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.