Differences in personal and professional tweets of scholars
Article [Accepted Manuscript]
Is part of
Aslib Journal of information management ; vol. 67, no. 3, pp. 356-371.Publisher(s)
EmeraldAuthor(s)
Abstract(s)
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show that there were differences in the use of Twitter by
professors at AAU schools. Affordance use differed between the personal and professional tweets
of professors as categorized by turkers. Framing behaviors were described that could impact the
interpretation of tweets by audience members.
Design/methodology/approach – A three phase research design was used that included surveys of
professors, categorization of tweets by workers in Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, and categorization
of tweets by active professors on Twitter.
Findings – There were significant differences found between professors that reported having
a Twitter account, significant differences found between types of Twitter accounts (personal,
professional, or both), and significant differences in the affordances used in personal and professional
tweets. Framing behaviors were described that may assist altmetric researchers in distinguishing
between personal and professional tweets.
Research limitations/implications – The study is limited by the sample population, survey
instrument, low survey response rate, and low Cohen’s κ.
Practical implications – An overview of various affordances found in Twitter is provided and a
novel use of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk for the categorization of tweets is described that can
be applied to future altmetric studies.
Originality/value – This work utilizes a socio-technical framework integrating social and
psychological theories to interpret results from the tweeting behavior of professors and the
interpretation of tweets by workers in Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.
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