Twitter isn’t only useful for promotion. The spirit of the social media is that it is not a megaphone for broadcasting, but a tool for engaging others in meaningful discussion. Anyone who has taught knows that tools that help keep students engaged and that encourage discussion are useful. This interesting article from the Graduate Center’s own Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy (JITP) describes using Twitter to inform student understanding of experimental literature like James Joyce’s Ulysses. — The Social Mediums
Tag: Twitter
When we think about social media, what comes to mind is usually the big platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. But there are many other tools that fall into the category, including apps that let you live-stream. ONe of our jobs as Social Media Fellows is to help groups in our respective programs live-stream events and to plan to make live-streaming a success. We have all the tools that the GC has to take advantage of, though (high quality web cameras, IT staff, etc.). But what can you do with simpler technology like you’re phone? This interesting article from the Graduate Center’s own Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy (JITP) describes using an app for live-streaming in a journalism class, but it has implications for any kind of streaming you might want to do as part of you research, organizing, etc. — The Social Mediums
The past few blog posts have been articles that encourage us to think about the ways we purposefully (and unpurposefully) may shape our social media landscape. This article, from the Chronicle of Higher Education, flips the focus from what we see to what others see.Â
One of the jobs that we have as Social Mediums is consulting with faculty and students in our programs to construct social media plans. Social Media has become ubiquitous enough that it seems organic, but it is generally purposefully driven (even if it’s not always obvious what our purpose is). Through the process of professionalization or even just the usual processes of time, our social media persona that we want to project may change. Certainly there are calls now for the current U.S. president to consider his social media strategy even if he won’t change who he is. It’s not always a case of “authenticity” but of “appropriate.”
So we share this article on taking care of your social media feed. We think of it a bit like caring for a garden. Sometimes pruning helps keep the paths and ways clear so that people can better enjoy the view. — Social Mediums
Following up on our recent post from The New York Times about apps that infiltrate your social media feeds to get your out of your “bubble,” this new app from the New Yorker steps into your social feed to insert poetry.Â
It seems interesting that while the name for these technologies, Social Media, implies social interaction, increasingly tools such as the apps we’re discussing this week and last are decidedly antisocial. They’re lines of code that have little to do with our friends or our social sphere. These algorithmic incursions, like Netflix’s suggestions which embody their own biases, are thought to be neutral (although to be fair, this poetry bot uses poetry collected by The New Yorker‘s Poetry Editor, so it’s not an algorithm in the same way as Amazon’s suggestions are).Â
It is interesting to think about how we cultivate our social media “feeds” and what each of them represent as we engage, sometimes socially, with these lines of communication, often on our own, alone. — Social Mediums
While we often think of social media as a tool to reach out to others and build communities, there has been increasing discussion in the U.S. about how our digital communities also isolate us.
In this piece from The New York Times, the author describes a number of apps and tools that transform your usual social media tools so that you can view the world from inside the bubble inhabited by a person with a vastly different political view point than you. –Social Mediums
