Issue-Specific Activism on Climate Issues on Facebook

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

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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Building social networks and activating weak ties: Twitter for academics

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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Still missing a market: Academics e-readers

It’s been a year since I first posted about my frustration that the e-reader market is missing an obvious demographic: academics. In that year, that has become the top-viewed post on my blog (not that hard to do!), with over 1000 pageviews. Yet, I am sad to say little has changed in the e-reader market …

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The Catch-22 for E-books: Market failure

As I mentioned in a previous post, I got a Nook a couple of months ago. My first impression of the Nook was somewhat negative – I had hoped it would be useful as an academic tool, allowing me to easily read pdfs and comment on them. My thoughts about the academic application of the …

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