Links of the week – twitter statistics and etiquette
A rather busy week in real life last week equated to a rather slow week on the site. Between a two-day teacher training workshop and a weekend in Seoul, I’ve fallen behind on my internet activities. In addition to ignoring my blogging schedule, I’ve barely spent any time on twitter in the past week.
I’ve written about my attempts to build a larger, more engaged twitter audience in the past, but lately I’ve found myself coasting. This edition of links of the week examines interesting links, studies, and posts about twitter; hopefully, it will revive my twittering energies. All of the links featured in this week’s ‘links of the week’ can be found under the ‘Digital Humanities ‘How to’ Links’ header on ivrytwr. This page contains my some of my favorite DH advice and has a section dedicated to using twitter in academia.
1. An Exhaustive Study of Twitter Users Across the World – The name of this links says it all – this study comes from the social media monitoring service Beevolve and examines data from 36 million twitter users. The study breaks down information like gender distribution, age profiles, world heatmaps, and follower to following ratios. This study is useful for giving us ideas of how to best use the service.
2. Resources for Academic Live-bloggers – There has been a lot of discussion regards the ethics and best practice of live-tweeting/blogging presentations of academic conferences. This post from HASTAC provides a number of useful and informative links regarding the best current research regarding twitter best practice, ethics, and research. This post is a must-read for those interested in live-blogging.
3. Universities and Social Media: Academics Needs to be Bold in Our Use of Social Media and Not Outsource Digital Dissemination to Widget Gurus – This post comes from educational technologist Mark Smithers. This post takes a rather critical stance of the policy employed by many universities of outsourcing social media to so-called social media ‘gurus’ instead of developing in-house policies. Mark argues, as I’m inclined to agree, that universities should be flexible and inclusive in their use of social media. The role of the university is to create and disseminate information, social media policies should facilitate this, not hinder it.
4. Research – Museums on Twitter – This study, conducted by MuseumNext.org, polled 1000 people asking them how they think museums should use twitter. If you’re interested in how social media can be used to engage a wider audience, this study may be of interest to you.
5. The Threat of Scholarly Openness: Twitter and its Discontents – This is post comes from the consistently awesome site Hybrid Pedagogy and examines ethical dilemas surrounding the use of twitter and social media in academia. I really can’t say enough good things about Hybrid Pedagogy – if you only have the time to read a handful of academic blogs, this blog should be near the top of your list.
Well that concludes another edition of ‘links of the week.’ Look for a busy week on the site including posts about how not to apply for grad school, thoughts about history and dogma in Korea, and another instalment of ivrytwr’s Summer Roadtrip 2012 exploring the Busan Aquarium.
I’m looking forward to a busy and productive week and I wish you the same. Time to shake the cobwebs that have been building up in my mind and get down to business. Have an outstanding week.
