Journal of Business and Technical Communication Jan 2014

Switching in Twitter’s Hashtagged Exchanges

John Jones

Abstract

Networks have a remarkable ability to bring people together in communities, both online and offline, but such community building is not the only possible result of network use. This article examines the case of a tagging network on Twitter, the online social networking service characterized by short messages. Although Twitter has many social features that foster interaction between users, the use of hashtags to signal the topic of a message exists outside of the site’s primary social structures, creating a unique writing environment. This article analyzes a hashtagged exchange surrounding the 2009 health care debate in the United States, examining the social features of this exchange and how participants used it to communicate about that debate. While traditional social features were certainly present within the exchange, they were not prominent or common; rather, users engaged the network properties of this exchange to make connections with other networks, drawing on a form of network power called switching. The analysis focuses on how the Twitter network’s structural features affect communication between users.

Journal
Journal of Business and Technical Communication
Published
2014-01-01
DOI
10.1177/1050651913502358
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Open Access
Closed
Topics
argument social media affect and writing
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (8)

  1. Shi et al. (2022)
    A Cross-Cultural Genre Analysis of Firm-Generated Advertisements on Twitter and…
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  2. Zhang et al. (2020)
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  3. Miller et al. (2020)
    Social media in professional, technical, and scientific communication programs:…
    Communication Design Quarterly
  4. Potts et al. (2019)
    Boycotting the Knowledge Makers: How Reddit Demonstrates the Rise of Media Blac…
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  5. Vie (2017)
    Training Online Technical Communication Educators to Teach with Social Media: B…
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  1. Lam et al. (2017)
    The social help desk: examining how Twitter is used as a technical support tool
    Communication Design Quarterly
  2. McNely (2015)
    Knowledge work, knowledge play: a heuristic approach to communication design fo…
    Communication Design Quarterly
  3. Jones (2014)
    Programming in Network Exchanges
    Computers and Composition

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CrossRef global citation count: 16 View in citation network → Build reading path →

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