Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Alex Kelly Oct. 30 Social Media

The first reading today focused on social media and how its uses and prevalence in today’s society is rapidly growing. Millions of people use twitter to communicate and it is quite possibly the most widely used form of communication online today. The article discusses how teachers can use twitter to communicate with their students and provides some basic guidelines on the dos and don’ts of doing it. I believe that twitter is an effective tool for communication between teachers and students and efforts should by made on both ends to use it.
The second article discuses how social media can be used to further the goals of public historians. Museums are quickly growing their use of social media outlets such as Facebook and twitter. I believe that these social mediums can help to expand the audience of these institutions. Because of their popularity today they can help bring public history to a much wider audience.
The third article talks about how sifting through all of the information that people put on social media websites. It is a difficult task because there are millions of tweets and Facebook posts everyday. They can however be used to understand what people at the time are thinking and how they respond to the events of their time. In this way they are a very useful historical resource. Charts and graphs can add a visual component to this research. I believe that chronicling everyone’s social media posts has many benefits to the discipline of history.

The final reading talks about how Clemson University has established a social media listening center with help from Dell. I think this was a great move for the university because social media is the future of communication. It was an excellent idea for Clemson to do so because it will help the university remain relevant in the field of social media. Chronicling people’s social media posts will almost undoubtedly prove to be historically useful sometime in the near future.

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