Social media & politics

Posted by Mihaela in Social Media on Feb 2nd, 2009 | 3 Comments

I’ve been invited to participate in a roundtable discussion about the role social media should play in politics. The session is hosted by South Carolina congressman Bob Inglis (here’s his twitter stream).

The roundtable was inspired by the recent press coverage such as this:

“Audiences usually treat presidents to a round of polite applause, but when President Obama addressed House Republicans on Tuesday, they started Twittering.” (read entire article)

I know where I stand, but, in the spirit of social media, I was wondering if I can be your voice at this roundtable. Do you have any thoughts, ideas, wishes, requests, or advice that I can convey on your behalf?

Do you want your congressmen and senators on Twitter? How would you like them to use or not use Twitter?

How about other social media?

My twitter is not your twitter

Posted by Mihaela in Featured Articles, Social Media on Dec 27th, 2008 | 6 Comments

There’ve been several discussions -which I’m too lazy to link to- about twitter: What it is, what it should be, the right/wrong way of using it, who you should follow, who you should unfollow, and most recently, how to measure authority (whatever that is: influence? credibility? trustworthiness?)

I resist any attempts at defining the right way to use twitter and I urge you to do the same.

The right way is that there shouldn’t be one right way.

It all comes down to the way you view the world:

Possible worldview #1: The world is complex, pluralistic, and fragmented; there are multiple voices and multiple truths. People construct their worlds through communication.

Possible worldview #2: The world can be reduced down to a few simple laws, rules, and patterns. There is one truth out there waiting to be discovered.

If #2 is your worldview, then you will keep looking for the “right” way to use twitter, and for the right way to define and measure authority.

However, if you see the world as in #1, you will agree that different groups and subgroups will create different cultures around twitter, and will use it in different way. You may also agree that a person who has authority in one group doesn’t have it in another group, because each group has different criteria for authority, and in some group the concept doesn’t even exist or matter.

To me, the beauty of social media is that it is fluid, pluralistic, multivocal, fragmented, and chaotic. Yes, it’s very postmodern, and that’s the way I like it. I see no need to impose strict authoritative definitions. Once these definitions are imposed and accepted, twitter becomes them – because that’s how we construct our world through communication.

And the problem is, that once something is constructed and accepted, it becomes reified – it becomes a hard, immutable, taken for granted truth. We forget there was a time when it was open to negotiation and discussion and we continue to live with it, to obey its definitional authority, even when it doesn’t serve our purposes any longer.

To avoid this, I’d rather we keep the world of twitter fluid, complex, and pluralistic, and that we don’t agree on any one definition or right way. Rather, let us enjoy the multiple worlds and villages we’ve built around twitter, and celebrate the fact that my twitter might not be your twitter, and that’s the beauty of it.

How to find people to follow on Twitter

Posted by Mihaela in Social Media on Nov 9th, 2008 | 7 Comments

So you figured out Twitter, signed up for an account, added a nice photo and did all the basics David Meerman Scott recommends.

Now, what?

It feels awkward and lonely. Like you have a phone but no one to call. The next step is to build up your social network on Twitter. To do so, you need to find people to follow.

Caution! Before you start following people,
make sure you’ve done the things DMS recommends!!!

At the very least:

  1. have a bio & a link to your site, blog, etc.
  2. upload a personalized avatar (preferably a photo of your beautiful self)
  3. post at least 10-15 tweets. See also this guide to getting started on Twitter

Now, you’re really ready. Let’s find those people.

What kind of people? Who should you follow?

You should follow people you have something in common with. I’ll take the example of a PR student. You want to follow PR pros, other PR students, PR profs, and if your hobby is… sand castles, sand castle enthusiasts.

The principle is simple: Find 2-3 people to follow. Then:

  1. Look at the list of people they follow. If the people you’re interested in are interested in these people, chances are you’re interested in them, too. Repeat the process. For every new person you follow, or who follows you, look at the list of people they follow.
  2. [update 10/31/2009: unfortunately, this tip is outdated. You can only see @replies if you follow both people in a conversation. As Twitter adds capacity, I hope they will revert to the old model, it was the best way of finding new people to follow, IMO] Make sure you choose, in your twitter settings, to see all @ replies. Notice who the people you identified in step 1 are conversing with. Check them out by clicking their username in the twitter conversation. See what they tweet about, read their bio, check out their blog, and if appropriate follow them. Then repeat Step 1: see who they follow.

    3. twitter

  3. You probably read PR blogs. Most PR bloggers are on twitter, also. Look at their About or Contact pages, or look at the sidebars for twitter information. Look at their blogrolls to identify other PR blogs & bloggers. Then repeat step 1.

It will take you a few weeks to build your social network, but if you follow these steps, you can accumulate quite a lot of followers in a few days. Take it easy, don’t follow 70 new people every day, or they’ll think you’re a spammer. Attempt to find 5 new people to follow every day until you reach 50 or 100. Then your social network will grow naturally, you don’t have to try.

Now, if you’re in PR, the easiest thing to do it to go to PROpenMic (a social network for PR folk) and to find people there. Many people list their twitter username in their profiles.

So, let me get you started and ready for Step 1. Here is a list of some of the people I follow and I think you should, too, if you’re in PR. It’s not a comprehensive list and it’s not a TOP.. anything list. Just a list:

See also:

And since you won’t find me on any of these lists, I’m @prprof_mv.

Happy & safe tweeting!

If you’re a seasoned twitter user and want to help out, write your advice and/or twitter username in the comments.

Students live-twitter class

Posted by Mihaela in Education, Social Media on Oct 18th, 2008 | 3 Comments

It’s long overdue, but here is my post about the PRinciples class session that was live-twittered.

I started class with these instructions for students:

  • Unprotect updates (settings)
  • Use Web interface & reload page often
  • Use #principles hashtag – twemes
  • Tweet: Important ideas, Links, Comments

Then I set them free and started lecturing about social media: What it is, and how it has changed power dynamics in society. I remember telling students that social media lets people inside the Golden Wall – telling them that as I was speaking, they could twitter what I said, and that was scary: What if I said something stupid? I also told them that social media makes it possible for individuals to have voices as loud as those of rich organizations.

Then Laura Fitton (@pistachio) joined us on Skype, and the live-twittering continued.

During that one hour, the conversation coming from our class was at the top of twitter conversation tracking boards twitscoop and current.fm.

The most powerful take-aways for me were:

  1. We LIVED the concepts I had just talked about at the beginning of class. We saw our voice climb up among twitter conversations. Tweets from a small group of mostly young women were at the top of the charts. We experienced the shifted power dynamics brought about by social media.
  2. For me as the teacher, the experience was terrifying and liberating. It was like living the nightmare that you’re naked in public. My students might not tweet negative things about me, but if I do say something stupid, as I often do, it doesn’t stay within the classroom -it’s out there for the whole world to see. So, CAUTION: This exercise is not for everybody. It certainly wasn’t for this NYU professor.
  3. Learning happened – quickly and powerfully as an avalanche. It was important to give students time to reflect on what they learned. Here are some of their reflections: Alyssa, Cara, Michael, Sallie.
  4. The downside: This experiment made apparent several opportunities for twitter spam, which I won’t explain because I don’t want to teach people how to spam.

You can read everything that was twittered during class, or just my favorites. Students still twitter during class, and I see and comment on their tweets afterwards – it’s allowed and encouraged, but not required – they should be free to take notes in whatever medium serves them best. I would like to experiment in the future with collective note taking (I’m looking into NoteMesh) and with CoverItLive.

Twitter in education: Practical solutions

Posted by Mihaela in Education, For Educators on Mar 7th, 2008 | 3 Comments

We talked at EDB about using twitter with students: the benefits, the drawbacks, the logistics – including the 48 hours of twitter assignment that Karen Russell and Kaye Sweetser use. One logistical issue was to help the students find and follow each other among the professor’s long list of followers. Karen Russell solved this problem by getting a new account to use with her class. However, one thing I like about twitter is the help I sometimes get from other people who jump in the class discussion. Creating a new account would make it impossible for my students to meet my twitter community.

Here are the 2 solutions I found, and I document them here so other instructors can use them (and so I don’t forget them!).

1) – ask students to use a specific number (or other set of characters) as part of their twitter user names. For example, the course number, or any other random number. Then, they can scroll through the list of followers and follow all the other people whose user names contain that number. This works well, but sometimes students dislike interfering with their freedom to create a user name they like. The second solution solves this problem, too:

2) – e-mail students a distinct, clearly different image that your other followers are unlikely to use and ask all students to upload that image as their twitter icon. Instruct students to scroll through your list of followers and follow all the people identified by that particular image. After the students have identified and followed all the other class members, they can upload their own photo to their twitter profile.

Another challenge is to keep track of a conversation students carry on a particular topic. Their tweets might get lost among the tweets of others you’re following. Ask your student to use hashtags (#) followed by a specific code so that Twemes will collect all (in theory, at least) the posts on that topic. For example, we discussed symbolic interactionism in my Communication Theory class and marked all tweets about it with #si. You can see the resulting conversation indexed on twemes. I noticed Twemes didn’t pick up ALL students’ posts, so I wouldn’t rely on it to assign participation points, at least not yet.

Do you have other practical solutions or ideas for using twitter in higher education? Please share them in the comments!

Need more on twitter? Here are some of my favorite links:

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