Comfortable, Effective Socially Based Writing Through Social Media

In her 2009 article entitled "There's an Art to Writing on Facebook or Twitter -- Really," Maria Puente makes some interesting claims about writing on social media sites.

Puente concedes that social media sites "allow people to feel connected to a virtual community, make new friends and keep old ones, learn things they didn't know. They encourage people to write more (that can't be bad) and write well and concisely (which is hard, trust us)."

She notes, however, that writing on these sites needs improvement. She quotes social media expert Hal Niedzviecki who jokes ''We all have to go to status-update charm school. Just one in every million status updates is worth reading, maybe one in every 5 million if you're looking for poetics.''

Puente then asks "So what makes a good status update? 'Personality,' says Adam Ostrow, editor in chief of Mashable.com, an online publication that covers social networking. 'Personality is really what drives people to (follow) you, especially on Twitter.' How to improve your updates? 'Follow others who are funny, clear and concise and mimic them, or Twitter a bunch and figure out what people respond to,' says Sarah Milstein, co-author of The Twitter Book."

If students can practice making engaging, relevant, or interesting tweets or status updates, they can perhaps begin to give their scholarly ideas and academic writing those same qualities. As an exercise, have students follow political pundits, modern philosophers, comedians, and other popular figures to see what they are saying. Challenge the students to then create good posts on their social networking sites. Groups can be created on Facebook and Twitter so the class can see these status updates.

In Because Digital Writing Matters, The National Writing Project, which authored the book, quotes from "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century" which states, “‘Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement. The new literacies almost all involve social skills developed through collaboration and networking’” (11). When composing online, writing inherently becomes more collaborative and interactive than in the traditional classroom setting. Traditionally, a student drafts an essay by himself or herself, turns it in, and gets the essay returned with a few marks from the teacher. Through online writing, however, students can toss out ideas, get a response to those ideas, and ultimately collaborate at varying levels.

For many students, group work --or at least a level of interaction-- carries less of a negative connontation than an isolated, individually-based assignment. As social creatures, we generally feel comfortable working on assignments in groups. For this purpose, social media can serve a valuable role in the classroom.

Of course, as we explore the uses of and build assignments with social media components, there is still a place for traditional essays. There will always be value in traditional writing assignments, both for the skills they build and the comfort level they provide for reserved students who prefer a more individual work style. Likewise, what writing assignments with social media components--or foundations--can provide outgoing students a chance to write more in their own environment and in their own terms.

If nothing else, working with social media in the writing classroom can provide a welcomed change and variety to the traditional writing assignments.