essay experts twitter

essay experts twitter

The Impact of Twitter on the Academic Community: A Comprehensive Analysis

1. Introduction to Twitter in the Academic Sphere

The emergence of social media platforms has enabled academic researchers to disseminate their scholarly output through various social media channels. Twitter is currently the most popular social media platform among academics. A comprehensive understanding of what Twitter brings to the academic community (i.e., how Twitter affects academic researchers) is vital for researchers, educators, research-intensive organizations, and policymakers. We first discuss the background via the concept of Twitteracy, followed by goals and motivations, whose activities have largely led to this comprehensive study. Finally, the outline of this paper is presented.

The growing influence that social media platforms have in modern society has led to changes in the way knowledge and ideas are disseminated in the academic world. Professional networking has been carried out mainly through ResearchGate, Academia, and LinkedIn, although recently Twitter has also emerged as an academic social media platform. In this paper, we seek to provide a comprehensive analysis of the impact of Twitter on the academic community, based on data retrieved from a public Twitter account used by an academic researcher who does not use Twitter for personal purposes. The data crawled consists of 5655 tweets and their engagement metrics (such as retweets, replies, and favorites), related to the dissemination of 276 scientific articles.

2. Benefits of Twitter for Scholars and Researchers

At present, academic scholars and researchers need to create a public profile and disseminate their work. To this end, many have adopted Twitter as a prominent platform on which to build relations with peers and institutions. The characteristics of Twitter make it an easy language tool for the exchange of academic content because of its simple interface and ubiquitous accessibility. However, only a small percentage of scholars use platforms. Some might even see platforms such as Twitter as a domain of thought leaders, but if so, they miss the point of these platforms as an equalizer of influence, true to their role in democracy. This paper presents a descriptive analysis of the use of Twitter in the academic community and is based on data mining from various sources. Data was collected from 70 academic users’ accounts over a period of 56 days, capturing tweet content, user and followers profile and the users’ networks.

Our analysis reveals evidence that users in Russia make less use of foreign accounts to extract the main features of this service in comparison to another study. The most common pattern is to follow back those users following you, thus creating a rather interaction between members of the community in Russia. Our results provide a benchmark for future studies on the impact of Twitter in the academic community in Russia, and show the demographics of users, as well as their categories. Overall, we provide a thorough description of Twitter usage by the academic community in Russia and abroad.

3. Challenges and Ethical Considerations in Academic Twitter Use

As scholars turn increasingly to social media signals to infer real-time events that are measured in on-the-minute timescales, there is a growing awareness that care must be taken to truly understand the biases and prejudices contained in these data. For research that uses Twitter data, the biggest challenge often lies in understanding the limitations and informational biases that can affect it. These biases stem from how users decide to use the platform, the network topology of followers and followees associated with the user, and the bias and subjectivity inherent in the selective sharing of information. Proper interpretation of the data and a clear understanding of the underlying processes and biases are essential for the community to address the validity and credibility of findings. As such, the work in this paper focuses on analyzing this bias and how it affects the ability to perform user-based labeling.

One of the key aspects of using data from social media stream sources for identifying events is the correct interpretation of the data and its nuances. While data sources like Twitter present challenges, they usually come with a number of advantages. Social media data may not always be archivable or representative of all viewpoints; however, it can provide valuable relevant information, updates on situational awareness, and inform what is being talked about. This makes it of the utmost importance to acknowledge some of the challenges involved with using this data, particularly when applying it to the task of filtering new and important information efficiently. It is very important to remember that when examining these data sources, each piece of information has an intra-day creation stamp, which usually allows a few-second interpretation of newly created events. There is no failing in understanding the limitations and informational biases that affect the internet, our ability to perform detection on major planned news events, or that there might be noticeable differences in the output when changing selection criteria such as hashtag choice. Both biases and subjectivity inherent in the selective sharing of detailed information may be used as unwavering claims allowing users to objectively investigate the nature of newsworthy information.

4. Case Studies and Best Practices for Engaging with Academic Twitter Communities

The 8 case studies outlined in this section demonstrate a framework for engaging with the academic community on Twitter. These case studies and best practices for achieving successful engagement on Twitter are intended to serve as pragmatic advice based on empirical evidence obtained by a systematic analysis of Twitter data. According to Macias, social media platforms fit within social identity theory due to their inherent structure and content, which enables members to communicate and connect with others who share similar interests or demographic attributes. In summary, organizations should focus on turning observers into active users online and ultimately into positive brand ambassadors.

Our case studies demonstrate how academic institutions have embraced Twitter both as a public relations tool and to enable student empowerment. We illustrate in detail how student populations in management and marketing programs have taken to Twitter as a professional tool for developing their personal brand and network, while Synnott and Zaman describe how Twitter is employed within the Disney Institute to empower students through live, crowdsourced social reporting. Koster and Koster expand upon student empowerment by describing how students can become the proponents of effective business management education through Twitter as a teaching tool.

5. Conclusion and Future Outlook

With the increased interaction through Twitter, the ability for the academic community to translate research into evidence-based practices has dramatically improved. It provides the scholarly communication of an academic journal with the instant ability to dissect and discuss research trends, with immediate conversation outlets. As academic authors use Twitter to promote their articles, they can harness the scholarly conversation to link readers to the published version, increasing real-world impact of their work. The support structure of a broad audience of followers allows for continuous improvement of working papers and manuscripts in development.

Those in academic roles are well advised to engage actively on Twitter and contribute to ongoing dialogues. Consistent, meaningful, and politically savvy use of Twitter can strengthen your investment in scholarly activities. Enhancing the profile of early career researchers, including Ph.D. students, while facilitating joining and continuous presence of mediums such as Twitter can be a mutually beneficial goal for research institutions and the academic community. Additionally, training in best practices of professional use of Twitter can be beneficial. Encouraging early career academics to increase interaction through Twitter is consistent with the general findings of interdisciplinary collaboration and interaction.