Nobody Goes There Anymore, It’s Too Crowded: Historic Retrospective of Twitter #Edchat (Poster 30)

• In Event: Thursday Poster Session 2:30 pm
  In Poster Session: Artificial Intelligence for Diverse Learners

Abstract

Education-related Twitter hashtags have facilitated connections, interactions, and resource-sharing among educators with similar interests and needs. #Edchat was one of the first such hashtags and has attracted substantial attention as an affinity space for educators. We add to the literature by retrospectively exploring the digital trace data associated with #Edchat from October 2008 to May 2023, analyzing nearly 17 million tweets in terms of changes in volume (e.g., daily tweets, questions, replies, and amount of engagement through favorites and retweets) and content (e.g., number of words and hashtags per tweet, co-occurring hashtags, and which topics tend to be favorited and retweeted). We discuss findings in relation to the importance of social, more than technical, aspects of affinity spaces.

Authors

• Bret Staudt Willet, Florida State University

• Jeffrey P. Carpenter, Elon University

• Hunhui Na, University of North Carolina - Charlotte