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.