New Literacies and Academic Identity of Emerging Scholars: Graduate Students on Twitter

• In Event: Technology in Teaching and Teacher Education

Abstract

This qualitative case study explored two graduate students’ processes of identity expression and development as emerging scholars by examining their new literacies on Twitter for over five years. The study has implications for educators, graduate students, and administrators in higher education as the findings shed light on graduate students’ critical new literacies practices such as information sharing, purposeful amplification of the marginalized on campus, and attention to technoethics. The study suggests that social media, specifically Twitter, can serve as a useful space for knowledge building and the development of identities and techno-ethics. Twitter, as a space to organize participatory practices, may enable the development of new processes of identification that contribute to critical individual and social change.

Authors

• Benjamin William Gleason, Iowa State University

• Long He, Iowa State University

• Ozlem Karakaya, Iowa State University