Tweeting with colleagues: A study of an institutional hashtag

Abstract

Higher education work is often conducted in silos without the in-person interactions that characterize other educational settings. This is increasingly evident since the COVID-19 pandemic led to a significant shift in online communication and remote work. Educators might grow from understanding the types and quality of interactions that social media could facilitate. We investigate a dataset of 557 tweets from 51 participants over 2-years of an institutional hashtag in a College of Education. We analyze who tweets, the frequency of interactions, and supportive reasoning from seven participant interviews. Shaped by networked participatory scholarship utilizing a mixed-method research design, we discern tweeting differences based on role and found the most common reason to tweet is for affective reasons. Faculty and the college Twitter account encompass 66% of Tweets, with the least likes from the college, department, and university. Tweets receiving the most likes were generally positive and focused on faculty and student accomplishments. Individual interviews indicate the institutional hashtag led to a sense of connectedness, with regret toward not using the hashtag more frequently. We describe why participants tweeted, and offer benefits, drawbacks, possibilities, and suggestions for the use of an institutional hashtag to connect a networked institutional community.