U.S. State Education Agencies’ Use of Twitter

Yinying Wang

doi:10.1177/2158244015626492

Abstract

This study examined how Twitter was used by all U.S. state education agencies (SEAs) for public engagement in education. Drawing on the ecological model of communication, this study analyzed the latest 71,913 tweets from 40 SEAs that had official Twitter accounts. The results of correlation analysis indicate no significant relationship between the SEAs’ presence on Twitter and the SEAs’ targeted Twitter users, denoting that the SEAs’ well-intentioned efforts in communicating with stakeholders and the public by using Twitter might fall short of the public’s preferable medium for receiving information. In addition, the results of content analysis suggest that the SEAs primarily used Twitter for one-way asymmetrical information broadcasting, leaving Twitter’s two-way symmetrical communication functionality largely untapped. Findings are discussed with respect to the implications for educational organizations’ effective use of Twitter through the public’s increased participation and collaboration.

Highlights

Social media has been gaining a foothold in education
Among an ever-growing number of social media tools, Twitter was chosen in this study because of its unique features in facilitating communication, which will be introduced in detail
The first state education agencies (SEAs) that created its presence on Twitter is the Georgia Department of Education, registering the Twitter account @ GaDOEnews on January 22, 2009

Summary

Introduction

Social media has been gaining a foothold in education. Students use social media to complete homework-related tasks and maintain friendship (Weeden, Cooke, & McVey, 2013). SEAs’ adoption of Twitter, and pinpointed the two end points of SEAs’ communication on Twitter: the SEAs on one end, stakeholders (i.e., students, parents, communities, educators, and administrators) and the general public on the other end. Prior research revealed a persistent problem: The organizations in many sectors primarily use Twitter for one-way asymmetrical information broadcasting, despite the two-way symmetrical communication functionality of Twitter (Auger, 2013; Lovejoy, Waters, & Saxton, 2012; Waters & Jamal, 2011; Waters & Williams, 2011). Considering the dominant one-way asymmetrical information broadcasting pattern of the organizations in other sectors on Twitter, the second purpose of the present study is to assess whether the SEAs’ Twitter use suggests a similar oneway asymmetrical information broadcasting pattern, leaving the two-way symmetrical communication functionality of Twitter largely untapped. Each of the following sub-sections introduces a key communication constituent followed by its application in the SEAs’ communication on Twitter

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion