Drinking from the Firehose: The Structural and Cognitive Dimensions of Sharing Information on Twitter

Abstract

The continuous professional development of teachers is a pivotal element in the provision of high-quality education. Informal social networking sites (SNS), such as Twitter, can contribute to this process by enabling teachers to share their ideas and collaboratively reflect on their practice. In this context, educational scientists have increasingly acknowledged that the concept of social capital can contribute to our understanding of how such networks develop and evolve over time. This study uses a multi-method approach to investigate the role of structural and cognitive social capital in the #observeme Twitter conversation. Moreover, our results show that Twitter users are able to gain structural and cognitive social capital.