Sowalla - Blog 8

Our semester-long tweeting assignment was a very new challenge for me. I had never used Twitter extensively before, and wasn’t used to the posting style of the website.

One of my greatest struggles with this assignment was simply remembering to tweet! Since I wasn’t in the habit of using Twitter every day, I didn’t always have the reminder of my classmates tweets to spur me on to Tweet. Eventually, I got to the point where most nights it would become part of my nightly routine to wonder if I’d Tweeted yet that day, but this didn’t help me much on nights where I stayed up past midnight. Sometimes I would add Tweeting to my to-do list. However, since I delete items on my to-do list as soon as I do them, I would have to remind myself to add Tweeting back to the to-do list the next day. Fortunately, I was much better at completing the retweeting part of the assignment. I thought it was fun to scroll through my classmates’ tweets and retweet and that stood out to me as particularly interesting or relatable.

When I did remember to tweet, I believe I did a good job sticking to the guidelines on the syllabus. My tweets were always related to social media in some way. Many of my tweets were written in question format, encouraging responses from other students. At least 3 or 4 times, my tweets were responses to other students. I also voted on many of the surveys my classmates posted.

One way I could have improved my tweets would have been to vary the type of tweet I posted every now and then. I don’t think I ever went out of my way to find a post, article, or other piece of media to link to. Another thing I could have done would be to respond to my classmate’s tweets more often, as opposed to just retweeting. It would have contributed to the community atmosphere and put me in conversation with my classmates more.

Speaking of which, one of my favorite parts of the tweeting assignment was when I would see my classmates interacting and have the chance to interact with them. I could always count on seeing a few interesting, substantive tweets whenever I saw that people were responding to a post; it indicated that the original post had been insightful and thought-provoking. It makes sense that the social part of social media would be the most fun – after all, that’s what social media was designed to be.

It was always interesting to see when many people would post about the same topic. Sometimes it would be because many of us were responding to our class readings or assignments. This would help me remember what assignments I had to do and encourage me to do them, since they must be interesting if people are tweeting about it. Other times, people would post about the same thing because something in the world/the news/on social media had caught all of our attentions. For example, many people, including myself, Tweeted about coronavirus as it became a larger threat and started to affect our lives.

My favorite day of the Twitter assignment was probably the day we posted live tweets while watching Scandal. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would, having initially worried that I would have trouble thinking of things to tweet and posting tweets before the moment of their relevance had past. I realized that, when I relaxed and focused on my immediate reactions to scenes, I was able to get into the assignment and enjoy my classmates tweets as I posted my own. This was probably the time where I felt most engaged with the online community our class had formed. As Harrington, Highfield & Bruns (2013) stated, “For audiences with access to social media on a second screen, the experience of watching television thus becomes an even more communal one.”

If I were to grade myself on a 50-point scale, I would probably start by dividing this scale into 25 points for retweets and 25 points for original tweets. I did pretty well consistently with the retweets, so I’d give myself a full 25 points for that. The original tweets are a little more complicated, since I’m not sure exactly how often I forgot about these… Maybe 1-2 days each week? The tweets I did remember were usually thoughtful, so I’d give myself credit for that. How about 18 points for the original tweets? That makes a total score of 43. Not perfect, but a solid B.

That being said, I might be giving myself too much credit on how many tweets I remembered to make… Hopefully my memory wasn’t as bad as I think it may have been!

Harrington, S., Highfield, H. & Bruns, A. (2013). More than a backchannel: Twitter and television. Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, 10(1), 405-409.

Blog #8

My first tweet for class

Although I have an account on just about every social media platform, I don't really tweet a bunch. I mainly use it to send funny tweets to my friends or catch up on sports. I typically use social media for entertainment or to pass time, but this assignment definitely changed that.

I was mainly nervous about the assignment because I often think too much about what others will think of me, especially when posting online, which is one of the main reasons why I created a separate Twitter account for class. Another thing that I was worried about was forgetting to tweet everyday, but I ended up setting a reminder to go off every night so I wouldn't forget. Tweeting for a class is something that I've never had to do before, but I was kind of excited to take part in it.

A poll that I ran for class

After our very first class and after going over the syllabus, I was so nervous about having to tweet for class. I thought that it was going to be difficult because I was kind of confused about it at first, but after the first week or so I got the hang of it. Although this was the case, I think it took me a little longer to get used to tweeting everyday and constantly coming up with tweets that were engaging. I tried to incorporate readings, activities, technology, and social media in general in my tweets, but sometimes I would just run a poll to see what others were thinking. I thought that this was interesting way to get people engaged in my tweets, especially because they're more interactive and you can see the results right away.  Also, I thought that using a hashtag (#cnusocialmedia) for our tweets made it easier to find what others were talking about. There were one or two times where I forgot to put this in my tweets, but I always went back and replied with the hashtag.

I thought that this assignment brought a different alternative when it comes to class participation, which I also thought was really interesting because we're all on our phones most of the time anyway, so it shouldn't be too hard to think of a tweet five times a week. Boy, I was wrong. At times, I worried about what my classmates would think of me if I tweeted something different about a reading, but I had to keep putting myself into the mindset that everyone has to do this for class, so it doesn't really matter. I didn't find having to retweet 10 tweets difficult at all because this is what I typically do on Twitter anyway and I honestly found most of the content funny and entertaining. I thought it was interesting to see how engaging my classmates' tweets were, so that definitely had an influence on what I would tweet about. Anytime I could contribute to a conversation, I would reply to someone else's tweet. I found this easier than coming up with my own tweet because we could bounce ideas off of each other quickly and see what others thought about a certain topic. According to Whiting and Williams, this pertains to the communicatory utility aspect of the uses and gratifications of social media. (2013). The communicatory utility theme in the uses and gratifications theory is something that I don't really use social media for today, so it felt nice to have a social media account dedicated to engaging with other classmates and providing information/opinions on readings and social media.

Impact of COVID-19 

In terms of coming up with content for tweets, I feel like being in quarantine definitely changed my mindset. Honestly, I found it more difficult to come up with a tweet during this time than when we were on campus and having in person classes, even though I was keeping up with the readings and commenting on the discussion board. I'm sure this has to do with a "technology overload" more than anything, but I continued to try and tweet things that were engaging or related to the class readings. When we were still on campus, I could just tweet about something that was discussed in class, but I feel like it changed for some reason when we transitioned online I thought it would be easier to just look at the news about COVID-19 and tweet about that, but eventually I got so tired of looking at the news and trying to write a tweet for it. Instead, if there was more of a response about the pandemic on social media, I would focus on that or how people are being impacted.

I really liked when we had in-class activities on Twitter. For example, I thought the selfie activity was different, even though I felt a little uncomfortable taking selfies in front of my classmates. Also, I really liked the live-tweeting activity that we did. I've never taken part in a live-tweeting "session" before, but I liked it! It was nice to see everyone's reactions in real time and I think this allowed me to bounce ideas off of other classmates and it made me realize things in the show that I probably would've missed if I were watching it by myself. Also, I think that this activity was a good way of bringing everyone back together in a sense since we don't really have online sessions.

Overall, I really enjoyed the Twitter assignment! I thought it was very different and it brought a fun twist on being able to express opinions on class, readings, etc. I think I did a pretty good job with the assignment and I don't think I had a lot of days where I didn't tweet. I probably missed a tweet here or there, but it was probably because I was studying or I went to bed early. I would give myself a 46/50 because of the days that I missed and I'm sure that there's a couple of tweets that I accidentally repeated or tweets that weren't as engaging as my other tweets.

References

Whiting, A., & Williams, D. (2013). Why people use social media: A uses and gratifications approach. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 16(4), 362-369.

Blog 8

#cnusocialmedia

Twitter has always been one of my favorite social media platforms and I never thought I would use it for academic purposes. However, in a class called Communication and Social Media, it only makes sense to integrate one of the most popular forms of social media into the course. I will confess, when it was announced we would have to post Monday-Friday and retweet at least ten of our classmates' tweets, I was not the biggest fan. Knowing my toxic personality trait of procrastination, I had a feeling I would probably forget to make a tweet until the last possible second or not meet the retweet count. I also am not a fan of tweeting on my personal twitter account and primarily use to my account to keep up-to-date with news around me and being able to laugh at memes. 

Reflecting on my #cnusocialmedia experience, some days I found it easier to tweet content and some days it was more of a chore than anything. I often felt that I was recycling my tweets, just wording things differently. Or I'd be in a rush to send out that late-night tweet to get credit and saying the most basic comment that relates to social media or a topic discussed in class. 

The two things I found to be great to tweet about had to be watching The Circle and Scandal. Both were set up as live-tweet discussions, more so Scandal due to having to go home for corona. I thought both of these shows were engaging and the live-tweeting experience was surprisingly fun and enjoyable for me. As I mentioned before, I am not big on actually creating tweets and have always stayed away from engaging in things like live-tweeting, but these two exercises showed that it can be to engage with your peers and those who are enjoying the same content/shows as you are. This also goes to show how twitter can go hand-in-hand with other platforms, like streaming Netflix, for the use and gratification of entertainment and engaging with others.

While I know most of my peers all needed to retweet the same amount of their classmates' tweets as I did, I liked us all retweeting and liking each other's posts every week. When others would respond to my tweets, it was nice, especially with those who I never really talked to in or outside of class. Interacting with people online who you might not see or engage in conversation with in person is a practice that I think is a big reason social media is so popular. I made a tweet about this once, but I have recognized that I have online friends and other friends who I engage with every day outside of social media. Those online friends or 'mutuals' will like and respond to your posts, and you do the same. It's an interesting thing but also gives you a sense of community when you log into your platform.

Overall, I think I did well with my twitter assignment. I know there were a few days that I'd miss sending out a tweet, or I would not tweet the most engaging content, but as a whole, I thought I satisfied our requirements. In the end, having to tweet every day was not as bad as I thought it would be and certain assignments, like live-tweeting, made it enjoyable as well. I don't think it will change my tweeting behavior on my personal twitter, but it was pretty cool to engage with my classmates almost every day, even all the way home in Florida. 

Isabel Schnaidt Blog #8

On the first day of class, when we were told that we’d have to tweet daily, I admit that the thought filled me with dread. At the time, the only tweets that I had ever written were for internships, which was completely different, since they were never my own personal thoughts and opinions. I had no idea how I was going to manage to go from clueless about Twitter to tweeting daily. As I look back on my experience, however, I realize that while I struggled at times, it was easier and more rewarding than I ever thought it would be.

Initially, I was terrified of Twitter

Challenges

While daily tweeting wasn’t as intimidating as I thought it would be, I definitely still struggled at times. The main issue that I encountered was exactly what I expected: there were days where I had no idea what to tweet about. I wanted to make sure that I was actually contributing something valuable or posing a question that people would have opinions about. Because of this, there were many days where I spent longer than I’m willing to admit trying to think of things to tweet. I think that I got slightly better as I got more practice with tweeting, but I continued to struggle to some degree for the whole semester. 

Though I predicted that my lack of ideas would be difficult, there was also a one-time occurrence that presented an unexpected challenge. At the end of January, a random Twitter user replied to my tweet about The Circle in a way that simultaneously bewildered and annoyed me. I posted some light criticism questioning why Shubham would audition to be on The Circle if he hated social media so much. In the response I got, as pictured below, @TheSavageNorth claimed that Shubham was randomly put on the show through a lottery, seeming to imply that reality TV contestants are randomly selected with no audition process.

Pictured is the aforementioned tweet, which I still don't entirely understand.

I honestly didn’t know what to do about this response. I was worried that I misinterpreted it, but I don’t see what else he could have meant. Calling me an idiot after showing that he had no idea how reality TV works was a move that was both infuriating and hilarious, and I was very tempted to respond to him. I knew that I could try to gently correct him by linking to the casting applications for The Circle, which would ideally help him see that he was wrong.

However, a couple of things stopped me from replying. The first thing that came to mind was our class discussion on #GamerGate, where online harassment can have particularly scary impacts for women, like Brianna Wu. Since my real name and the school I go to are attached to my Twitter account, I knew that if this guy was anything like the #GamerGate men, it could be bad for me. So while I’m sure that my offhand comment wasn’t enough to actually put me in danger, I figured that it’s always better to be on the safe side, even if that meant not correcting his misconceptions.

Based on the way he tweets, I also figured that a conversation wouldn’t be worth it. His response reminded me of masculine online rhetoric, which is defined by self-promotion, rhetorical coercion, and adversality (Hodapp, 2017, p. 43). @TheSavageNorth particularly demonstrated rhetorical coercion and adversarial put-downs when speaking to me. This kind of rhetoric creates an environment “hostile to constructive conversation, exchange, critical thinking, and meaningful dialogue,” so I knew that he wouldn’t seriously listen to me or express a willingness to be corrected (Hodapp, 2017, p. 44). The unfortunate side effect of my restraint is that his tactic succeeded in silencing me, which is often one of the goals of masculine rhetoric. While I wasn’t actually offended, I hope that this didn’t embolden him to continue replying to strangers in the same way in the future.

Even just looking at his profile, I knew that a constructive conversation wouldn't happen, so I was content to send screenshots to friends and laugh at him in private. Contrary to his wildly condescending bio, he ended up providing me with a lot of entertainment (as his expense).

Luckily, the response I got was a one-time occurrence and not at all serious, but it did demonstrate how easy it is to get into arguments online, even with complete strangers. I think that after this incident, I subconsciously began to censor myself a bit to avoid confrontations like this in the future, which I will elaborate more on when I talk about some shortcomings. It also highlighted the lack of privacy that a public Twitter account has, since I didn’t even use a common hashtag, yet a stranger still found my tweet.

Enjoyment

Despite the challenges I faced, both expected and unexpected, there were also several aspects of daily tweeting that I enjoyed. The main thing that I really appreciated was hearing the opinions of my classmates. Tweeting provided a way for the people who might not normally speak up in class to speak their minds in a different format. It also allowed people to post the thoughts that come to them throughout the day, instead of just in class, meaning there was a lot of variety in the content. Through Twitter, I heard more from my classmates in this class than any other, which was particularly nice after we moved to online classes.

One particular thing that I loved to read about was when my classmates were able to relate class concepts to current events, whether that be the actions of CNU, the pandemic, or trending Netflix shows. I liked seeing the connections that I never would have been able to make myself, and I think that it helped to solidify the real-life applications of a lot of the class material in my mind in a way that doesn’t happen in other classes.

Twitter was a good way for me to keep up with classmates when physically separated.

And while I did struggle with figuring out what to tweet about, I also enjoyed the ability to express my thoughts. I surprised me that there were times where I wanted to put some opinions forth or ask the class some questions. In my first blog post, I referenced my own uses and gratifications from social media, and I mentioned that I never used social media to express my opinions, but only for things like entertainment, relaxation, and passing time (Whiting & Williams, 2013, p. 366). Contrary to this initial finding, as the semester came to a close, I realized that I was getting some enjoyment out of being able to express myself, which was entirely unexpected.

Online Communities

One of the big things that I learned about creating and maintaining an online community is the importance of hashtags. Even though we were required to follow each other for this class, the #cnusocialmedia hashtag was an important way to organize our tweets and keep us unified (and would have been even more important if we didn’t follow each other). Hashtags don’t have fixed and stable boundaries that entire online communities neatly fit into (Bonilla & Rosa, 2015, p. 7). However, they are extremely useful for bringing people together and maintaining an online community, even if they don’t entirely encompass them, as demonstrated through #cnusocialmedia.

I was surprised to learn how important hashtags are, but I also know that they are normally more complex than what our class activity could account for.

Through our class tweets, I also learned about the importance of interactivity for maintaining an online community. When people just independently tweet about the same topic without interacting with each other, it feels less like a community and more like separate people monologuing about the same thing. However, by actually interacting with and responding to each other, people can build more of a sense of community and togetherness. This was definitely evident in the way our class tweeted. On the days when we tweeted more independently, the contents of the hashtag seemed like some loosely connected but separate thoughts. But, when we actually interacted with each other, it was more unified and engaging.

I also realized that while social media is an asynchronous medium, live events are still extremely important for building and maintaining communities online. This was brought to my attention on the day that we live-tweeted an episode of Scandal, because it definitely felt like we were stronger as an online community at that point more than any other. The feelings of “shared temporality” while live-tweeting make people feel like they are part of a community, as it provides engagement in “real time” activities (Bonilla & Rosa, 2015, p. 7). This shows that while social media can and does often stand on its own, having a live event to rally around can be extremely important. This strengthens communities who may live far away from each other, since they all get the same feelings of shared experiences and participation. Additionally, it helps me to understand why live-tweeting television is such a common practice, because it really heightened the experience of watching the show. I also understood why television producers often aim to promote live-tweeting and building “brand communities” around their shows, because these shared experiences likely build intense brand loyalty (Casella, 2015, p. 4).

While we only used social media within our class, Twitter can be used to build online communities across the world.

Shortcomings

I think that my main shortcoming is that I didn’t respond enough to my classmates’ tweets. In fact, I think that as a class, we didn’t interact enough to build a community as strong as we could have otherwise. I would often prefer to pose questions rather than answer them, and I noticed that a lot of other people did as well. Because of this, many questions went unanswered, and people retweeted them without comment instead of answering. I honestly don’t know why this happened on such a large scale, but I know that personally I often forgot that responding to people was something that counted for credit, so I would primarily write original tweets. I think that a preference for original tweets isn’t a bad thing by itself, but since the vast majority of the class shared this preference, it meant that we had relatively low interactivity and weren’t necessarily strong as a “community.”

Another way that I think I fell short was by hedging my opinions in tweets by toning down my stronger views when I knew they would be controversial. I did this twice in the last week of tweeting, as pictured below, though I know I did it many times before, as well. This was an example of self-censorship, where I avoided more controversial topics to manage impressions with my readers (Marwick & boyd, 2010, p. 125). Part of this was because of the negative encounter I had after tweeting about The Circle, but I was definitely more focused on the impressions I was giving my classmates. Since I knew that my primary audience were others in this class, I knew a lot about them and didn’t want to offend any of them. That means that I self-censored my tweets to manage impressions and avoid hurting feelings, even when I knew that my honest opinions might have incited more passionate discussions.

I know that a lot of my classmates like TikTok, so instead of outright condemning the actions of the company, I posed a question to get another opinion.

I stand by this tweet, but I definitely wouldn't have bothered to add in the qualifier about needing to make money if I were talking to friends in a face-to-face scenario.

Score and Conclusion

Based on the qualifications put forth in the syllabus, I think I should earn a full 50 points for my tweets. I feel justified saying this because I never missed a day, and consistently tried to bring something substantial, whether it be my thoughts, a discussion question, or a relevant article. So, I know that I gave it my absolute best effort.

Overall, this method of class participation was unique, and while there were definitely challenges and shortcomings, it promoted student engagement in a way that was unprecedented, in my experience. And while nobody expected the rapid shift to online classes, the use of Twitter was an unplanned way for us to stay in contact, even when we were far apart. Therefore, despite my initial dread of tweeting, it ended up being an unexpected blessing.

Twitter ended up being a great way to stay connected with classmates during social distancing.

References

Bonilla, Y., & Rosa, J. (2015). #Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States. American Ethnologist 42(1), 4-17.

Casella, R. (2015). The new network: How social media is changing — and saving — television. In A. F. Slade, A. J. Narro, & D. Givens-Carroll (Eds.), Television, social media, and fan culture (pp. 1-22). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Hodapp, C. (2017). Men's rights, gender, and social media. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Marwick, A. E., & boyd, d. (2010). I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media & Society 13(1), 114–133. doi:10.1177/1461444810365313

Whiting, A., & Williams, D. (2013). Why people use social media: A uses and gratifications approach. Qualitative Market Research 16(4), 362-369). doi:10.1108/QMR-06-2013-0041

Blog #8

Drew's 8th and final blog post

Well… It turns out that I suck at tweeting.

       At the beginning of the semester, the idea of tweeting everyday sounded like it would be an easy thing to do. I had flashbacks to high school, where I would tweet multiple times a day with no care as to what I was tweeting or who was reading my tweets. As I transitioned to college, my days of actively tweeting evolved to becoming a silent observer. Over the last 4 years I have created a habit of being on Twitter all of the time and NOT tweeting, and I believe that this ultimately became my downfall when it came to this assignment.

       I think the biggest challenge for me was 1) thinking of content to tweet about, and 2) actually remembering to tweet. It had been so long since I had actively tried to tweet that I could not break the habit of getting on Twitter just to read other people’s tweets, and then not tweet my ideas. When I would remember to tweet, I found it was really difficult to articulate the ideas in my head. I probably over-thought each of my tweets, leaving them in the ‘draft’ folder forever. I wanted each of my tweets to be perfect, with the proper grammar and wording that could be understood by everyone who read it. I get that this overthinking is probably counter-intuitive to the Twitter model of ‘think something, tweet something,’ but I guess as I got older, I cared more about what people thought of my tweets. I did find that retweeting other people’s tweets was easier, but then I would get too picky on the tweets I wanted to retweet and I focused on tweets that resonated with me.

       Another challenge I noticed was that I normally wouldn’t see my fellow classmate’s tweets on my timeline. I guess the Twitter algorithm was so in tuned to my personal taste (because I was using

my 4 year old personal account) so it wouldn’t show me much of my classmates tweets, I would have to search the hashtag to see a majority of the tweets. I also had to turn on the tweet notifications for whenever Dr. B tweeted, so that I wouldn’t miss anything important.

       Did I enjoy anything? Yes. I thought it was cool to be able to interact with classmates in Twitter. It was helpful to see what other people in the class were thinking about certain things we learned about in class, and it helped further discussions that we were having in class. Twitter also came in clutch a few times when it came to when the blogs were due. I would notice that there would be more tweets about the blog topic, which would lead to me realizing that the blog was due in two days. I also thought it was cool that we were able to interact with Dr. B through Twitter and receive updates that way. After I had turned on the notifications, I was able to get the class updates quickly, much quicker than through Scholar or email.

       I also really enjoyed the “Live Tweet” event that we did for class. It was a lot of fun to interact with the class in that way, and I wish that we could have done more of that. I felt that I was able to do better at that because it was high paced, so I did not think as much when I was tweeting, I was just trying to get more content out there for the rest of the class to see and interact with. I am a huge fan of reading live tweets about certain shows, and after this exercise I think I might start live tweeting more often about shows that I enjoy.

      One thing I learned about this assignment is that it is a lot more work to run an account than I thought it would be. I think in order to run a successful account, you need to be fully involved with the page at all times. The other key is generating a lot of content, so that it shows up consistently on your follower’s timeline. I think that the most successful twitter personalities and accounts create enough content that at least one of their tweets is seen by their followers almost every time they scroll through Twitter. I think another key to being successful on social media is understanding your audience. The reason I follow certain Twitter personalities is because they tweet with a sense of humor that I relate to, and I think most of their followers relate to, so making sure that you understand who is reading your tweets will help in growing the page.

      I believe that where I feel short was with the content creation part. I think the tweets I tweeted were quality tweets that resonated with other classmates, and I engaged with other classmates about what they were tweeting, but in the long run, I did not create enough content to run a successful, or even adequate Twitter page. If this was a page that I was trying to run as a personality or business, it would definitely flop big time. If I could do it all over again, I would tweet much more than I did, and try to make it a habit to tweet more but worry about what I’m tweeting less.

      If I’m and going to give myself a grade here it would probably be a 30 out of 50.

     I know that I did not meet the weekly requirements when it came to original tweets, but I did do my retweeting more often. I also feel that most of the tweets I put out there were quality tweets and they received some decent engagement, even from people who weren’t in my class (my high school history teacher ‘liked’ a couple of my tweets. That’s kinda weird, right?). Overall, I really enjoyed this class. I learned a lot about parts of social media I did not even knew existed, and I also learned more about social media that I kinda knew about before.

I hope everyone has a great quarantined summer!

-Drew Camp

Blog #8 McMillan

            In the span of this semester I either tweeted or retweeted something right around 200 times. On my personal twitter, since 2014, I’ve only tweeted or retweeted 107 things. So needless to say, tweeting everyday was something very new for me. It came with its challenges, however, I’m glad it was a part of this class because its something I likely would never have experienced otherwise.

           This idea of using social media regularly for a class is not completely foreign to me though. When I had Dr. Billinson in the fall, every Tuesday we had to write down five news stories that the Associated Press tweeted about. This was again pretty new to me since I don’t often check the news. However, it did get me in the groove of using my twitter for something other than getting the best memes. It also gave me more insight into a popular reason why many people use social media, information seeking (Whiting & Williams, 2013). Many people use social media as the main way to get their news. While I don’t personally follow any news accounts on my social media I do see it through other peoples posts. Of the seven uses and gratifications that Whiting and Williams proposed, information seeking is pretty low on the list for me (Whiting & Williams, 2013).

Associated Press's Twitter

                There were a few challenges that came with tweeting every day. The first and likely one of the more common ones is remembering to tweet every weekday. The easiest solution to this would be to set a daily reminder. However, I try to limit the notifications I receive on my phone, so I don’t really like to set reminders. Most of the time I would tweet around lunch time or right after class, so I established a routine of doing that so I rarely if ever forgot to tweet till later. The other difficulty in tweeting everyday was having something of substance to tweet about. Its much easier to tweet the first thing that comes to mind but thinking of something about social media and relating to class material was really difficult, especially every day. In order to make this a little easier I tried to mix in a few jokes or gifs in order to have something lighter to tweet about. If I could do this over again, I would follow a few accounts that tweet about social media so I could either quote retweet their content, or use it to fuel my own ideas.

An example of a more light-hearted tweet of mine

             There were also many things I enjoyed and looked forward to about tweeting every day. The first being how accepting and low consequence it felt. On personal accounts, I often spend a lot of time shaping the content I post to create a certain image of me. However, in my school account, I was able to post without so much thought since the expectations were in writing set by Dr. Bernabo, instead of in my head and set by society. The retweeting requirement also gave a sense of satisfaction when I posted a tweet that got a lot of retweets. Even though classmates were required to do so, it always feels good to have a tweet be retweeted by a lot of people and it really made my newsfeed feel more like a community. This level of social interaction was a big plus for this tweeting assignment. And although it was for a grade, if I were to assign my main uses and gratifications for that account, social interaction would be very high on the list (Whiting & Williams, 2013). This also motivated me to come up with funny tweets that classmates would enjoy.

            Tweeting every day has also given me an appreciation for those who do it as a living. I couldn’t help but to think about how time consuming it would be to be an online personality or influencer. With much less guidelines than I had for this class, I feel that I would really struggle to come up with content all the time that others would enjoy. I feel like a lot of influencers fall into this trap of posting generic fabricated content because its what they think others will like instead of posting what they like. Tweeting my own thoughts every day would be easy, but if I was tweeting to impress others, I would struggle greatly.

            It also made me wonder if the average focused all their time on amassing a lot of followers on twitter or Instagram, if they would be successful. Or put otherwise, can fame online be a product of hard work or is it a combination of other things. To understand what others thought about this I asked my classmates if they thought they could become an influencer if they tried hard enough. The results were similar to what I thought. Around half of the class thought they could while the other half didn't.

            

Results from the poll

In other blogs, I’ve analyzed and been critical of other social media users. Now, its time to turn the tables on myself. Overall, I think I did a pretty good job! If I were to give myself a numerical score I would give myself a 94.5 (decimals make it sound more official). Starting with what I could do better, I could have been more interactive with my classmates. Things like quote-tweeting and replying more to other’s tweets would have been easy ways to do this. However, often times I did my tweet and retweets for the day and then didn’t check until the next day, failing to interact with my classmates. Another thing I may have fell short in is the substance of the tweets. I could have been more thoughtful or engaged more class readings with my tweets. Often times I had a more casual tweet in mind, so I rarely took more time out to think about what the best tweet is, instead of the first. Like I said earlier, if I could do it over again, I would follow people who tweet about things similar to what we were learning in class so I could introduce new content to the class. Another thing I would use a bit more is the drafts feature. This would allow me to sit down and in an hour or two I could have substantive tweets for the whole week. This is something that people also utilize in social media campaigns (Baker, 2019). If I were to treat these tweets like a social media campaign, I could even schedule them to post ahead of time. This would really allow me to set aside the time in the beginning of the week and then not have to worry about thinking of quality tweets every day. Although this would be good for a social media campaign, it’s probably overkill for tweeting every day (Baker, 2019).

Along with the missteps, I also am proud of a few things I did during this twitter assignment. Firstly, I’m proud that I was able to regularly tweet for an entire semester. This has made me more willing to post on my personal accounts since I now realize its really not that big of a deal. And finally, I’m glad that I, as well as my classmates, were able to stay positive in such an uncertain time that we are in today. No matter what’s going on outside, it was always nice to log in and know I was surrounded by friendly faces.

Random but I was surprised to see so many people have seen my tweets!

References

Baker, K. (2019, October 1). The ultimate guide to social media marketing campaigns. Retrieved from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-media-campaigns

Whiting, A., & Williams, D. (2013). Why people use social media: A uses and gratifications approach. Qualitative Market Research 16(4), 362-369). doi:10.1108/QMR-06-2013-0041

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Blog #8

Before this class assignment I have never been one to tweet very often. Although I do love Twitter I serve as more of a bystander in that world. I also believe that those kinds of people are needed on twitter and other places. This assignment however was more fun than I expected it to be and showed me more of what it is like to be active on twitter and within a twitter community. 

It could often be somewhat challenging however, because of the same reason that I find it hard to tweet on my regular twitter. I wanted to have something to say with content. Something that people would actually care about, and even though it was just a class assignment I still liked to pay attention to how many likes or retweets I would get. There is something that comes with the culture of social media that I think can often lead to anxiety and I think that is something that especially affects me. Some days it was really hard to come up with something to say, but I always tried my best to have some sort of quality to my tweets. I never really had trouble remembering to tweet or retweet though as I had a reminder set on my phone that went off every day, and my classmates all had great stuff to say so the retweets were natural and fun.

 

I enjoyed being able to share some of my thoughts with people and not having to worry about if they cared. They were pretty much assigned to care. I also think that I learned more about social media and what others think about it which was enjoyable for me. It was a new and refreshing way to learn as well as communicate for class. It was also fun to interact with other people which is not something I regularly do on my personal twitter. Replying to people, participating in polls, and creating conversations was entertaining and made it feel as if it wasn’t even an assignment. I also was able to actually learn how to make things such as polls or do things like save drafts. In my very minimum twitter experience up to this point these were things that I had not explored. It was fun to be able to find these kinds of features and use them to make polls and gather information and people’s opinions.

 

I think the most important thing about creating and maintaining an online community is that aside from activity, interaction is vital in maintaining this. At the beginning of the semester I think most people would go and do their tweet for the day and then log off. As the semester went on though and we all began to learn the same information, we had more to talk about. We started to pay more attention to what each other were saying and it was engaging. More and more conversations began to evolve and it became more of a community. The shared experiences or interests is also key to an online community. Had we not all been in the same class and been learning the same things it would be very difficult to have a successful online community because we would have nothing to talk about. I think one of the most successful activities was when we all live tweeted Scandal. I think this got us all very active and forced us to be more comfortable and to engage with each other more.

I think in the future of this class it is something you should continue and maybe even incorporate it earlier in the class to give the students more of a sense of what the twitter community should be like. It also showed me some of the reasons that people enjoy live tweeting. It proved to me what Harrington meant when he stated “Twitter does not necessarily replace existing media channels, such as broadcasting or online mainstream media, but often complements them, providing its users with alternative opportunities to contribute more actively to the wider media sphere.”(2013, p. 405). This particularly stood out to me as we watched scandal because right now as we are all trapped in our houses we were able to watch it together and have conversations about it. I imagine it works better with tv shows that are aired at specific times so that you do not have to schedule with everyone when to start it, and I can see how it creates a sense of community around similar interests in tv shows and also boosts other people's interest in the shows as well. 

I do, however, know that in some ways I fell short on this assignment. Although I sometimes did, I rarely directly interacted with other students by replying to their tweets. This is something that I could have done a lot more in order to enhance the experience. I also previously mentioned that sometimes it was hard for me to come up with substantive things to say every day. I think that I usually did a good job but every once in a while I would have a very uninspired day and I would end up having to tweet something less substantive or thought provoking. I do know that I always tweeted every day and that I always had my 10 retweets per week. 

For my score on this assignment I think I deserve a 97 or 98. Although I may not have always engaged other students and I had a couple less substantive tweets, I think overall I met the criteria well and I never missed a day of tweeting. I did my best to come up with good content and to engage course material in my tweets. I also think that most of my tweets were well thought out and were things that other people could relate to or would find interesting. 

Harrinton, S., Highfield, T., & Bruns, A. (2013) More than a backchannel: Twitter and Television.

Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, 10(1), 405.

Blog #8- @NathanGi11

3/25/20

@NathanGi11

 After a long enduring semester, it’s time to reflect on my own personal social media usage throughout this period. From the start of January 2020 to late April 2020 I was tasked with creating, maintaining, and engaging with my peers on Twitter’s social media platform. I did not have a twitter before the start of this class, nor did I ever have a personal Twitter account. I came to the game with a slight disadvantage but quickly learned how the platform operated and the hidden rules of what to do and expect on Twitter. The guidelines were clear and simple in laying out the requirements of the assignment. Students were required to tweet once every weekday with the hashtag ‘#cnusocialmedia’ and have a total of at least 10 retweets by the end of every week. Luckily, my generation was born into a digitalized era so adapting to social media related assignments became second nature with proven complications from time to time.

            The start of my journey began with setting up my profile. This is always an exciting part of joining new media platforms as you are able to dictate your own identity across this platform. It’s almost like choosing a character at the start of a video game. Do you wish to be the funny outgoing guy or the silent lurker with no profile picture; how about the avid content creator that posts 20 pictures a day or a more humbling yet adventurous type that has limited but fascinating photos. Coming into Twitter, I recognized who my target audience was and what I was comfortable with them seeing so I decided to keep it simple for the time being.  My Twitter handle was meant to be simple and effective as it identifies who I am. Then I selected a profile picture that best resembled myself with a splash of comedic relief and adventurous nature.

Me yawning in front of Westminster Abbey Collegiate Church

 The cover photo came quickly to as It shows some personality that I enjoy to relaxing in warm weather.

This may not seem all too interesting but everyone makes micro assumptions when viewing profiles and I wanted to portray myself in a positive light to my classmates. The final touch to my profile included a bio that stated the course I was a part of so other fellow students could easily identify me.

            Once everything was set up, I started with the task of Tweeting once a day. Initially, my tweets were very subpar as they were not too relevant to the coursework at hand. I had to keep in mind that I was supposed to be tweeting about social media related topics yet, my focus was on making people laugh and trying to tweet witty comments about CNU. This ended up falling flat on its face as I was made aware of my insufficient tweets that lacked course material. It wasn’t long after that I quickly started to get the hang of appropriate messages to tweet for my colleagues. With a couple of retweets here and there and a few ‘hearts’ on some memorable posts, I was zooming through this assignment one day at a time. By the time I started nearing the end of the road I took note of my experience on tweeter and the lasting impact it left.

            In the beginning, I treated tweeting like a hassle; it was just another assignment to check off my to-do list. Never had I thought using social media would be viewed as a chore but as time went on, that perspective quickly changed. I started noticing that I would tweet more than just the minimum once a day requirement. I was retweeting more than 10 posts and liking content that was outside of class parameters. It was a strange feeling as homework started to shift into an addiction. I noticed myself checking my account more frequently and even logging in during the weekends (when we don’t have to tweet). Twitter obviously molded to my collection of media applications that I regularly check throughout the day and it fits nicely right between Instagram and Snapchat. As mentioned in "More than a backchannel: Twitter and television", Twitter would compliment my other applications by verifying information and discovering trends from a wider media sphere (Harrington/Highfield/Bruns, 2013). I started saving ‘draft tweets’ that I thought would be appropriate to post later and would even check the app during spring break. Maintaining my twitter account was something that seemed to be difficult at first but became second nature after 2 weeks.

            Scrolling through my account left me with a couple of highlights worth sharing and some worth deleting. My very first tweet on the platform was a common joke held around campus arguing that Regattas cafeteria is better than Commons, despite them having practically the same food options. My next tweet was on an interesting fact about CNU campus and how they spray paint their grass green. Despite this being a verified fact (see photo evidence) it was to be relevant to the course material at hand. I would later continue to tweet like this for the first week and a half until I started orienting my tweets in a more class-friendly manner. My first substantive tweet came on January 21^st when I asked a critical question on “how future generations would be affected by creating usernames on social media platforms”. This tweet had a verity of impressions that triggered suggestions of limited username counts and possibly retiring old or inactive account names. Tweeting after this became much more relevant and engaging with classmates as I started asking questions, commenting on tweets, and creating/interacting with poll data. To this day, my most engaging tweet was somewhat of a humorous rhetorical question meant to lighten the mood of my fellow classmates.

Overall I am proud of the tweets I have posted (with a few exceptions like the selfie) and believe they accurately captured my learning experience throughout the course of Communication 322. If I were to give myself an honest rating on the content I posted and engaged with on Twitter, I would score a 7.5/10. I give this rating because of the initial rough start I had at the beginning of course. If a perfect twitter account was represented as a 10/10 I would also suggest that there was plenty of room for me to grow and post more engaging content filled tweets throughout the semester. I am thankful for the experience/assignment of creating and using a Twitter account and will be using it far beyond the content of this course. 

Harrington, S., Highfield, T., & Bruns, A. (2013). More than a backchannel: Twitter and television. Participations, 10(1), 405-409.

Blog #8

  After I first read the syllabus for my social media class and saw that I was going to have to tweet daily, I immediately started to panic slightly because I figured I would forget to tweet some days. On my real Twitter account, I never post because I seem to care too much about what other people think. I will retweet some tweets, but I mainly scroll through and see what other people post. So, initially, I was scared that I would not come up with anything to post or anything that is worthy of posting. The first few weeks were a little challenging. I had to get in the groove and figure out what kind of tweets Dr. Bernabo was looking for. Also, I had to remember to use the class hashtag, #cnusocialmedia, which I forgot at least once. I eventually got used to tweeting every day. I found out that remembering to tweet on Fridays was the hardest because once classes were over, I only thought about the weekend. I did not find having to retweet 10 tweets challenging because I would just retweet a bunch early in the week. These tweets usually contained funny content or content that I could relate to or agree with.

  I enjoyed creating polls as my tweet of the day because I could post my opinion, but also allow others to chime in without actually having to post something. I did this a few times. I also enjoyed when my classmates would comment on my tweets or interact with them. I found more joy in tweeting when I was interacting with others rather than just making a daily tweet. It was also hard to create a tweet that would provoke others to respond or create some sort of a discussion because something that I find interesting, others may not. Sometimes I found it easier to just tweet about something in the readings because that usually sparked more of a response. The image to the left shows my first tweet which so happens to be a poll. This was the poll that got the most votes (38). Also, it received a few responses and retweets. Surprisingly, Twitter was the number one vote on which social media platform was used the most. I was surprised because it seemed like most of the class mentioned that they did not keep up with Twitter as much before doing this assignment.

  To best reflect on my experience tweeting daily, I decided to explore my tweet activity analytics. This is a really cool feature that I did not know Twitter offered. I was able to discover my most popular tweet, the average responses I received, the average amount of retweets and likes, and much more. During the last 28 days, I have earned an average of 208 impressions per day. Impressions mean that my tweets have shown up on someone's timeline. My top tweet was about the Fyre Festival, and it received 10 retweets and three likes. This tweet also encouraged four people to click on my profile. According to Twitter analytics, I received an average of two retweets a day and two likes per day. Overall, I believe my tweets were successful and original. I tried to tweet something different every day, so it would not be the same topics related to what other classmates were tweeting.

  Before this social media class, I have never had to maintain any type of online social community. I am not an active user and do not really interact with others when it comes to posting on any social media site. According to Whiting and Williams (2013), social interaction is one of the most popular themes for using social media, as well as entertainment, pastime, and relaxation. I mainly use Twitter for pastime because when I am bored, I always find myself scrolling through my feed to look for anything that may catch my eye. Sometimes I even scroll through Twitter just to take a break from my homework. However, even though I was browsing through my feed, I was never taking the initiative to tweet myself. So, tweeting daily was definitely a new experience.

  I thought that the tweeting activity was fun and different! It was a new way to engage with my classmates and professor, and it seemed to be pretty successful. We could easily tell which readings other students engaged in based on their tweets, what shows people were into, and where people stand on more serious topics. I do not think I fell short in one main area of this exercise. However, I would have liked to engage with my classmate's tweets more. I did this more towards the end of the semester, but I should have done it more in the first half too. Engaging in other people's tweets really develops a new sense of community and opens different paths for discussion. This is one reason why I really enjoyed the live-tweeting exercise because we were all tweeting at once and about the same thing. It allowed each other to interact. I thought I did well with not only tweeting about what I thought was important in the show but also engaging in my classmate's tweets. Live-tweeting allows users to be more active in the media, and it allows for television shows to be promoted through hashtags and tweets (Harrington et al., 2013). The act of live-tweeting gets the audience involved and discussing the show together through the use of Twitter.

  Overall, I thought I did a good job with the Twitter assignment. I had daily tweets except for one time. I remember the one time I forgot, and I was mad because it seemed like such a simple task to tweet about social media every day. Also, I believe I hit the 10 retweets a week, but there is a possibility I fell short a week early on before I got really into tweeting. I tried to make my tweets relatable or about something relevant to spark discussions. Since the Twitter assignment was worth 50 points, I would give myself at least a 47/50. I took points off for the one day I missed at the beginning of the semester and if some of my tweets were not as engaging as they should have been. The Twitter exercise was a good sneak peek into what it would be like to run an active social media account and the importance of being able to interact and engage with other users.

References:

Harrington, S., Highfield, T., & Bruns, A. (2013). More than a backchannel: Twitter and 
      television. Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, 10(1), 405-409. 

Whiting, A., & Williams, D. (2013). Why people use social media: A uses and gratifications 
      approach. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 16(4), 362–369. doi: 
      10.1108/qmr-06-2013-0041