Is Bigger Better? Exploring Educators' Uses and Gratifications in Twitter #Edchat

• In Event: 31.087 - Exploring Professional Communities

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore both how and why educators participate in educational conversations on Twitter. I collected 1,228,506 #Edchat tweets from 196,263 contributors over the course of eight months. Framed with uses and gratifications theory, I describe how educators are participating in #Edchat (i.e., their uses) through tweet types, tweets per tweeter, and tweets by time, and discourse. I analyzed why educators are participating in #Edchat (i.e., their gratifications) through thematic analysis, describing gratifications related to others, self, working together, and linking media. I found that although #Edchat is a big conversation, the scale of the conversation could represent too many tweets from contributors who are too loosely connected.

Author

• Bret Staudt Willet, Michigan State University