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Abstract

This dissertation investigates the structure and ideological role of ‘Edutwitter’, the education community on the microblogging and social networking service Twitter. Working from a critical realist perspective, this work takes a mixed-methods approach. It first aims to quantitatively determine the major communities which exist within the Edutwitter milieu by analysing the ‘follow’ relationships between self-declared Edutwitter participants. It then characterises those communities through linguistic analysis of their members’ ‘biographies’ (short self-descriptions). Qualitative methods are then applied to explore the ideological role played by Edutwitter by thematically analysing and interpreting the Tweets (posts) of users determined to be influential within and between each community. The findings are interpreted through a Marxist lens, drawing on the works of Gramsci, Žižek and Baudrillard to interpret the utterances, actions and interests of influential Edutwitter participants.

Course: Humanities and social sciences - MRes - P2460PTC

Date Deposited: 2023-03-01

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis14105.html