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.