Royce Kimmons|George Veletsianos
Education scholars’ evolving uses of twitter as a conference backchannel and social commentary platform
abstract scholarly community faces lack largescale research examining students professors use social media authentic contexts use changes time study uses data mining methods better understand academic twitter use around 2014 2015 american educational research association annual conferences conference backchannel general means participating online descriptive inferential analysis used explore twitter use 1421 academics 360 000 tweets posted results demonstrate complicated participation patterns twitter used ground particular show tweets conferences differed significantly tweets outside conferences students professors used conference backchannel somewhat equally students used hashtags frequently professors used hashtags frequently academics comprised minority participants backchannels participated much higher rate nonacademic counterparts number participants backchannel increased 2014 2015 small number authors present years number tweets declined year year various hashtags used throughout time period study occurred ongoing ie tended stable across weeks others eventbased ie spiked particular week professors used eventbased hashtags often students students used ongoing hashtags often professors ongoing hashtags tended exhibit positive sentiment eventbased hashtags tended exhibit ambiguous conflicting sentiments findings suggest professors students exhibit similarities differences use twitter backchannels indicate need research better understand ways social technologies online networks integrated scholars lives