Dr Brian Stout, @drbrianstout, Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Western Sydney, previously taught on the DipPS and the PQF at De Montfort University and worked as a probation officer in Northern Ireland.
Why I tweet
Reading through the contributions of previous writers in the ‘Why I tweet’ series it is clear that most of them were compelled to join twitter because of what they felt they had to say. My use of twitter is a bit different, in that I spend most time reading what others have posted. I enjoy the interactions and the discovery of blogs, links and articles and sometimes have to remind myself that I should be posting as well.
I joined twitter in January 2011, after spending some months lurking in secret (reading posts but not signing up). My initial reluctance was partly due to having joined facebook but having been unimpressed by the quality of some of the interactions. At that time I also shared some of the disquiet that there was about social media in social work, criminal justice and academic circles; the stream of stories of people getting into difficulties because of what they had posted online had led many to decide that the easiest way to avoid problems was to stay away from social media entirely.
I did eventually sign up and I have found that Twitter is very different from what I had expected. Alongside the Justin Bieber fans, the corporate PR and the obsession with reality TV there is a space for serious, focussed debate with stimulating people with similar interests and both matching and opposing views.
The best and worst things about tweeting
The best thing about twitter is that it allows me to stay in touch with what interests me most. My academic interests cross criminology and social work and both subjects have an increasing, though slightly different, presence on twitter. Criminological tweeters are perhaps more established; many of them have blogs, and they are very good at engaging other tweeters (practitioners, journalists, members of the public) on criminological issues. The Social Work tweeters do some of that too but they are perhaps more likely to interact with each other, and to use twitter to discuss social work issues.
The worst thing about twitter is its compulsive nature and its contribution to the difficulties in drawing a boundary line between work and leisure time. Tweeting or reading others’ tweets does not quite feel like proper work but engaging in academic discussion is not quite leisure time either. I spend a lot of my time in front of a computer screen (writing, reading, preparing, marking, emailing) and twitter can seem like a siren voice tempting me away from the task I should be doing to a twitter feed that will be more immediately engaging.
What I (and my organisation) get out of tweeting
Universities in the UK can get a lot out of tweeting, engagement with the community through social media can demonstrate the ‘impact’ of research and twitter is a quick, non-threatening and public way for students, and prospective students, to engage with academics. In Australia the academic use of twitter is much less established than in the UK but this is changing and there are some excellent tweeters and bloggers in Australian academia.
It seems to me that academic engagement with twitter remains in its early stages, in future we should see much greater engagement between academics, professionals and students and a much greater sharing of materials.
Tips and Successes
Four tips that help me manage my use of twitter:
- The ‘favourite’ button is a very good time management tool. I often favourite a tweet to bookmark an interesting looking link to read at another time.
- Having initially dismissed them as childish, I have become a convert to emoticons. The tone of short tweets can so easily be misinterpreted that, if in doubt, it is worth adding a ☺ to confirm that your intention is not to be confrontational or sarcastic.
- When re-tweeting a link, it helps to add a personal, descriptive comment, particularly as the web address itself will be shortened. ‘This is great’ or ‘you must see this’ followed by a blue jumble of letters is not engaging and, more importantly, might not be safe to open. I’ve found that I’m more likely to receive retweets or replies if I add my own comment to a link.
- Twitter is usually good for discussing issues but sometimes care needs to be taken. Debating with the police can be a real challenge as police tweeters all tend to follow each other and a conversation with one person can very quickly become a wide-ranging and hard to manage discussion. Sensitive subjects are also hard to debate in short tweets in a public arena as all the necessary conditionals and caveats cannot always be expressed and nuanced positions can easily be misinterpreted.
Mistakes and Failures
In my previous role as an Academic Practice Officer, I have been witness to serious mistakes made by others on social media. The advice that I would give to any professional user of social media is to imagine that your boss and your service users are reading everything you write. In this regard, twitter is safer than facebook, tweets are so obviously public that users tend not to make the mistake of assuming that what they write can only be read by a few friends. I am very wary of the traditional position that advises people to use privacy settings on facebook or to protect their tweets on twitter as the protection that provides is very limited. I’ve dealt with a number of social media cases where ‘private’ posts have been physically printed and then shared; there are no privacy settings that will prevent that from occurring.
However, the overwhelming majority of tweeters use twitter in a safe, professional and stimulating way.
I am glad I joined twitter and would advise anyone with an interest in social work or criminal justice to do likewise.
Get Russell’s free guide to Twitterfectiveness. Read Brian’s post on the pros and cons of probation supervision by biometric kiosks.
