Twitter’s contribution to improving strategic communication in Latin American universities

Alba Patricia Guzmán Duque, María Esther del Moral

Abstract


An analysis was performed to identify the key points for achieving effective strategic communication in universities via Twitter. An evaluation and comparison was made of how 263 universities used Twitter by looking at their followers, tweets, retweets, replies and hashtags. The main purposes for its use were identified as boosting communication among members of its community and disseminating institutional information. Many Latin American universities are active on Twitter, but they need community managers to manage their official profiles to optimise communication and to increase their reach by making the most of their users’ activity. 


Keywords


community manager, communication, promotion, Twitter, universities

References


AGARWAL, S.; MITAL, M. (2009). “An Exploratory Study of Indian University Students”. Business Communication Quarterly. Vol. 72, No 1, pages 105-110.

ALLOWAY, T. P.; ALLOWAY, R. G. (2012). “The impact of engagement with social networking sites (SNSs) on cognitive skills”. Computers in Human Behavior. Vol. 28, No 5, pages 1748-1754.

ATKINSON, C. (2009). The backchannel: how audiences are using Twitter and social media and changing presentations forever. Berkeley: New Riders.

BAE, Y.; LEE, H. (2012). “Sentiment analysis of Twitter audiences: Measuring the positive or negative influence of popular twitterers”. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Vol. 63, No 12, pages 2521-2535.

BOYD, D.; ELLISON, N. (2007). “Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship”. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Vol. 13, No 1, pages 210-230.

BOYD, D.; GOLDER, S.; LOTAN, G. (2010). “Tweet, tweet, retweet: Conversational aspects of retweeting on Twitter”. In: 2010 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, pages 1-10. Hawaii: IEEE. [Accessed: 1 November 2012].

CASAS, M.; STOJANOVIC, L. (2013). “Innovation in Ibero-American Universities”. RUSC. Universities and Knowledge Society Journal. Vol. 10, No 1, pages 61-74.

CHAMBERLIN, L.; LEHMANN, K. (2011). “Twitter in higher education”. Cutting-edge Technologies in Higher Education. Vol. 1, pages 375-391.

DABBAGH, N.; KITSANTAS, A. (2012). “Personal Learning Environments, social media, and self-regulated learning: A natural formula for connecting formal and informal learning”. The Internet and Higher Education. Vol. 15, No 1, pages 3-8.

DEL MORAL, M. E.; VILLALUSTRE, L. (2012). “Presencia de los futuros maestros en las redes sociales y perspectivas de uso educativo”. Revista Latinoamericana de Tecnología Educativa, RELATEC. Vol. 11, No 1, pages 41-51. [Accessed: 15 November 2012].

EBNER, M.; LIENHARDT, C.; ROHS, M.; MEYER, I. (2010). “Microblogs in Higher Education - A chance to facilitate informal and process-oriented learning?”. Computers & Education. Vol. 55, No 1, pages 92-100.

FIELDS, E. (2010). “A unique Twitter use for reference services”. Library Hi Tech News. Vol. 27, No 6/7, pages 14-15.

FORKOSH-BARUCH, A.; HERSHKOVITZ, A. (2011). “The use of Social Networks by Higher-Education Institutes in Israel”. Proceedings of the Chair conference on instructional technologies research 2011: Learning in the Technological Era (pages 14-20). Raanana: The Open University of Israel.

FORTE, A.; HUMPHREYS M.; PARK T. (2012). “Grassroots Professional Development: How Teachers Use Twitter”. Sixth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media. Ireland: Trinity College. [Accessed: 1 August 2012].

GRIFFITH, S.; LIYANAGE, L. (2008). “An introduction to the potential of social networking sites in education”. Emerging Technologies Conference, 2008 (page 9). Wollongong: University of Wollongong.

GROSSECK, G.; HOLOTESCU, C. (2010). “Microblogging multimedia-based teaching methods best practices with Cirip. Eu”. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences. Vol. 2, No 2, pages 2151-2155.

GUZMÁN, A.; DEL MORAL, M. E.; GONZÁLEZ-LADRÓN-DE-GUEVARA, F. (2012). “Usos de Twitter en las universidades iberoamericanas”. RELATEC: Revista Latinoamericana de Tecnología Educativa. Vol. 11, No 1, pages 27-39.

HANEEFA, K.; SUMITHA, M. (2011). “Perception and Use of Social Networking Sites by the Students of Calicut University”. Journal of Library & Information Technology. Vol. 31, No 4, pages 295-301.

HERGÜNER, G. (2011). “Opinions of students in physical education and sports teaching on the use of social network sites”. TOJET: The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology. Vol. 10, No 2, pages 174-183.

HUANG, J.; THORNTON, K.; EFTHIMIADIS, E. (2010). “Conversational tagging in twitter”. Proceedings of the 21st ACM conference on Hypertext and hypermedia. ACM.

JOHNSON, K. A. (2011). “The effect of Twitter posts on students’ perceptions of instructor credibility”. Learning, Media and Technology. Vol. 36, No 1, pages 21-38.

JUNCO, R.; HEIBERGER, G.; LOKEN, E. (2010). “The effect of Twitter on college student engagement and grades”. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. Vol. 27, No 2, pages 119-132.

KIERKEGAARD, S. (2010). “Twitter thou doeth?”. Computer Law & Security Review. Vol. 26, No 6, pages 577-594.

KIETZMANN, J. H.; HERMKENS, K.; MCCARTHY, I.; SILVESTRE, B. (2011). “Social Media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of Social Media”. Business Horizons. Vol. 54, No 3, pages 241-251.

LINVILL, D.; MCGEE, S; HICKS, L. (2012). “Colleges’ and universities’ use of Twitter: A content analysis”. Public Relations Review. Vol. 38, No 4, pages 636-638.

MADHUSUDHAN, M. (2012). “Use of social networking sites by research scholars of the University of Delhi: A study”. The International Information & Library Review. Vol. 4, No 2, pages 100-113.

MILSTEIN, S. (2009). “Twitter for Libraries (and Librarians)”. Computers in Libraries. Vol. 29, pages 17-18.

MISTRY, V. (2011). “Critical care training: using Twitter as a teaching tool”. British Journal of Nursing. Vol. 20, No 20, pages 1292-1296.

ÖZSOY, S. (2011). “Use of New Media by Turkish Fans in Sport Communication: Facebook and Twitter”. Journal of Human Kinetics. Vol. 28, pages 165-176.

PRIETO, V. (2012). Ranking Web of World universities 2012. [Accessed: 5 July 2012].

RAMPAI, N.; SOPEERAK, S. (2011). “The development model of knowledge management via web-based learning to enhance pre-service teacher’s competency”. TOJET: The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology. Vol. 10, No 3, pages 249-254.

RINALDO, S.; TAPP, S.; LAVERIE, D. (2011). “Learning by Tweeting”. Journal of Marketing Education. Vol. 33, No 2, pages 193-203.

ROBLYER, M.; MCDANIEL, M.; WEBB, M.; HERMAN, J.; WITTY, J.; (2010). “Findings on Facebook in higher education: A comparison of college faculty and student uses and perceptions of social networking sites”. The Internet and Higher Education. Vol. 13, No 3, pages 134-140.

SHAFIQUE, F.; ANWAR, M.; BUSHRA, M. (2010). “Exploitation of social media among university students: A case study”. Webology. Vol. 7, No 2. [Accessed: 11 January 2012].

SIEMENS, G.; WELLER, M. (2011). The Impact of Social Networks on Teaching and Learning [online monograph]. Introduction: “Higher Education and the Promises and Perils of Social Networks”. RUSC. Universities and Knowledge Society Journal. Vol. 8, No 1, pages 156-326.

STIEGER, S.; BURGER, C. (2010). “Let’s go formative: continuous student ratings with Web 2.0 application Twitter”. Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking. Vol. 13, No 2, pages 163-167.

TILFARLIOGLU, F. (2011). “An international dimension of the student’s attitudes towards the use of English in web 2.0 technology”. TOJET: The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology. Vol. 10, No 3, pages 63-68.

TWITTER (2012). [Accessed: 18 February 2012].

VELETSIANOS, G. (2011). “Higher education scholars’ participation and practices on Twitter”. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. Vol. 28, No 4, pages 336-349.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7238/rusc.v10i2.1744

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.




 Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. eLearn Center

RUSC. Universities and Knowledge Society Journal is an e-journal edited by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Barcelona).

Creative Commons
The texts published in this journal are – unless indicated otherwise – covered by the Creative Commons Spain Attribution 3.0 licence. You may copy, distribute, transmit and adapt the work, provided you attribute it (authorship, journal name, publisher) in the manner specified by the author(s) or licensor(s). The full text of the licence can be consulted here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/deed.en.