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How can 280 characters, including hashtags, possibly be of use in academic work? Two main scholarly uses for Twitter are:
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Twitter's strengths are timeliness and democratic access for all sides and voices in any given debate - and it IS a debate. It's not controlled by a single source as news, Facebook pages, and blogs are, so all sides can be represented. Twitter's weakness is that it is unedited and not fact-checked. It's hard to know what value to give to any single tweet. For academic use, you'll likely follow a person or a hashtag and use the collective set of tweets to bolster your work, which should be supported by more robust information resources. |