Reflection: Learn to use a new tool
Theme: Diversity
For this activity I wanted to learn how to use Twitter because despite its popularity I haven’t really understood it. I had noticed the rising popularity of a campaign called We need Diverse Books (WNDB) which I found increasingly often being referred to in the blogs and e-lists I follow. After some investigation I understood that this campaign had originated in a Twitter exchange between Ellen Oh and Malinda Lo (2 prominent authors of YA books) in April 2014 and that their tweets were picked up in the Twitterverse and formalised in the hashtag #weneeddiversebooks which has now been tweeted 7519 times, not including retweets. This grassroots campaign has resulted in a non-profit organisation being set up that seems set to have a profound effect on the publishing and reading community not just in the United States but around the world.I wanted to understand firstly how to use Twitter and secondly how Twitter could be used for social activism.
I was interested to learn that there are estimated to be 500 million Twitter accounts worldwide and nearly 3 million in Australia.( CCI.2015) (Wikipedia 2015) Twitter has been used by activists to deliberately start movements and sometimes hashtags evolve organically as with the recent shootings in Paris. Because of the immediacy of the data exchange on Twitter it is often co-opted and quoted by news agencies as news. It serves as an information carrier for like minded individuals who can follow each other to share their news. Additionally Twitter is often used as a tool by politicians, movie stars and the like who use it to promote themselves and influence public opinion. In some case a Twitter campaign will come to nothing - think #Kony2012 whilst others, as in the case of WNDB flourish and are actioned.
It was easy enough to set up an account on Twitter as it is on most social media outlets but I needed to do quite a bit of reading to understand the ‘rules’ of Twitter and tweeting. I searched the Internet for how-to advice, read Wikipedia which gave me a good background into Twitter and carefully read the Help section of Twitter. Previously when using social media I haven’t bothered much with that step but I did find it gave me a lot of information that I might have missed such as Verified accounts having a blue tick. I particularly wanted to understand the concepts of hashtagging and ‘trending topics’ which I now understand
Once established I quickly got into the flow of information and I felt very up-to-date using Twitter. I have colleagues who claim that Twitter supplies them with nearly all of their professional information. I don’t use Twitter to push information at my library, although many librarians do, but I work with children up to 14 years and they generally don’t use Twitter. I did find Twitter useful for staying on top of the current buzz. In the end it was too time consuming to keep up with and I stopped checking it regularly. It is not an application you can just check once a week as tweets are soon overtaken and disappear. I felt I had to always be checking for new feeds and ultimately I didn’t feel there was enough new content to make the effort worthwhile.
References
Cci.edu.au,. (2015). First Survey Finds 2.8 Million Twitter Accounts in Australia. Retrieved 31 January 2015, from http://www.cci.edu.au/node/1671
Lublin, N., & Lublin, N. (2010). Slacktivism: Helping Humanity With a Click of the Mouse. Fast Company. Retrieved 31 January 2015, from http://www.fastcompany.com/1615198/slacktivism-helping-humanity-click-mouse
Rainie, L., Smith, A., Schlozman, K., Brady, H., & Verba, S. (2012). Social Media and Political Engagement. Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved 31 January 2015, from http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/10/19/social-media-and-political-engagement/
Sun, C. (2014). We need Diverse Books Inc. formed. Library Journal, 139(14), 20. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA379639915&v=2.1&u=csu_au&it=r&p=EAIM&sw=w&asid=975f5beb6e8742225df2a8b4320f6b56
We Need Diverse Books,. (2015). Home. Retrieved 31 January 2015, from http://weneeddiversebooks.org/
Whitehead, T. (2015). Paris Charlie Hebdo attack: Je Suis Charlie hashtag one of most popular in Twitter history. The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://Paris Charlie Hebdo attack: Je Suis Charlie hashtag one of most popular in Twitter history
Wikipedia,. (2015). Twitter. Retrieved 1 February 2015, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
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