Tweeting Social Justice: How Social Work Faculty Use Twitter

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Tweeting Social Justice How Social Work Faculty Use Twitter

Article in British Journal of Social Work middot October 2018

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Tweeting Social Justice How SocialWork Faculty Use Twitter

Johanna K P Greeson Seongho An Jia XueAllison E Thompson and and Chao Guo

University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy amp Practice Philadelphia PA 19104 USA

Correspondence to Johanna K P Greeson Assistant Professor University of

Pennsylvania School of Social Policy amp Practice 3701 Locust Walk Philadelphia

PA 19104 USA E-mail jgreesonsp2upennedu

Abstract

Social media are considered useful tools for academic purposes Our exploratory study

offers insight into the use of Twitter by social work faculty in the USA Employing an

online survey this study investigates Twitter usage among a sample of social work

faculty (n frac14 274) from the top-fifty-ranked MSW programmes in the USA Slightly

more than half of the participants had Twitter accounts the majority of whom use

Twitter as part of their academic work The most common motivations for using

Twitter include promoting onersquos research raising awareness about an area of research

and engaging in networking with peers This study contributes to the literature by

describing the prevalence and patterns of Twitter usage among social work academics

and lays a foundation for future research investigating its effectiveness in increasing

awareness and promoting changes related to social justice issues

Keywords Twitter social media social justice MSW programmes social work

education

Accepted October 2017

Introduction

Widespread use of social media has changed the environment of com-

munication in many aspects of our society over the decade People use

social media in a variety of ways sharing life events and photos with

close family and friends building professional networks and promoting

The Author(s) 2018 Published by Oxford University Press on behalf

British Journal of Social Work (2018) 0 1ndash20doi 101093bjswbcx146

Downloaded from httpsacademicoupcombjswadvance-article-abstractdoi101093bjswbcx1464811938by gueston 18 January 2018

causes and issues they care about Academics have incorporated socialmedia into their disciplines for research and education purposesA Nature survey shows that approximately 45 million researchers haveaccounts on ResearchGate with another 10000 new users every daySocial media such as ResearchGate are lsquochanging science in a way thatis not entirely foreseeablersquo (Noorden 2014 p 126) University facultyuse social media to interact with students (Moran et al 2011) dissemi-nate knowledge and resources related to their work (Priem andCostello 2010) and share information on academic conferences (Rosset al 2011) Various scientific disciplines use social media for academicpurposes including health professionals (Antheunis et al 2013) econo-mists (Fox 2012) physicists and mathematicians (Schriger et al 2011)and medical educators (Cheston et al 2013) Twitter in particular isused to share academic resources (Veletsianos 2012) facilitate educa-tion and learning (Grosseck and Holotescu 2008) exchange ideas(Ebner et al 2010) and promote interactions with scholars in other partsof the world (Dunlap and Lowenthal 2009)

Across all sectors of social work including practitioners students aca-demicseducators and researchers there is increased appreciation of theimportance of proficiency with social media as part of practice andresearch efforts (Best et al 2016) In addition government and non-profit organisations use social media to share information about profes-sional services and mission-related work (Guo and Saxton 2014) Socialwork academics are called to engage with practitioners in the field sothat the fruits of research efforts more effectively reach practice com-munities Towards this end social media offer opportunities to dissemi-nate academic work more broadly reaching much larger audiences andfostering new ways to collaborate around social justice issues In addi-tion recently the American Academy of Social Work and SocialWelfare (AASWSW) has promoted the use of technology for socialgood as one of the twelve challenges for social work (Berzin et al2015)mdasha groundbreaking initiative to champion social progress poweredby science The AASWSW advocates that innovative applications ofnew digital technology such as the use of social media by social work-ers has the potential to help social and human services reach more peo-ple with greater impact on our most pressing social problems (Berzinet al 2015) However it remains unknown whether and how social workfaculty use social media as part of their academic and scholarly work

In this study we address this gap in our knowledge by examining howsocial work faculty use Twitter in their professional academic livesTwitter has recently been examined as a classroom tool in universityeducation (McArthur and Bostedo-Conway 2012) This study is animportant step in furthering our understanding of the use of Twitteramong higher-education faculty by focusing on social work academicswho collectively teach the more than 650000 individuals pursuing social

of 20 Johanna K P Greeson et al

work as their profession across the USA (Bureau of Labor Statistics2017) Our results provide insights about the nature of Twitter usageamong social work academics and recommendations for how we can bet-ter avail ourselves of this ever-evolving and expanding technology as weboth educate future social workers and strive to build a more just andequitable society

Social media and social work academics prior literature

Social media allow academics to enhance teaching and research opportu-nities University faculty use social media to enhance the interactionbetween instructors and students and enable students to expand theirlearning opportunities (Turner 2013) Social media can be used as anew form of communication for reading commenting and discussingwithout any restrictions of time and space in the university classroom(Ebner et al 2010) Following relevant professionals or organisations intheir field of study on social media supports student learning and profes-sional development (Dunlap and Lowenthal 2009) In particularTwitter offers a platform for students to map their learning by askingquestions adding hashtags and compiling lists of feeds which extendsthe classroom and helps develop their public presentation skills(Greenhow and Gleason 2012) One study found that the use of Twitterin class discussion helps strengthen studentsrsquo understandings of professio-nal competencies and behaviours (Hitchcock and Battista 2013)

The use of social media by academics is not without its risksDownsides include copyright issues and that it can be time-consumingmicroblogging contents must be updated frequently to be successful(Bonetta 2007) Despite such challenges recent empirical studies showthat social media have proliferated throughout academia Moran andcolleagues (2011) have conducted a survey with 1920 teaching faculty inthe USA and found that about two-thirds of faculty use at least onesocial media site and that one-third use social media in their class ses-sions Another study of 711 academics worldwide surveyed publicly onTwitter by Lupton (2014) shows that more than 90 per cent of facultywho use social media do so for their work

Scholars can use social media in their research to collaborate withothers across schools and countries in a timely manner share pedagogi-cal practice and build an online research community (Grosseck andHolotescu 2008) Scholars use Twitter to share information resourcesand media related to their work share information about their class-room and students request assistance from and offer suggestions to oth-ers and engage in social commentary (Veletsianos 2012) They can alsoshare links to peer-reviewed resources in order to keep current withtopics in onersquos field of research (Priem and Costello 2010) circulate

Tweeting Social Justice Page 3 of 20

draft forms of academic work for quick comments and disseminate infor-mation on academic conferences (Ross et al 2011) These activities cre-ate opportunities for academic support outside of existing networks byconnecting users with a wider audience outside of traditional academia(Lupton 2014)

Social media may also change how scholarship is generated anddisseminated For example Twitter posts by the general public have pro-vided scientists with information about earthquakes in real time(Greenhow and Gleason 2014) Twitter also creates the possibilities ofconnecting social work academics worldwide For example the hashtagSWvirtualpal on Twitter was developed to connect social workers glob-ally and was created by academics in the USA and UK The use ofhashtags on Twitter has the potential to expand social workersrsquo under-standing of social work practice in other parts of the world (Hitchcock2016)

Recently a study on social media use across different disciplinesreveals clear disciplinary differences in how scholars use social media(Davis et al 2012) Social work researchers assert that there are distinctreasons to bring social media into their pedagogy Ahmedani and col-leagues (2011) recognise the emergence of a new educational technologyand argue that social workers must be prepared to use these tools wiselyand so social work educators should help students prepare for futurecareers by cultivating social media literacies Robbins and Singer (2014)suggest ways to infuse social media into social work education Theyargue that social media can be used to maximise the time social workstudents spend learning content outside the classroom and get updatedknowledge efficiently For example by following legislators and advo-cacy organisations on Twitter social work students can learn aboutrecent changes in social policies that published textbooks do not containThe authors argue that social work educators should prepare studentsfor integrating technological innovation to best serve clientsAdditionally they suggest that social media can be used by social workacademics for social advocacy For example social work scholars canpost a news item about gender or racial discrimination and provide rele-vant academic content on Twitter

Although most prior research emphasises the importance of under-standing the potential of social media in social work education no stud-ies have examined how academics in social work use social mediagenerally or Twitter specifically Therefore despite some recommenda-tions for social media use in social work education being present in theliterature we know very little about the actual use of Twitter amongsocial work academic faculty This study attempts to address this gap byanswering the following research questions

To what extent are academics in social work using Twitterprofessionally

What motivations do they have for using Twitter

By answering these questions we hope to offer insights about the use ofsocial media and Twitter among social work academics in the USA thenaddress to what extent Twitter use among social work academics is asso-ciated with improved communication and networking with colleaguesand to what extent Twitter use impacts the dissemination and implemen-tation of social work academicsrsquo work

Method

Instrument

An online survey using Qualtrics survey software was developed bythe authors to answer questions about social work academicsrsquo experiencewith and use of Twitter As a pilot test the survey instrument (seeSupplementary Material) was distributed to seventy-seven faculty mem-bers from a select number of MSW programmes Sixteen faculty memberscompleted the survey Based on feedback from this pilot test the surveywas modified to improve its design (eg including a progress bar)

The final survey included thirty-three questions twenty-five closeditems with pre-coded response options and eight questions that requiredextended written responses In addition to demographics participantswere asked to report on whether they have a Twitter account and toprovide their Twitter IDs that allow access to their tweets used for anon-ymous quotes for this study They were asked about their experiencerelating to a variety of Twitter activities such as frequency of tweetsand retweets number of followers issues they tweet about and motiva-tion to use Twitter This study was approved by the universityInstitutional Review Board

Recruitment and procedure

The online survey was conducted from 2 to 25 February 2016 At firstan invitation e-mail was sent to all assistant associate and full professorsthrough their school e-mails obtained from university websites The invi-tation included a brief description of the survey instructions on how tocomplete it and the link to the survey After the first round tworeminder e-mails were sent to those who had not responded to our invi-tation The survey link closed 21 days after the second reminder e-mailThe response rate of this study was 194 per cent which is consideredreasonable for internet-based surveys (Im and Chee 2004)

Participants

Participants were recruited from the top-fifty-ranked social work pro-grammes in the USA as reported by the 2014 US News amp WorldReport This report only surveys MSW-level programmes the terminaldegree in social work We desired to investigate Twitter use amongthose who educate these future leaders of the social work fieldParticipants were recruited from the top-fifty-ranked MSW programmesas reported by the 2014 US News amp World Report The initial samplesize was 1446 faculty members After sending the first-invitation e-mailwe excluded (i) faculty who sent an automatic reply saying they wouldbe out of office more than two weeks (n frac14 18) and (ii) individuals withundeliverable e-mail addresses (nfrac14 18) With a response rate of 194 percent the final sample included 274 participants Over half of therespondents were men (53 per cent) Approximately two-thirds of theparticipants identified as white (6679 per cent) followed by blackAfrican American (985 per cent) and Asian (474 per cent) The aver-age age of the respondents was 4728 years (SD frac14 093) Over half ofthe respondents were working at a public university (54 per cent) fol-lowed by non-profit private university (2847 per cent) for-profit privateuniversity (438 per cent) and liberal arts college (146 per cent)Approximately one-third of the participants were teaching in MSW (30per cent) and PhD (27 per cent) programmes Approximately one-thirdof the respondents were assistant professors (3394 per cent) followedby associate professors (3358 per cent) and full professors (219 percent)

Results

Twitter use among social work academics

Of the 274 faculty members who participated in this study most (n frac14 254927 per cent) had heard of Twitter and approximately half of the partici-pants reported having a Twitter account (532 per cent n frac14 146) Table 1contains the results of a series of chi-square analyses exploring significantsubgroup differences in Twitter usage among the participants Participantsunder the age of fifty years were significantly more likely (583 per cent)to have a Twitter account than participants over the age of fifty years((430 per cent) X2 (1 N frac14 239) frac14 557 p frac14 002) Asian participantswere significantly less likely (154 per cent) to report having a Twitteraccount than non-Asian participants ((533 per cent) X2 (1 N frac14 240)frac14 708 p frac14 001) Social work faculty teaching exclusively in the macroconcentration were marginally more likely (618 per cent) to havea Twitter account than participants teaching in only the clinical

concentration ((488 per cent) X2 (1 N frac14 171) frac14 293 p frac14 009) Macro

social work refers to lsquoan essential component of social work practice tar-

geting change in organizations communities and political systemsrsquo

(Pritzker and Applewhite 2015 p 191) while micro or clinical social

work indicates individual-level direct interventionIn terms of other demographic characteristics participants who

reported having a Twitter account did not significantly differ from those

without a Twitter account on gender ethnicity regional location higher-

education setting (ie private versus public university) and career stage

(ie assistant associate full professor)We further analysed the nature of Twitter use among participants who

reported having a Twitter account (see Table 2) One-fifth (199 per

cent n frac14 29) of participants with Twitter accounts reported logging on

to Twitter at least once a day and nearly half logged on at least once a

week (466 per cent n frac14 68) Among those with a Twitter account

roughly one-quarter (233 per cent n frac14 34) had twenty-five or fewer fol-

lowers one-quarter (253 per cent n frac14 37) had 26ndash100 followers one-

quarter (240 per cent n frac14 35) had 101ndash500 followers and approximately

one-tenth (116 per cent n frac1417) had more than 500 followers The rest

either did not know how many followers they had (n frac14 17) or did not

answer the question (n frac14 6) The number of followers indicates the level

Table 1 Subgroup differences in Twitter usage among social work academics

N Have a Twitter

account ()

Teaching concentration Macro only 89 618 293dagger

Clinical only 82 488

Gender Male 75 467 273

Female 168 530

Age lt50 years 132 583 557

50 years 107 430

Race White 183 536 163

Black 27 556 023

Asian 13 154 708

Multi-racial 13 385 090

Hispanic 14 714 247

Location North-east 60 500 001

Mid-west 83 530 029

South 60 500 001

West 23 478 008

University ownership Private 90 511 000

Public 154 513

Faculty position Assistant prof 93 516 000

Associate prof 92 533 020

Full prof 60 483 030

daggerplt 010 plt005 plt001

of potential audience size (Dow et al 2013) Existing studies measurethe audience size by the number of lsquofollowersrsquo because the more fol-lowers you have on Twitter the people you can reach the more peoplecan read your tweets and the larger effect of your online word of mouth(Ju et al 2014 Rui et al 2013)

When asked to estimate the number of tweets they currently haveroughly a quarter (233 per cent n frac14 34) of the participants did notknow and of those who knew (n frac14 106) half (509 per cent n frac14 54)reported having fifty or fewer tweets 16 per cent (n frac14 17) had 51ndash200tweets 14 per cent (n frac14 15) had 201ndash500 tweets and 189 per cent(n frac14 20) had more than 500 tweets Roughly one-quarter (274 per centn frac14 40) reported following fewer than twenty-five people or organ-isations and over half (541 per cent n frac14 79) reported following fewerthan 100

Table 2 Nature of Twitter usage (N frac14 146)

Frequency Percentage

Number of followers

0ndash25 34 233

26ndash50 16 110

51ndash100 21 144

101ndash200 16 110

201ndash500 19 130

501ndash1000 10 69

1001ndash2000 4 27

2000thorn 3 21

I donrsquot know 17 116

Missing values 6 41

Numbers of peopleorgs following

0ndash25 40 274

26ndash50 21 144

51ndash100 18 123

101ndash200 17 116

201ndash500 17 116

501ndash1000 9 62

1001ndash2000 6 41

2000thorn 1 07

Missing values 6 41

Numbers of tweets

0ndash25 43 295

26ndash50 11 75

51ndash100 8 55

101ndash200 9 62

201ndash500 15 103

501ndash1000 6 41

1001ndash2000 4 27

2000thorn 10 69

Missing values 6 41

Motivation to use Twitter among social work academics

Using a seven-point Likert-type scale (1 frac14 strongly agree 7 frac14 stronglydisagree) participants were asked to rate their motivation for usingTwitter across eighteen items (see Table 3) The motivations with whichparticipants most strongly agreed were to share resources (M frac14 226SD frac14 127) to network with colleagues (M frac14 229 SD frac14 137) and topromote awareness across an area of study (M frac14 230 SD frac14 140) Themotivations with which participants most strongly disagreed were toexpress their opinions freely in an area of study (M frac14 395 SD frac14 168)and to participate andor debate in an online discussion of an area ofstudy (M frac14 411 SD frac14 195) Following these questions participantswere then asked to identify their biggest motivator Two most frequentlycited motivators were to promote actionawareness of an area of studyand to promote their own scholarly work Participants were also askedto provide an example of this motivation in their own tweeting Suchexamples included tweeting the release of journal articles or features innews media related to their area of study expressing support for newpolicy sharing information that may shift popular opinion or stereo-types advertising about upcoming academic conferences engaging socialwork students in class participation via Twitter tweeting accomplish-ments of students from schools of social work and sharing universityresources with fellow faculty members

How social work academics use Twitter

The majority (582 per cent) of participants with a Twitter accountreported using Twitter as part of their academic work Participants alsoreported that they often tweeted about social justice issues to raiseawareness promote social change and share information and resourcesNearly half of the participants with a Twitter account reported tweeting(482 per cent) or retweeting (488 per cent) about a social justice issueat least a few times per month

Participants were asked to select one topical area of social work aboutwhich they tweeted and retweeted most (see Table 4) They most fre-quently tweeted about the areas of social policy mental health geriat-rics health and racial and ethnic disparities The areas in whichparticipants most frequently and infrequently retweeted were similar incontent to the areas in which they most frequently and infrequentlytweeted

Participants were asked about what type of people or organisationsthey followed on Twitter (see Table 5) The respondents were morelikely to follow users in their professional fields than those with whomthey have personal relations or shared interests Of those who responded

(Nfrac14

n(1frac14

7frac14

solita

6lsquoS

mrsquomdash

mdashh

(n frac14 133) the majority followed universities and departments (609 percent) advocacy organisations (601 per cent) researchers (571 per cent)news outlets and others in the same field (519 per cent) but fewer than

Table 4 Areas of tweets and retweets

What areas do you tweet

and retweet about most

(N frac1481)

Retweet

(N frac1474)

Example tweet

Social policy 9 (111) 11 (149) New on httpstco8pxKdRDxAR j CfP

Policy Reviews in Higher Education

Mental health 8 (99) 7 (95) How does the deaths and witnessing the

deaths on video impact mental health

KentSchoolConversation

Geriatrics 7 (86) 5 (68) Letrsquos fix our protective service system to

end elderabuse and assure older adults

are safe at home

Health 7 (86) 4 (54) Neighbourhood formal social organisation

matters for resident health My new

article in HampSW

Racial and ethnic disparities 7 (86) 6 (81) We all have humanrights to life and voice

Itrsquos time to shout blacklivesmatter

socialwork

Child welfare 6 (74) 6 (81) We must address violence amp safety to help

kids thrive in RVAmdashA Jones

RPS_Schools ChildSaversRVA

BridgeRichmond

Poverty 6 (74) 6 (81) Poverty is injustice social exclusion amp dis-

crimination We have a right to dignity

Humanrights socialwork

Education 5 (62) 5 (68) Education gap between rich amp poor is

growing This is a humanrights social-

work emergency

Substance use 5 (62) 2 (28) We are working to reduce youth violence

amp substance use in our community

BridgingtheGapmdashVCUpresident

Research methods 4 (49) 1 (14) clairlemon Anecdotes arenrsquot case studies

Case studies use the scientific method

Evidence-based practice 3 (37) 3 (42) ApplebaummdashGreat suggestions for LTSS

including additional EBPs on worker

training and supervision WHCOA

Violence 3 (37) 3 (42) nabholzj Anger is not the problem

Violence is the problem People should

certainly be angry that AHCA would

uninsure millions

Social entrepreneurship 2 (25) 2 (28) How do we develop the language of sys-

tems entrepreneurship RachelmSinha

secon17

Newspolitics 2 (25) 3 (42) I think I just got whiplash House

Republicans Back Down on Bid to Gut

Ethics Office

Non-profits 1 (12) 3 (42) The opportunity in social media for non-

profits RichGreif httpstco

gQX9m0DB0M

Other 6 (74) 7 (95)

AHCA American Health Care Act of 2017

half of them followed friends and family (451 per cent) and lifestyle blogs

and outlets (195 per cent) on Twitter Fewer participants used Twitter for

entertainment such as following athletes and comedians (98 per cent)

musicians and bands (90 per cent) and movies and TV (75 per cent)

Discussion

This study is the first to examine Twitter use among social work faculty

members in the USA or worldwide It provides suggestions to social

work researchers and educators for moving the field forward in terms of

using Twitter to support and advance social work education in the era of

the third-generation Web which is marked by increased connectivity

openness and intelligence

Roughly half of the 274 participants reported having a Twitter account

compared to 23 per cent of all online adults from the general population

(Duggan 2015) and 105 per cent of faculty from a representative study

Table 5 Types of people or organisations followed on Twitter

Type of people or organisations following on Twitter (multiple choice) Frequency Percentage

Personal Friends amp family 60 451

Lifestyle blogsoutlets 26 195

Celebrities 18 135

Athletes 13 98

Comedians 13 98

Musiciansbands 12 90

Restaurantslocal businesses 10 75

Movies amp TV shows 10 75

Companies 4 30

Notable brands 3 23

Professional Universitiesdepartments 81 609

Advocacy organisations 80 601

Researchers 76 571

News outlets 72 541

Others in my field 69 519

Political organisations 60 451

Government agencies 54 406

Journalists 49 368

Other non-profits 48 360

Politicians 41 308

Authors 40 301

Charities 31 233

Science amp tech content producers 23 173

Professional consultants 16 120

Other 22 165

of social media use among nearly 8000 faculty at US higher-educationalinstitutions (Seaman and Tinti-Kane 2013) It is plausible that facultyfrom the top MSW programmes in the USA utilise Twitter at a higherrate compared to all higher-education faculty It is also plausible thatthere is selection bias in our sample and faculty with Twitter accountswere more likely to respond to our survey We attempted to address thisas best we could by using rigorous sampling and recruitment methods tosecure as much of a representative sample as possible We used e-mailto recruit participants and 994 per cent of the faculty teaching in theMSW programmes selected for our study had e-mail addresses publiclyavailable on school websites Thus roughly half of our sample did nothave a Twitter account representing a broader array of experiencesamong US social work faculty

Forty per cent of our participants reported not using Twitter for aca-demic work It is likely that some scholars are concerned about thepotential risks of social media such as misunderstanding their messagesin an unexpected way or disadvantages from their institutions Indeedscholars have been disciplined placed on leave or had their job offerrevoked for social media messages they had posted (Bowman 2015)

Faculty in the MSW programmes had relatively small network sizescompared to the general population Over three-quarters of our partici-pants reported having fewer than 500 followers and followees while theaverage Twitter user in the general population had 707 followers as of2016 Twitter users who have a sizable number of followers tend to beopinion leaders who influence other users receiving their tweets(Holmberg and Thelwall 2014 Stewart 2015) Therefore it is plausiblethat academic Twitter users who want to establish their expertise mayhave more followers while those who use Twitter for building networkswithin their field of study are less likely to be motivated to have morefollowers

Similarly to other studies among Twitter users in the general popula-tion (Statista 2016b) and in higher-education settings (Seaman andTinti-Kane 2013) age was negatively associated with Twitter use withyounger social work faculty from our study significantly more likely touse Twitter than older social work faculty Although older adults areless likely to use social media than young adults social media usageamong adults aged sixty-five and older has more than tripled from 11per cent in 2010 to 35 per cent in 2016 (Duggan and Page 2015)Coupled with the fact that Americans with higher-education levels aremore likely to use social media (Duggan and Page 2015) the use ofsocial media platforms including Twitter will likely increase amongolder faculty in the coming years

Faculty teaching exclusively in the macro concentration were margin-ally more likely to use Twitter than faculty teaching only clinical prac-tice The connection between the utility of Twitter in terms of unifying a

group of followers around a particular social issue and the goal of macrosocial work to impact community-level or organisational-level change islogical Twitter can be used to support community and connectionsamong large groups of people around shared interests to gather andshare information and to establish common ground (Chen 2011)However we did not find significant difference between macro- andmicro-concentration Twitter users regarding the motivations and behav-iours of their Twitter use

Asian faculty was significantly less likely to use Twitter as comparedto their non-Asian counterparts Given the fact that Asians comprise thelargest group of Twitter users globally (Statista 2016b) this trend mayseem somewhat surprising However the majority of Twitter users inAsian countries may be adolescents and young adults rather than univer-sity faculty For example a study examining teenagers as a percentageof active Twitter users in select countries found that 87 per cent ofactive Twitter users in the Philippines were teenagers whereas only 18per cent of active Twitter users in Canada were teenagers (Statista2016a)

Other demographic characteristics such as gender ethnicity andregional location were not significantly associated with difference inhaving a Twitter account Studies in the general population indicate thatthere is little difference in Twitter use based on ethnicity with blacks(28 per cent) and Hispanics (28 per cent) marginally more likely thanwhites (20 per cent) to use Twitter (Duggan 2015) Findings from ourstudy mirror this trend in that minorities were more likely to useTwitter than whites However the differences we observed betweenblack versus non-black Hispanic versus non-Hispanic and white versusnon-white participants were statistically insignificant

Motivation to use Twitter

Participants from our study reported that their strongest motivations touse Twitter were to participate in online discussions to share resour-ces to network with colleagues and to promote awareness across anarea of study These results indicate that Twitter provides social workscholars with an online platform where they can discuss academicissues with others across schools and countries in a timely manner(Grosseck and Holotescu 2008) and thereby develop a research com-munity in an open but less formal atmosphere than the university set-ting (Kirkup 2010)

When asked to identify their biggest motivator our participants mostfrequently cited promoting actionawareness of an area of study and pro-moting their own scholarly work consistently with Lupton (2014)Regarding the promotion of onersquos work within academia Priem and

colleagues (2012) propose that social media may also be used to meas-ure scholarly impact suggesting that lsquoldquoalternative metricsrdquo orldquoaltmetricsrdquo build on information from social media use and could beemployed side-by-side with citationsmdashone tracking formal acknowl-edged influence and the other tracking unintentional and informalldquoscientific street credrdquorsquo (p 1) Relatedly the use of social media sitessuch as Twitter facilitates an immediate rapid distribution and promo-tion of onersquos academic work For example Priem and Costello (2010)find that 39 per cent of Twitter citations refer to articles less one weekold and 15 per cent refer to articles published that day

The majority of our participants who have a Twitter account used it aspart of their academic work connecting with users in their professionalfields Nearly half of them regularly tweeted or retweeted about a socialjustice issue such as social policy racial and ethnic disparities and pov-erty Participants reported tweeting about social justice issues in order toraise awareness promote social change and share information andresources The use of Twitter to promote social justice is reflective ofthe National Association of Social Workersrsquo Code of Ethics (2008)which identifies the promotion of social justice as one of its core ethicalprinciples lsquoSocial workers pursue social change particularly with and onbehalf of vulnerable and oppressed individuals and groups of peopleSocial workersrsquo social change efforts are focused primarily on issuesof poverty unemployment discrimination and other forms of socialinjusticersquo

Indeed the ability for social work academics to reach large groups ofpeople across disciplines and with varying value systems makes Twitteran ideal conduit for increasing awareness and promoting change relatedto social justice issues It is often challenging for academics to maketheir work accessible known and translatable across disciplines andbeyond academia (Proctor et al 2011) and Twitter provides an opportu-nity to extend academicsrsquo reach and impact to promote social justice(Priem and Costello 2010)

While the majority of participants from our study reported that theyused Twitter for online discussions sharing resources networking withcolleagues and promoting awareness across an area of study few partici-pants discussed the use of Twitter as a teaching tool However this mayrepresent opportunities for advancing the use of social media amongsocial work academics in the USA Grosseck and Holotescu (2008) pro-vide a framework for using Twitter in educational settings They suggestusing Twitter in the classroom in order to build a greater sense of com-munity explore collaborative writing gauge studentsrsquo responses to

classroom material and lectures foster collaboration with similar learn-ers across schools and countries encourage reflection and discussionand share supplemental research and resources They suggest that suchactivities may facilitate richer and more engaged classroom dynamics asmore students with varying communication styles may be drawn intoclassroom dialogue academic staff may have a better pulse on the edu-cational needs of the students and students may experience a closer con-nection with the faculty

Limitations

There are several limitations to our study First there may be someselection bias as it is possible that social work academics with Twitteraccounts were more likely to respond to the survey Second our dataare cross-sectional which constrains our ability to examine the patternof social work scholarsrsquo social media behaviour or infer causal relation-ship Third our study is limited to top MSW programmes in the USAwhich limits our generalisability to both other social work degree pro-grammes (eg BSW and DSW) and other countries Fourth the numberof Asian and Hispanic participants from our study is low and so our dis-cussion surrounding Twitter use based on raceethnicity should be inter-preted with caution

Notwithstanding these limitations our study provides a significantcontribution to the field of social work education As one of the earlystudies to examine Twitter use among social work academics ourexploratory study lays a good foundation for future research investigat-ing the benefits strategies and impacts of Twitter use among social workfaculty Expanded research may provide guidance to social work aca-demics regarding the most effective usage of Twitter particularly as itpertains to the promotion of social justice A greater stronger presenceof social work academics utilising Twitter effectively may serve toadvance our field and the areas of social justice our field represents

Further research

Our exploratory study lays the foundation for additional researchregarding the effectiveness of Twitter use among social work facultySuch research may include an investigation of the outcomes associatedwith Twitter use among social work faculty For example futureresearch questions may include (i) To what extent is Twitter use amongsocial work academics associated with improved communication andnetworking with colleagues from within onersquos field and across fields(ii) To what extent does Twitter use impact the citation dissemination

and implementation of social work academicsrsquo work Future studies mayutilise publicly available Twitter data rather than relying on self-reported survey data which would provide credible evidence of partici-pantsrsquo behaviour on social media Future research could also include aqualitative investigation about the kind of scholarly benefits (eg inter-national network and resulting in research project) or barriers (eg lackof time privacy concern copyright issues) social work scholars identifywith social media as well as quantitative research that examines whatfactors influence social work academicsrsquo adoption and use of socialmedia

Additionally the relationship between the promotion of social justiceand Twitter use among social work faculty warrants further research Inlight of our finding that many social work academics use Twitter to pro-mote social justice future research could explore (i) the extent to whichsocial work academicsrsquo attitudes towards social justice are associatedwith Twitter use and (ii) the extent to which Twitter use impacts theattitudes of others towards social justice issues

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Downloaded from httpsacademicoupcombjswadvance-article-abstractdoi101093bjswbcx1464811938by gueston 18 January 2018View publication statsView publication stats

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