Yesterday, Social Work Helper held its first inaugural live twitter chat after a long hiatus, and the first chat was used as an open forum/town hall with members of the social work community both domestically and abroad to discuss twitter uses in academia and practice.
The purpose was to identify topics and issues that resonate with students, practitioners, and academics in order to micro target future chats. Additionally, it occurred to me the best way to challenge existing norms of social media use within the profession is to prove Twitter’s practical applications for data collection, resource identification, evaluation, community organizing, live event engagement, and advocacy.
There was no surprise when familiar themes emerged such as lack of branding for the profession, lack of technology core competencies being taught in social work education, ethical use of social media, and using social media in the professional space. Social Work Academia and leaders within the profession are still asking the question of whether to use social media platforms instead of how do we teach ethical use of social media and leverage them to extract data for future implications.
With the data collected from Sunday’s chat and future chats over the next six weeks, I will use this data to create a study for publication to challenge existing perceptions in the field of social work on the practical applications of twitter as a resource tool. The post for next week’s chat is soon to follow, and you can view the full archive of the chat at here: http://sfy.co/dc1t
#SWHelper Live Twitter Chats are held on Sundays at 3PM EST, and here are the week’s best tweets!
Assessment
Through blog posts, interviews, and collect data, we will be looking and sharing in depth analysis of our twitter chats. #swhelper
— SWHELPER (@swhelperorg) March 9, 2014
#swhelper branding ourselves as professionals is uber important! and it's not taught in SW programs
— Stacy Braiuca, 🧭 Change Navigator™, 🐿️ Wrangler™ (@stacybraiuca) March 9, 2014
A1. Lack of understanding that social media can be used for professional work, not just socializing. #swhelper
— Laurel I Hitchcock (@laurelhitchcock) March 9, 2014
Q how do you all deal with #administrators who are afraid of staff using #socialmedia since that is STILL a major issue I think #swhelper
— Stacy Braiuca, 🧭 Change Navigator™, 🐿️ Wrangler™ (@stacybraiuca) March 9, 2014
Need to build the value of twitter/social media for admin & show how it can help the org. Be better. It's hard for them to see it. #swhelper
— Jimmy A. Young, PhD, MSW, MPA (@JimmySW) March 9, 2014
I also think Twitter itself either confuses or scares people, partly b/c of it's dualistic: simplicity and complexity #swhelper
— Stacy Braiuca, 🧭 Change Navigator™, 🐿️ Wrangler™ (@stacybraiuca) March 9, 2014
MT @StacyBraiuca we need to help people realize that it can be used for #advocacy and #research like http://t.co/DFGmxwSTnw #swhelper
— Laurel I Hitchcock (@laurelhitchcock) March 9, 2014
2/2 @EmpowerMENt2011 #swhelper we introduce it in induction week in our BA and MSc programmes at GCU
— Martin Kettle (@MartinK55) March 9, 2014
Just as you should use good judgment in practice, with a pen/pad, in a note…the same applies with social media. #swhelper
— Dr. S (@NewStepsCounsel) March 9, 2014
Hope to network w/others & demonstrate digital advocacy & help nonprofits, students, etc. see the benefits of social media. #swhelper
— Jimmy A. Young, PhD, MSW, MPA (@JimmySW) March 9, 2014
Desired Goals and Outcomes
Twitter has shown to produce far more results in advocating for a position than email and petitions alone. #swhelper
— SWHELPER (@swhelperorg) March 9, 2014
https://twitter.com/meggy107/statuses/442745910024368129
I hope to use it to help get #socialwork #students & #faculty involved in #socialmedia as a regular part of their practice #swhelper
— Stacy Braiuca, 🧭 Change Navigator™, 🐿️ Wrangler™ (@stacybraiuca) March 9, 2014
I believe Twitter chats are a great advocacy tool. Use to be if you had a complaint you had to send an email or do a petition #swhelper
— SWHELPER (@swhelperorg) March 9, 2014
Addressing chronic community violence is a passion of mine and social media can be used educate, mobilize, and call 4 action! #swhelper
— Dr. S (@NewStepsCounsel) March 9, 2014
@swhelpercom It's important for students to know how to get their foot in the door when pursuing macro SW jobs and where to look #swhelper
— Dexter C. Daniel, DSW, LMSW (@drdexterdaniel) March 9, 2014
Challenges and Barriers
@HillSwoguy13 @swhelpercom For the frame of this chat- teaching SW'rs not to chat with clients, share info etc is really a shame. #SWhelper
— Rachel Lendzion (@rachel_lendzion) March 9, 2014
https://twitter.com/meggy107/statuses/442748707478728704
@jlwestwood @jimmySW even if SWKers do not use social media they need to understand it to help clients deal with digital issues! #swhelper
— Laurel I Hitchcock (@laurelhitchcock) March 9, 2014
A5. Looks like we need a chat on ethics in social media! #swhelper
— Laurel I Hitchcock (@laurelhitchcock) March 9, 2014
https://twitter.com/davecannFSED/statuses/442761041135800321
@MartinK55 Absolutely, the problem is most people have been introduce to socialmedia as a personal diary #swhelper
— SWHELPER (@swhelperorg) March 9, 2014
https://twitter.com/meggy107/statuses/442744780624109568
