For a class assignment we were asked to follow the conversations around the term #highered for 48 hours. I will discuss the type of information being spread with this hashtag, the common themes around the hashtags, the influencers who were using the hashtag and what made their communication so effective.
Hashtags were first used on Twitter to categorize information and also to make that information easier to search. A hashtag is a grouping of letters and possibly numbers. Now they are used for even more than simple classification of messages. They are used to form conversations with likeminded individuals, to promote brands, and to profess opinions and beliefs. They can be used to emphasize, discredit, disclaim, support, emote, promote, and numerous other functions (Caleffi, 2015).
From 1/24/20-1/26/20, there was a lot of activity surrounding the highered hashtag. The tweets came from people working in higher education, higher education institutions, and also political activists or social commentators discussing higher education. They focused on themes of the value of higher education, the ways to improve access to higher education, and also hiring efforts of higher education organizations (Twitter, 2020).
Before signing up for a social media class I was unaware of the program, Tweetdeck. Among other things, this program allows you to monitor and search hashtags on Twitter for free. You can also perform these advanced searched on Twitter. Looking at #highered on Twitter from 1/24/20-1/26/20 I searched for tweets that received at least five replies. Retweets and likes are good but can also be seen as vanity metrics that only serve to inflate the ego of the user who posted. Replies can show more engagement (Harper, 2015). The majority of posts involving more than five replies were positive in content. These posts shared useful resources for other educators, recognized the efforts of fellow educators, and/or asked for the engagement of fellow educators. These posts received the most engagement (Twitter, 2020).
Hashtags are more than just categories they are ways of engaging an eager public looking to connect with likeminded individuals and organizations. It is possible to search a term that links to your area of interest and find a conversation about it, and searching for posts with high levels of engagement will get you to the heart of the topic.
Works Cited
#highered search query. (2020, January 26). In Tweetdeck. Retrieved from tweetdeck.twitter.com
highered since_time:1579845600 until_time:1580104799 min_retweets:20 min_faves:20
Harper, B. (2015, April 09). Social vanity metrics: The top 4 worst offenders. Retrieved
from Social Media Today website: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-business/2015-04-09/social-vanity-metrics-top-4-worst-offenders
Twitter. (2020, January 26). In Twitter. Retrieved from
Caleffi, P.-M. (2015). The “hashtag”: a new word or a new rule? SKASE Journal of Theoretical
Linguistics, (2), 46. Retrieved from https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsglr&AN=edsgcl.430169061&site=eds-live&scope=site
DJ Snickel 