Differences in personal and professional tweets of scholars
| Pages | 356-371 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-12-2014-0180 |
| Date | 18 May 2015 |
| Published date | 18 May 2015 |
| Author | Timothy D Bowman |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval |
Differences in personal and
professional tweets of scholars
Timothy D. Bowman
Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to show that there were differences in the use of Twitter by
professors at AAU schools. Affordance use differed between the personal and professional tweets
of professors as categorized by turkers. Framing behaviors were described that could impact the
interpretation of tweets by audience members.
Design/methodology/approach –A three phase research design was used that included surveys of
professors, categorization of tweets by workers in Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, and categorization
of tweets by active professors on Twitter.
Findings –There were significant differences found between professors that reported having
a Twitter account, significant differences found between types of Twitter accounts (personal,
professional, or both), and significant differences in the affordances used in personal and professional
tweets. Framing behaviors were described that may assist altmetric researchers in distinguishing
between personal and professional tweets.
Research limitations/implications –The study is limited by the sample population, survey
instrument, low survey response rate, and low Cohen’sκ.
Practical implications –An overview of various affordances found in Twitter is provided and a
novel use of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk for the categorization of tweets is described that can
be applied to future altmetric studies.
Originality/value –This work utilizes a socio-technical framework integrating social and
psychological theories to interpret results from the tweeting behavior of professors and the
interpretation of tweets by workers in Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.
Keywords Social media, Affordance, Impression management, Altmetrics, Twitter, Frame analysis
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The current conversations in both popular media and academic discourse surrounding
the use of the social web places pressure on various groups within academia –such as
scholars, universities, and funding agencies –to consider a variety of behaviors, policies,
and regulations related to the production, consumption, disclosure, and dissemination of
information within these environments. Interaction in computer-mediated environments
is a ubiquitous aspect of day-to-day life (Mitzlaff et al., 2013) and as such researchers
look to examine the digital traces (Lazer et al., 2009) left behind in social media by
participants (e.g. scholars), in an attempt to analyze phenomena such as utilizing and
maintaining social capital (Hoffmann et al., 2014), managing impressions (Haustein
et al., 2013; Veletsianos, 2012), influencing science (Priem, 2010; Priem et al., 2010, 2012),
and consuming and disseminating scholarly information (Bowman et al., 2013;
Schroeder et al., 2011). In addition, universities and organizations look to this research
to assist them with evaluating scholarly production (Bar-Ilan et al., 2012) and crafting
social media use policies (Duque and Pérez, 2013; Hank et al., 2014; Lough and Samek,
2014) as the boundaries between public and private continue to blur.
In the case of social media this blurring of boundaries is particularly important as
the information within these environments can be archived, searched, reproduced, and
viewed by vast invisible audiences (boyd, 2011). Twitter is an important context for
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 67 No. 3, 2015
pp. 356-371
©Emerald Group Publishing Limited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-12-2014-0180
Received 22 December 2014
Revised 16 March 2015
Accepted 18 March 2015
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
356
AJIM
67,3
researchers studying social media metrics (or so-called altmetrics) because analyses have
found that scientific articles are frequently shared in this environment (Haustein et al.,
2014a; Holmberg and Thelwall, 2014) and, opposed to reference managers like Mendeley,
include potential audiences outside academia. In general, social media metrics researchers
are trying to identify and distinguish between the dissemination of, and engagement with,
scientific content on social media, in order to determine whom, how, and why users share
and consume academic discourse in these environments, to compare the activity
with traditional bibliometric measures, and to determine what type of impact this
dissemination and engagement in social media has on both academia and the general
public. As Holmberg and Thelwall (2014, para. 1) argue, “it seems that social media are
triggering another evolution of scholarly communication”.
With the scholarly use of these social media platforms comes an increase in the
potential for audience members to interpret messages in unexpected ways.
For example, scholars have been placed on leave, disciplined, or had their job offer
rescinded (Berrett, 2010; Herman, 2014; Ingeno, 2013; Jaschik, 2014; Rothschild and
Unglesbee, 2013) for messages posted within the context of social media (See Figure 1).
Because of issues like these, universities are involved in a continuous cycle of crafting
rules and norms intended to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate social
media use (Duque and Pérez, 2013; Hank et al., 2014; Lough and Samek, 2014; Sugimoto
et al., 2015). It is critical that we examine how it is that scholars are communicating and
sharing information within these contexts (Haythornthwaite and Wellman, 1998), how
their interactions are affected by the affordances (Gibson, 1977) available in the social
media platform, and how their messages are interpreted by the vast potential audience
members to whom the information is being disseminated.
This research examines the ways in which scholars can utilize affordances
(i.e. a quality of an object allowing for some action in a context) and frame interactions
(i.e. add meaning to an act in order to aid the understanding of the act in its context) in
order to manage communications from the perspective of their personal and
professional selves as they communicate on Twitter. This socio-technical framework
combines Goffman’s (1974) frame analysis model, Goffman’s (1959) impression
management model, and Gibson’s (1977) conception of affordance. Using this
framework, the following research questions are addressed:
RQ1. How does Twitter use by university professors differ by department, gender,
age, ethnicity, and academic age?
Figure 1.
Scholar’s
controversial
tweet made on
July 18, 2014
357
Personal and
professional
tweets of
scholars
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