that honors an inductive style, a focus on individual meaning, and the importance of rendering the complexity of a situation” (p. 4). These studies differ from macrostudies in their attention to theindividual over the aggregate (Stake, 2010). Through such microanalysis, our research sought to examine

the actual, embodied human interactions surrounding SNS activities.

By studying individual cases of actual users, we have stepped away from the widely implementedquantitative approaches more typical of social networking studies to examine the particular: the individualaccounts of real people in real settings. Located behind the measurements of numerical data are actualhuman agents interacting with SNS for specic, individualized reasons. Taking a qualitative approach tostudy these interactions has allowed for a closer, more in-depth look at the actual, meaningful ways thatthese technologies exist in lived practices.

As users of technology, we constantly take part in reciprocal, co-evolving relationships. Engaging withtechnology causes a transformation in the use and purpose of the technology, as well as a transformationin the actions of the user. When numerous users are involved, such as in online social networking

platforms, the relationships occurring between users also evolve. A closer look at these relationships entailsan examination of “the interplay of multiple motives of multiple actors” (Kaptelinin and Nardi, 2006, p.153).

These microstudies provide such an examination.

While they focus on different themes within SNS, they all consider user interaction through examining “the why of activity and not just the how” (Kaptelinin and Nardi, 2006, p. 153). These interactions,however, do not take place in a solitary, individual environment but are embedded in social meaning (Dourish, 2001; Kaptelinin & Nardi, 2006). Dourish explains that “the key question is to understand howthe relationship between technology and social action comes to be worked out in different situations, andfrom these to understand how the features of technological design and the features of everyday social

settings are related” (p. 97). Therefore, it is important to look at the meaning of artifact and humaninteraction as it is embedded in the functioning of a society.

We feel that such an understanding can be gleaned from microstudies. While they certainly don’t provideall of the answers behind user activity, these studies act as a starting point for further discussions andongoing research.

We hope to continue seeing qualitative approaches redene the way that we look at human-computerinteractions. A rich resource with a prolic collection of additional studies exists in danah boyd’sbibliographies on research of social network sites and twitter and microblogging . For those interested inembarking upon similar research projects, we have included a brief annotated bibliography. The sourcesin this bibliography spurred much of our interest in qualitative studies of writing technologies, and we

hope they can serve as a similar jumping off point for those wishing to engage in like research.

Emily [email protected]

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http://www.danah.org/researchBibs/sns.php


http://www.danah.org/researchBibs/twitter.php








[ annotated bibliography ]

Creswell, J. (2009). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Los Angeles: SagePublications.

Creswell’s Research Design provides an informative, clear overview of research work, unpacking thedifferences between qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches for the entire researchprocess. This text walks researchers through the steps necessary to plan and implement a study, providing relevant examples to direct the reader at each step. A solid reference text for researchers of all skill levels, Research Design functions as a valuable starting text for research projects.

Dourish, P. (2001). Where the action is: The foundations of embodied interaction. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

In this text, Dourish introduces readers to the term “embodied interaction,” a new approach calling forhuman-computer interaction (HCI) that focuses on the engaged, lived practices of users of technology.Dourish seeks to concentrate HCI as a eld that “places interaction at the center of the picture…not onlyas what is being done, but also as how is being done” (p. 4). Ideal for readers of multiple backgrounds andelds, Dourish’s book makes a compelling argument for the need of ongoing study in the interplay

between computer systems and the everyday lives and performances of those using them.

Haas, C. (1996). Writing technology: Studies on the materiality of literacy. New York: Routledge.

In this book, Haas examines the relationship between writing and technology, arguing that the two are“inextricably linked—indeed that imagining writing without technology is both practically impossible andtheoretically nonsensical” (p. xii). Haas argues against views of technology as transparent or all-powerfuland suggests that the eld of Technology Studies can open up insights into the link between literacy andtechnology and the new types of writing continuing to emerge. Haas includes studies of her own torepresent this symbiotic relationship and to develop the concept of “writing as an embodied practice, apractice based in culture, in mind, and in body…” (p. xv).

Kaptelinin, V., & Nardi, B. A. (2006). Acting with technology: activity theory and interaction design. Cambridge:The MIT Press.

Kaptelinin and Nardi’s book proposes activity theory as a means to better understand the relationshipbetween humans and technology. In this inuential discussion, the authors include a comprehensiveexplanation of the major components of activity theory, which views everyday, mundane activities as theinitiators of meaning and consciousness. This includes an examination of the ways that people act withtechnology, valuing the action itself as the integral mediator between subject and object. This book furthers previous conversations of Kaptelinin and Nardi that support activity theory “as a framework forthinking about human activity as it is expressed in the use of technology” (p. 9). The authors outline thistheory in rich detail, arguing for its inclusion in ongoing studies of human and technology interaction.

Norman, D. (1988). The design of everyday things. New York: Basic Books.

While Norman’s book is not new to the eld, its presence retains value for anyone interested in thinking about the relationship between design and usability. Norman argues for an increased attention to theactual user in the design of all products and insists that much design not considering this user results inineffective, confusing and useless outcomes. Norman provides a clear overview of topics such asaffordances, constraints and visibility within design. This argument for human-centered products can beapplied to multiple settings of use, especially that of writing technologies that our studies focused upon.

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Stake, R. (2010). Qualitative research: Studying how things work . New York: The Guildford Press.

Stake’s book is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in undertaking qualitative research. Thecompelling, readable prose encourages readers to examine “how things work” through the study of theparticular based in experiential knowledge. Stake argues for the importance of looking at the common asunique and the value of studying the individual. With rich detail and interesting examples, Stake walks

readers through the steps necessary to plan, implement and present qualitative research projects.

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Microstudies of Microblogging | A White Paper