Archive of posts filed under the Social media category.

Issue-Specific Activism on Climate Issues on Facebook

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Even as scholars discuss changes in the ways in which young adults approach politics – and particularly their focus on specific issues and social concerns rather than dutiful political participation – a lot of what we know about political engagement via social media focuses on politics proper: political candidates and campaigns. While this research is largely promising …

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Don’t build walls! Twitter’s new API

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I logged into my blog tonight intending to write about the life of an academic with reference to the “true” meaning of spring break. What I didn’t realize when I went to update my plug-ins was that a change in Twitter’s API would render my Twitter app for WordPress useless (I use Twitter Widget Pro …

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Dealing with Draco: Twitter and holiday travel woes

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This saga begins with an all-too-common experience: Trying to get a relative home for Christmas. But for me, this became a cautionary tale on how companies can fail using social media, particularly Twitter, to help out stranded customers – or how they can succeed. My sister Amanda was supposed to be coming home to Madison …

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Multi-modality debating: How social media (especially Twitter) are changing the presidential debates

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How we choose to watch political debates changes what we get out of them. That’s not really news: scholars have been discussing this effect since the first televised presidential debates in 1960. Popular wisdom suggested Nixon’s poor appearance (“death-like”) on TV hurt his standing compared to Kennedy’s vitality, later supported by finding that people who …

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Building social networks and activating weak ties: Twitter for academics

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Twitter has taken a lot of heat for its flaws. Despite the millions of tweets (or some claim billions) sent each day, others point out that its penetration to the American market is small (with 15% of adults using Twitter and only 8% checking it daily). Even more troubling is research that suggests the Twitterverse …

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