Twittering
Theory
Task

My name is Adrian Granchelli and I am a student of the Master of Educational Technology program at the University of British Columbia exploring METatheory in ETEC 565B.

This Twittering Theory Task is proposed by Prof. Suzanne de Castell as an attempt to understand how Twitter progresses educational philosophies. Studying a specific user that I believe is progressing educational philosophy may uncover a deeper understanding for how a leader may interact with Twitter. These interactions may reveal how knowledge is progressed through the platform of Twitter. Below is this exploration.

WHAT IS TWITTER

Twitter is a popular social media platform with 206 million daily users (Dean, 2021) and famous for its limit of 280 characters per posting. Limiting the post, or ‘tweet’ length is what differentiates it from the competition and provides succinct, ‘sound-bite’ style messaging with the potential for rapid interactivity.

Twitter may be ‘holistic’ as described by Franklin (1989), where the user is in control of creating their tweets and their profile but Twitter also provides immense control over what is allowed and how we communicate - some may even call Twitter the standard for communicating in a digital age. This would make Twitter 'prescriptive'.

Twitter is designed around users who can follow and be followed by other users. The user may even be seen as the primary focus over ideas and the quantity of followers is an indication of a user’s social influence. On Twitter, the human desire for social proof and social influence can take the form of gaining followers motivating users to manufacture and share their inauthentic, ‘best’ selves (Krasnova, Spiekermann, Koroleva, & Hildebrand, 2010), for example by ‘virtue signaling’ (Dubner & Duckworth, 2020).

Due to its accessibility – free cost, ease of use, and mobile optimization – Twitter has a diverse user base across the world connecting people of shared interest and influence. The town square or coffee shop has been ‘replaced’, according to McLuhan’s Tetrad, by a digital space that is free from the confines of location. Presenting one’s best self in the public eye is nothing new but it is significantly easier to hide aspects of one’s self when one only briefly appears in the digital world and completely by choice.

The bottom line is that Twitter is a for-profit business that earns 86% of revenue from advertising (Twitter, 2020) thus needs to maintain user’s attention. The data has shown that users with extreme, controversial, and/or authoritative tweets have the most interaction and the algorithms promote these tweets to maintain attention (Dubner, 2021).
Usually, ‘holistic’ technologies are associated with craft (Franklin, 1989), so what is the craft of a successful twitter user? Is it charisma, social ‘hacking’, or maybe just a barometer of their popularity in other aspects of life?

WHO IS JANE MCGONIGAL

Jane McGonigal is a game designer, future forecaster, and has a PhD in performance studies (IFTF, 2021). She “specializes in games that challenge players to tackle real-world problems” (IFTF, 2021) and famously gamified the recovery process from a concussion (TED, 2012). Jane contributes to educational philosophy from her work exemplifying the power game design and the accompanying psychology which she shares to the world through authoring books (SuperBetter, 2015 & Reality is Broken, 2011), a MOOC, and Twitter.

“Her research focuses on how games are transforming the way we lead our real lives, and how they can be used to increase our resilience and well-being” (IFTF, 2021).

TWITTER IN JANE'S LIFE

Jane on Twitter (McGonigal, 2021)

Jane's Tweets versus Time (SocialBearing, 2021)

Jane uses Twitter a lot as @avantgame.

From analyzing 3248 Tweets over the last 628 days, Jane averages at 8.81 tweest/day (Socialbearing, 2021), she is in the top ten percentile of Twitter users (Wojcik & Hughes, 2019).

Maybe, Jane values Twitter for communicating above other digital means, because of what she shares on her ‘Contact Me’ page:

“(P.S. Secret hint: Even when I ignore my email and Facebook, I check my Twitter replies. So if you follow me on Twitter, and say hello, I’m about 100x more likely to reply!)”
(McGonigal, 2020)

WHAT TOPICS DOES JANE ENGAGE WITH

Jane's Hashtag Cloud (SocialBearing, 2021)

One can learn a lot of Jane by just visiting her Twitter profile. From her personal life, to politics, business, and research interests. Also, the sentiment of her tweets are mostly good.

Jane shows photographs of her children, her partner, and her runs often.

One can also learn that she is a democrat, environmentally conscious, pro mental health support, and advocates for her political leanings.

Most relevant to influencing educational theories are the research and ideas she tweets about. She pushes the conversation of games mostly, where indirectly, the underlying psychology is very applicable to education, and directly, she discusses gamification and serious games.

Jane also uses the platform for marketing which is evident upon first glance of her profile – the cover photo is her book cover, her brief bio shares her book titles with a link to buy, and the pinned tweet is her MOOC course.

Snapshot of Jane's Twitter Profile (McGonigal, 2021)

HOW IS JANE ENGAGING

Sentiment of Jane's Tweets (SocialBearing, 2021)

Type of Jane's Tweets (SocialBearing, 2021)

The majority of Jane’s engagement on Twitter has a positive sentiment and is interactions through replies. Replies would mean that Jane is engaging with other users' Tweets or commenting on their own Tweets, both of which have a better chance of connecting with other users than Retweets.

WHO IS JANE INTERACTING WITH

Jane is following 2,478 accounts and has 148.3K Followers (McGonigal, 2021).

Using the online tool Follower Wonk: https://followerwonk.com/analyze/avantgame a word cloud is created analyzing the biographies of everyone that Jane follows. It is as follows:

Bio Word Cloud of users Jane follows (SocialBearing, 2021)

Judging from the word frequencies and size of the word cloud, Jane is following mostly authors, game designers, entrepreneurs, and professors. It seems like, through who Jane is following, that she is/has built a community of inquiry – “a group of individuals who collaboratively engage in purposeful critical discourse and reflection to construct personal meaning and confirm mutual understanding” (Athabasca University, n.d.). Twitter, and digital technologies, allow for networks of people to connect regardless of distance.

(Unfortunately, there are too much data for this service to provide the same analysis for the followers of Jane.)

EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY

Social constructivists view knowledge and learning dependant on social interactivities (Powell& Kalina, 2009). Twitter is a platform designed for social interactivity but finding cause and effect of the progression of ideas is extremely difficult. There are tweets that progress knowledge in a more ‘formal’ way, such as discussing scholarly articles, however they are few.

Ideas are shared through tweets but the idea needs to be short and simple due to Twitter’s character limit and needs to be 'popular' (subject to Twitter’s algorithms) in order to compete for attention. So, are ‘ideas’ becoming shorter? Will the public demand philosophy to be explained in less than 280 characters? Will controversial philosophies continue to gain traction (did you know that Antarctica is not a continent but a giant ice wall that circumnavigates the flat Earth to keep the water from falling off the edge)? Will philosophers need to hate each other in order to garner attention?

It is of note that Jane does have a large follower base (143k) but her tweets' reach and interactions are very low (on average ~40 interactions per tweet).

Potentially, the largest contributor to the progression of knowledge is through maintaining connection with others and the formation/ maintenance of a ‘community of inquiry’.

CONCLUSION

From the words of McLuhan, “the medium is the message.” Twitter is a very opinionated for-profit platform that limits communication length as well as controls what communications people are subject to. Users share a lot of themselves on twitter but are also manufacturing their public image (Krasnova, Spiekermann, Koroleva, & Hildebrand, 2010). Tweets, or ideas, have the potential to reach global audiences and to spark conversation immediately but for ideas to gain popularity, the user is subject to the ‘rules’ of the medium.

The power of Twitter is evident but as has been seen with the recent spread of fake news through the platform, that the power may not be used in a positive way due to the affordances of the platform, psychology, or the user itself. Educational philosophies, like other ideas, compete for attention and publicity. So we must ask are the best ideas moving forward or the most popular? Is this a deeper pattern for all of humanity? Is the progression of educational theory even possible within the eye of the public, on Twitter? How can educational theory best be shared and progressed?

REFERENCES

Athabasca University. (n.d.) About the Framework. The Community of Inquiry. Retrieved from http://thecommunityofinquiry.org/coi on October 25, 2021

Dean, B. (2021). How Many People Use Twitter in 2021? Backlinko. Retrieved from https://backlinko.com/twitter-users on October 21, 2021

Dubner, S., Duckworth, A. (2020). How Can We Get More Virtue and Less ‘Virtue Signaling’? No Stupid Questions. Freakenomics Radio. Retrieved from https://freakonomics.com/podcast/nsq-virtue-signaling/

Franklin, U. (1989). The Real World of Technology. House of Anansi.

Institute for the Future. (2021). What We do. Retrieved from https://www.iftf.org/janemcgonigal/ on October 21, 2021.

Krasnova, H., Spiekermann, S., Koroleva, K., Hildebrand, T. (2010). Online social networks: Why we disclose. Journal of Information Technology, 25 (2), pp. 109-125

McGonigal, J. [@avantgame]. (n.d.). Tweets [Twitter profile]. Twitter. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/avantgame on October 17, 2021

McGonigal, J. (2012). The game that can give you 10 extra years. TEDGlobal. https://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_the_game_that_can_give_you_10_extra_years_of_life on October 21, 2021.

McGonigal, J. (2020). Contact me. You Found Me. Retrieved from https://janemcgonigal.com/contact-me/ on October 21, 2021

Powell, K. C., & Kalina, C. J. (2009). Cognitive and social constructivism: Developing tools for an effective classroom. Education, 130(2), 241-251

Socialbearing. (2021). User search & analytics for ‘@avantgame’. Retrieved from https://socialbearing.com/search/user/avantgame October 16, 2021

Twitter, Inc. (2020). Form 10-K. United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Retrieved from https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001418091/6074f5a7-baba-42c7-8f28-31accf8f3e8e.pdf

Wojcik, S., Hughes, A. (2019). Sizing Up Twitter Users. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter-users/ on October 24, 2021

Twittering Theory Task