Blog 8: Twitter Reflection

Blog #8: Twitter Reflection 

Social media has played a major role throughout my life. I cannot remember a point in time where social media wasn’t a prominent aspect within the society. Twitter, in particular, is an app that users either love or hate. When the app first came out, I remember not really understanding it but using it because it was the “shiny and new” social media app. The app itself has grown over the years and has its own culture in a sense. Meme sharing, cancel culture, political stories, and many more are some of the main uses of the app. Not only to mention the many movements placed within hashtags themselves. Twitter, as a social media platform, plays a large role within society but also within this course. The daily tweeting brought a lot to my attention that I have not realized in the past when using social media. 

I have never really been the biggest fan of Twitter until college. I feel as if college put a “funnier twist” on everything posted on Twitter because everyone is just as broke and sad as you are. In relation to this class, I really enjoyed the experience. I’m not going to lie- at first, it was a bit annoying, and I found myself forgetting to tweet at times at the beginning of this experience. After the first couple of weeks, it began to almost become a habit to tweet. I found it informative to hear the class’ perspective on particular readings, or just on life in general. This experience became more entertaining after being sent home because it felt as if everyone was back in the classroom again. I feel as if everyone’s content became more creative because of pure boredom, but also the increase of time to “come up” with fun and more interactive tweets. Also, the live-tweeting experience was one I have never been a part of and is something I really enjoyed. Similar to my live-tweeting encounter, Harrington, Highfield, and Bruns (2013) mention that Twitter itself does not replace the existing media channels, but essentially complements them. The Scandal episode that we watched virtually as a class felt as if I was watching with a large group, but also pointed out statements that I would have never thought of. Not only was the live-tweeting a source of entertainment but as well as information about the media we were consuming. 

Although tweeting every day was enjoyable, there were times when I struggled with it. At the start of the semester, I was struggling with reminding myself to tweet. Twitter was never an app that I was on daily like I was with Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook for example. Tweeting every day for this class almost made me realize how informative and entertaining Twitter actually is! Another struggle I faced was the lack of creativity within my tweets as the weeks went on. At times, I felt as if I was repeating information I had previously tweeted. This lack of creativity sheds light on a portion of social media that I have not thought about before. It allowed me to think about the content that I posted into depth, rather than creating a “quick post”. Although this appeared to be a negative effect when tweeting it will allow more creative content in the future. 

Another idea that I learned is that social media may not be the ideal job for me! Creating and maintaining content was a struggle within this course, and I can never imagine making a career out of it, but I now have a new opinion about influencers. Creating new and “fresh” content is definitely a struggle and I caught myself leaning towards making a poll tweet when I ran out of ideas. Also, I feel as if this experiment allowed me to pay attention to more tweets. For example, instead of scrolling through Twitter at a fast pace, I feel as if this experiment allowed me to slow do and digest a lot of new information. Also, incorporating Twitter (or any social media) into a college course is the easiest way to relate to any college student. As I previously mentioned that at first, it was difficult to tweet, it was also strange to “mix” my schoolwork and my social life at first. At the start of the semester, it felt very forced, but eventually, it felt as if I was tweeting something I would say outside of the classroom. 

In conclusion, this experience was overall very enjoyable. Although, I struggled at the beginning of the semester with tweeting consistently for a couple of days- I would give myself a 45/50. After being sent home for quarantine I also believe that my content got better as the days went on. I felt as if I was much more creative and had a lot more time to come up with tweets. Overall, tweeting for a college course was an experience that I will never forget! 
References: 
Bruns, A., Harrington, S., & Highfield, T. (2013). More than a backchannel: Twitter and television. Journal of Audience & Reception Studies. 10(1), 405-409. 

Blog #8

Lauren Lemelin

The Last Blog: Tweeting Daily.

“Bored.” “Just want school to be over.” these are examples of my meaningless tweets in high school. At that time I was using Twitter to vent, once I got to college I realized that my tweets were unnecessary and annoying so I logged out of my account and deleted the app. I was logged off Twitter until my communication and social media class began. On the first day of class I was told that I would have to tweet daily using the hashtag #cnusocialmedia. When I heard this I panicked and even considered dropping the course, I didn’t want to return to Twitter and use it the same way I had in the past. I decided to create an account for this class to try and prevent that from happening. This was a great idea until my old account and new account merged on the app. The reexposure to Twitter and the merging of the two accounts became one of the biggest challenges I faced while tweeting daily.

The Twitter banner I created on the first day of class. 

Avg. time spent on Twitter now.

Since I was almost addicted to Twitter, returning to this platform was very challenging and left me with a few unintended consequences. At the beginning of the semester, I was able to avoid my old account and solely use my new account to tweet daily and interact with my professor and classmates. However, after a few weeks, I began spending time on both of my accounts, for entertainment and educational purposes. Twitter quickly became a huge distraction for me and eventually consumed a lot of my screen time. After reviewing my screen time, I realized that I went from zero minutes a day (before the semester began) on Twitter to 30 minutes a day (from two weeks ago). This shows how the daily tweeting opened up a dark door for me as Twitter became a huge distraction again.

My reminder

When the semester began I was extremely worried that I would forget to tweet everyday, especially since I wasn’t used to using Twitter. I dealt with this worry and fear by setting a reminder on my phone alerting me to “Tweet for class” everyday at 10 AM. Setting this daily remainder was the best decision I made all semester because I never missed a tweet. At the beginning of the semester I was also very worried that I wouldn’t have enough content to tweet about. I didn’t think there was enough information on social media and communication to tweet everyday, I was extremely wrong! After a few weeks, I figured out that drawing from the readings, class lectures, and current events was the best way to compose a tweet. I also began to utilize the interactive features on Twitter, specifically the poll option, which was very helpful.

#CNUSOCIALMEDIA Family!

Although my Twitter usage and screen time increased after beginning this course, the platform became a great source of entertainment and information. I enjoyed the daily tweeting because it allowed me to get on Twitter everyday and therefore exposed me to a lot of information, news, events, and social interaction. When I started using Twitter again I felt much more informed and connected to my peers. I also really enjoyed creating a digital community with my professor, Dr. Bernabo, and peers outside of the classroom. It allowed me to see and interact with everyone in a different light and atmosphere. I really liked how my professor would post class updates on Twitter, I thought it was amazing how she connected with us on a common, casual, and comfortable platform. Therefore, I think the daily tweeting and online interaction created a tight knit community and class atmosphere. For example, I was at a party off campus one Saturday night and a classmate came up to me and said “CNU social media?” at first I was confused so I replied “Haha what do you follow me?” and he was like “Yes I am in your class!” This was awesome and I know it happened because of the digital community we created.

Throughout the semester I learned the importance of interacting with your followers by producing engaging content. One way I was able to create and maintain my online social community was by creating an imagined audience. An imagined audience is an idea of the audience that is viewing your content (Marwick & Boyd, 2010).  My imagined audience was Dr. Bernabo and my classmates, even though my account was public and technically anybody online could see my content, I imagined that they were the main consumers of my tweets. My imagined audience influenced the content I posted as I was focused on producing content that was relatable, interactive, and relevant to them, communication, and social media. My imagined audience also helped me create my online social community because it determined who I followed, interacted with, and the content I engaged in. Having an imagined audience also helped me maintain my online social community because it helped me post appropriate content that kept my followers engaged, connected, and interested. I also learned that it is important to appeal to my imagined audience and not just my ideal audience, such as individuals like me, as my ideal audience is very limited (Marwick & Boyd, 2010). I also learned that posing questions and creating polls is an excellent way to maintain an online social community as it keeps your followers engaged.

How I felt tweeting everyday.

I think I did an excellent job tweeting daily, but I know there are a few things I could've done better. First, I could have done a better job at replying to my classmates tweets. I didn’t start replying to their tweets until the end of the semester. Once I began replying to their tweets I realized that it was fun to interact with them and I wish I had started that sooner. Secondly, I felt like a few of my tweets were relevant to social media but not relevant to the course content. Lastly, I wish I would have used more interactive media in my daily tweets. I rarely used graphics or videos and I regret that because I think those are attractive, engaging, educational, and interesting. 

Overall, I think I deserve a 100 on the daily tweeting assignment as I didn't miss a day, always retweeted 10 or more times a week, sometimes even tweeted twice in one day, and for the most part, I did a great job tweeting relevant information!

Thank you for a great semester, I will miss this!

Blog 8

    The time of the year that some kids have prayed for and other mourn is officially here. It is the end of the school year, or in my case, the end of the semester. I am a part of the group that is mourning this time of the year because once this semester ends, I will be finished with my undergraduate studies. There is no going back to college after this for me. Come August, I will be diving into the big girl world at my new job in Fredericksburg with Geico. The mourning of the end approaching started early this year. The seniors’ time on campus was cut short due to the coronavirus pandemic, and we were forced to move home and face reality sooner than we thought. We are now doing homework in isolation rather than making our last few college memories with friends. One homework assignment I have been tasked with for this semester is to tweet a minimum of once daily about social media while using the hashtag #cnusocialmedia.

    The assignment was intimidating at first because I never post on Twitter. Twitter was the one social media app that I scrolled through and enjoyed the content but was never a content creator. Also, I decided to use my personal twitter account rather than making a school account, which forced me to try and create content that would appeal to my original following while also meeting the class requirements. In an attempt to please both fan bases, I was forced to brainstorm what to tweet rather than using my first initial ideas. Some individuals unfollowed me due to the social media-related tweets while others stuck along for the ride as they would often favorite my tweets with the hashtag.
    The challenges of this homework assignment continued as there were also about 20 other students in this course section that were tweeting about the same content. I am an individual that likes to be original and produce new material rather than tweet on the same topics that I see others posting about. As hard as I tried to create original content, the reality is that often, my tweets were similar in subject to my classmates. This is the part of the homework assignment that I often felt that I was coming up short.
    Although the homework assignment did have challenges, there were also benefits to it. I never tweeted on Twitter because when I was younger, I overshared on the platform. I was too young to have social media, and once I realized I was oversharing, I told myself I wouldn’t tweet at all. Even now, about seven years later, I was still fearful of creating content. This homework assignment allowed me to get over my fear of posting content on Twitter. Now that I am older, I am now more aware of what is appropriate and inappropriate to post, and I even found myself posting more tweets than just the required by this course.
   

After getting over my fear of posting on Twitter, I found myself going beyond the homework assignment requirements. I usually would try to interact with other social media posts in addition to creating my post. I also found myself retweeting way for than the required ten a week. At a certain point early on in the semester, it no longer felt like a homework assignment. When pulling up Twitter, I felt that I was getting on the platform for personal reasons. I had an alarm set for 7 pm Monday through Friday to remind me to tweet, and there were only a handful of times that I had not done by tweet for the day by that time. I enjoyed being able to interact with my classmates every day.
    I would give myself about 45/50 points for the tweeting assignment. I tweeted every day I was supposed to. I put thought and effort into the majority of my tweets. I went above and beyond by occasionally tweeting more than once a day. I attempted to interact with other classmates’ posts. I retweeted the ten required retweets a week with often going beyond that. I deducted points for myself because although the majority of the time, I put a great deal of effort into my tweets, I know there were a few times I slacked off. I am human, and on busier weeks that I was drowning in assignments, I found myself tweeting the first thing that came to mind rather than putting deeper thought into it. Additionally, I never counted my retweets, which leaves me at risk for possibly not hitting the required ten retweets.
    I hope this course continues to make this homework assignment a requirement. Coming into this, I dreaded the idea of tweeting every day, and now that I am leaving the course, I am going to miss it. I may not be using the #cnusocialmedia or tweeting every day, but I will continue to use Twitter. I think it would be interesting in the future to open up the tweets to be about anything or even possibly alternate weeks from social media related posts to anything. Possibly, offer extra credit to students if any of their tweets hit a certain number of favorites or retweets to encourage them to put more effort into their content. I once saw a Tik Tok where an individual posted a video on how her boyfriend cheated with her best friend that blew up, and she stated “like” for a part two. In part two, she said it was a class assignment to show what kind of content individuals make go viral on social media. Social media is a powerful tool, and this assignment helped me learn that.

Blog 8

Blog 8

  

          Twitter is a popular social media account that uses “short message length, and one-way connections, lead themselves effectively to random and regular updates on almost any form of personal or professional activity,” (Harrington, et al., 2013). Twitter was a newer platform for me, I only made mine a few years ago for a class at CNU actually and never really used it since. Even though the application has been on my phone for a few years I honestly never look at it, so getting in the habit of checking it a few times a day Monday through Friday has been quiet the challenge. I have learned how fun and entertaining Twitter can be and I think I will continue to use it. I feel Twitter is a uses and gratifications platform as discussed in the Why People Use Social Media reading and personally I use it mostly for social interaction, information seeking, and entertainment (Whiting & Williams, 2013).  

             Some challenges I faced when starting the daily tweets and retweets was coming up with something to say about social media every day. I thought it would be pretty easy because there is so much to say about social media, but coming up with original content to talk about that my classmates would want to favorite or retweet was way harder than it seemed. When it came to tweeting something original I quickly noticed that I had to keep up with what my other classmates said so I did not repeat the same thing which happened more often than I expected. Overall, the most challenging part was just remembering to tweet. I set a reminder on my phone for every day at 10 AM so I would not forget, then the next challenge was remembering to retweet throughout the day as my classmates tweeted. I found myself once or twice forgetting the hashtag, luckily I did not seem like the only one that forgot. Below is a screenshot of two times when I forgot the hashtag and had to add it in as a comment. 

           Even with all the challenges I really did enjoy engaging in tweeting regularly. I enjoyed being able to think deeper about social media and the content I was posting to come up with something unique and relatable. Having to tweet Monday through Friday made me focus more on what is currently going on in social media. I enjoyed reading what my classmates had to say about social media and I released we mostly recognized the same things, but I enjoyed learning more from them.  

              It was super interesting to take part in the live tweeting exercise since that is something I have never done before. That was definitely one of my favorite activities we have done because it was so out of my comfort zone, I honestly would never live tweet, but it was actually so fun. It was interesting seeing what other classmates thought about the episode and getting to kind of bounce off what they were saying. I personally have not seen much live tweeting besides during The Bachelor season, but it was cool to take part. “Twitter and services alike, become a kind of virtual loungeroom, connecting the active audience of specific TV shows,” so my classmates and I were able to connect on Twitter about a Scandal and discuss the show as we watch together. Below is a screenshot of what I tweeted during our live tweeting season, I felt like I tweeted way more than I actually did. It takes talent to tweet and watch the show at the same time. 

  

          From this experience I learned that it takes work and can be difficult to create and maintain a social media account. Sometimes you really have to do research and deeply think about what to tweet so that you can reach and connect with the largest amount of people. Also, I learned how easily tweets can spread, sometimes I noticed random people retweeting or favoriting my tweet which I have never personally experienced before. Twitter can be very hit or miss depending on what time of day you tweet or what you tweet about, I still have not quite figured out when the ideal tweeting time is. 

         

           Throughout this daily tweeting assignment I think I fell short with some of the content I was tweeting. It is so easy to get caught up in it and just tweet something kind of random just to get it done for the day and I quickly realized that I would not get many, if any retweets. I believe the score I should earn for the Twitter component in class is a 46 out of 50 points so a 92%. Even though I did tweet every day, sometimes I forgot the hashtag so I had to put it in the comments or I did not have good enough quality tweets. As shown below in the screenshot, there were a few instances where I would not get any retweets or favorites.    

References

Harrington, S., Highfield, T., Bruns, A. (2013.) Twitter and Television Participants: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 10

Whiting, A & Williams, D. (2013.) Why People Use Social Media A Uses and Gratifications Approach. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal  

Zwanziger Blog #8

Blog #8

When I first heard that we were going to be tweeting every day for our class, I was filled with a little bit of dread. Twitter has always been the social media that I love going on for looking at other people’s content but have never felt the need to tweet on my own. This is mainly because I never really know what to tweet. When I was in high school though, I used to tweet excessively. I mean like at least 20 times every day. I have no idea who I thought liked me that much that they wanted to hear every detail of my life, but hey to each their own. Other than that, though, I had basically stopped tweeting by the time that I had gotten to college. Now, on my personal twitter I know how the people I follow talk, and I knew that it was going to be very different from the kinds of tweets that I was going to tweet for this class. Because I knew that the audience I would be tweeting towards was different than my regular twitter, I wanted to make my twitter different than my personal one and seem more scholarly. Hodapp discusses this and says that “the establishment of online identity provides us with an opportunity to create an idealized version of the self, filtering out the characteristics about ourselves we find undesirable or troublesome, and focus on the traits that we admire or desire” (Hodapp). In this case, I wanted to make sure that my twitter embodied my school/class needs and wanted to make it seem more professional than I would have on my regular twitter. While I did have a good amount of anxiety about not knowing what to tweet, I wanted to try and make the best of it. The first thing that I tried to do was “decorate” my account as much as I could. By this I basically meant that I had uploaded a profile picture and a header, which to me was a lot of good hard work! After that though, I knew that’s when the challenges would begin. When I first started trying to tweet, I cannot explain how many drafts I created or how many times I would sit there and re-word my tweets. I was extremely nervous about what my classmates would think about my tweets and was definitely overthinking everything. This struggle lasted for about the first two weeks of the assignment and I was always extremely pleased with myself after I had completed my one tweet of the day. Tweeting is hard. However, after the first few weeks I started becoming a lot more comfortable about what I was saying. I felt that I had learned the voice that I needed to speak in for this assignment and felt comfortable tweeting whatever came to mind. I started tweeting more about what actually interested me, rather than what I thought my classmates wanted to hear. One thing that we had discussed in class is how people feel a sort of “high” when someone else likes or retweets their tweet, which is definitely true. While I know that everyone was forced to retweet at least five things every week, it didn’t stop me from feeling good when someone would retweet mine. Realizing how I felt when someone would like or retweet my tweet, I started making more of an effort to try and do the same to others. Not only that though, but sometimes my tweets would be liked or responded to by the companies I was tweeting about, which I always thought was exciting.

 One of the funny things was that even though I had created this twitter as an assignment, some other people who I have had class with in the past started following this twitter account too. While I was starting to actually enjoy tweeting and felt a lot more comfortable sharing my thoughts online, however dumb they may have been, it still was a little bit of a struggle to remember to tweet daily. For me, once I start something it is a lot easier to work off of that momentum, which often was the case for my twitter. Some days I would find myself not being able to tweet or totally forgetting to tweet, whereas other days I would tweet at least three things because they kept coming to my mind. I wasn’t just tweeting random things, but more things that were occurring in my everyday life, which was really helpful when I had questions about some things because twitter has a polls option!

 Being able to know the audience that I was tweeting for (in this case it was really easy because they were my classmates) definitely helped when trying to get more interactions on my content I was tweeting. Even though I had not talked to most of my classmates before, I felt like I got to know many of them through seeing them tweet. While there is definitely a difference between being friends with someone in real life and being friends with someone online, I found that a lot of the same people would engage with each other’s content which was a fun experience. It definitely made tweeting less awkward in the initial stages and felt like everyone was encouraging one another to keep up with this assignment. I also noticed that the more content you post, the more engagement you’re going to get. People want to see that you’re being active with your social media, which makes them want to engage with you. While I have always known this in the back of my mind, I have somewhat taken the backseat for many years when it comes to social media. It was nice to regain a lot of what I had lost for many years regarding social media, and I think it even helped with my offline confidence a little as well. While it may not seem like much and actually typing it sounds really dumb, I think that I regained some of my confidence about social media through this assignment. While I know that I did not tweet every day (but I made my best efforts I promise) I do think that I learned a lot through this assignment. Before this assignment, I had primarily kept my twitter open to my personal twitter account, however after this assignment I would always keep it on my school account as I was always interested to see what my classmates were posting as well. Overall, I think I did a pretty good job on this assignment and feel that it taught me a lot more than many assignments have in the past. I will definitely miss having our little community this assignment has created and I hope that more people will continue to use their accounts in the future. In all, I would grade myself a 45/50 as I definitely learned a lot through this assignment, as well as tweeted and retweeted regularly.

last blog :(. - blog #8

First of all, I have had such a great time in this class, it is crazy to see how there is always more to learn about in regards to social media. Even though we are a class about internet and social media sites, the classroom was very beneficial because there were many different perspectives and inputs in regards to the readings. I was really able to see that when we all worked together for a study guide for the midterm, seeing all the different explanations and inputs everyone put in was really cool because we all worked together for that. The study guide started after I tweeted and asked if anyone wanted to join me on that, it was really great to be able to use twitter to be able to get in touch with everyone. At first, I was really nervous about having to tweet something everyday because I am such a forgetful person, but it turned out to be a really great tool. I thought it was super helpful for Dr. Bernabo to get things out to us quickly and for us to get in touch with other students for questions. I think it really helped us stay involved and keep up with what we were (or what we were supposed to be) doing. I don’t know about anyone else, but I have a really hard time understanding concepts just from reading, so when I got to see other people talk about it I was able to grasp some concepts better. Using twitter also came in handy when we had to transition to online.

I had never really used twitter before this class, to tweet that is, so it was really cool to learn how to do certain things. My favorite times we used twitter were when we were in class, like that one day we all had to post a selfie. I of course didn’t know what kind of selfie so I picked a random filter on snapchat and took a picture and I ended up getting a spotlight. I came up with some explanation about lighting and posing, when in reality I was just having a really good hair day. But the reason I liked this activity was because everyone got to show their personality a little bit and it helped us get to know each other a little better and foster a sense of community. I thought that was the coolest thing about tweeting, we didn’t all just sit around and not know the other people all semester, we were able to use twitter to get to know each other and interact with each other a little and it helped class discussions. I really enjoyed getting to see how the topics we learn about apply to social media, like the uses and gratifications. We used twitter for information-seeking, communication, and sometimes entertainment (Whiting & Williams, 2013). 

When it came to actually tweeting, it seemed a little harder than I had anticipated. At first, everyone just kind of tweeted whatever, but once we all learned what we were supposed to be tweeting there were a lot of different interpretations of what that looked like. There were questions that were posted, polls, or just comments. Some people were very insightful and some people were really funny and some people were both. When it came to my tweets I tried to say things that would get other people involved or expressed my feelings about what activities or readings we were doing. Sometimes they weren’t very insightful and sometimes I just responded to what other people were saying. I really enjoyed getting to see what people said when they responded to other students and how those interactions went. I didn’t really miss many days, I think there was a week or two where I missed a couple of days, but other than that I was consistent with tweeting and retweeting. Another one of my favorite activities was a live tweeting of scandal. It gave everyone a chance to really have fun with tweeting, even though it was really hard for me to keep up with the show and tweeting (and in case you’re wondering I am now on season 3 of scandal). This activity also went to show a visual example of the things we were learning in class. We were really learning hard hitting topics which were really good, but made me a little nervous to tweet about sometimes. I am not good about keeping up with news and politics so when I read about the things we read about, that is one of the first times I hear/learn about it. So, when I go to tweet it on a public page I stop myself a little, because if my tweet starts an argument I don’t feel confident enough in my knowledge to have a productive conversation about it. Now that is nothing against tweeting and what we learned, because I thought both were great, I’m just trying to explain my reasoning behind some tweets. This is definitely related to the way that I want to present myself on social media or the way I want other people to see me. Another place I fell short a little bit was including the hashtag, when I went back through to look at my tweets I noticed that there were a couple of tweets that I forgot the #cnusocialmedia.

So, while I would like to think that my tweets were great every time, I think I tried to focus more on interacting with others and started conversations and how I interact with social media on a regular basis. I know that can be done, because of the syllabus, but they may not have been as insightful as others tweets. I think that my insightful comments came in my discussion posts. I know the blog isn’t really supposed to be about this, but I really wanted to talk about how hard it was to transition to online learning. I don’t know if I’m just not as technologically capable as other students my age or it’s because I’m a very visual and in person learner, but I found it really difficult to learn online (even with a class that was internet focused). The discussion boards were hard to keep up a conversation, I  think people had really great things to say but I didn’t want to just keep saying “oh I totally agree” or “this was a great post!” because that doesn’t really contribute to conversation and people didn’t say many things to keep conversation going. Ok off topic, sorry I just wanted to get that off my chest, back to tweeting. Of course I would love to say that I would get a 50 out of 50 (I figured it was going to be out of 50 still). Last time I got a 49, which I thought was very fair, this time I think I would deserve at least a 47-48 because of those ones that I missed, I know that this might not be the grade that I get, I strongly think I accomplished a grade in that range. Realistically I'm not sure if that is what I will get, but that is what I'm hoping for. Thank you to everyone who participated and helped me in class and shoutout to Dr. Bernabo for having one of the best classes at cnu!

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.