Situating the research data

In this section quantitative and simple qualitative data are explored to give a broad sense of the participants and their social media habits.

Demographic Factors

Chi Square tests were run on many quantitative data sets looking for statistically significant differences between genders and age groups questioned but no notable variance was observed. This reflects the relatively small amount of data collected for such a test to be effective, particularly given the approximately 2:1 ratio of female to male participants recruited. For example looking at Table 2, showing responses to question 12 (“Who do you connect to and learn from online?”) it is immediately apparent that any differentiation between gender is minimal with responses closely following the ratio of female to male participants.

Table 2: Responses to multiple-choice question 12: “Who do you connect to and learn from online?” illustrating similarity of responses by gender.

It may be the case that there are genuinely few differences between the experiences of different genders or age groups in the area of CPD in social media spaces but it would require a far larger and more evenly distributed cohort to properly explore this possibility.

Types of Engagement

In analysing questionnaire and interview responses I constructed a broad typology of participants as trends emerged. This is not intended to be an authoritative list but is provided to give a sense of the patterns of responses received:

• • Info Hounds see social networks as primarily concerned with information assets and exchange of assets. They may use social media as an alternative or addition to search engines rather than as a discursive space.

  • Cautious Enthusiasts are regular social media users with a reflective view of their own practice, an awareness and personal approach to addressing privacy concerns, but who nonetheless see benefit in engaging in social media.

  • Social Butterflies see CPD activities as part of much broader and blurred use of social media spaces. The individual is active in multiple spaces, is often more open in their practice or less concerned about privacy issues.

  • Focused Pros are networked professionals taking a very focused task and finish approach to CPD or learning activities in social media. Their use may be more discursive than Info Hounds but they engage less often and focus on very specific goals when they do engage.

  • Active Skeptics are peripheral, sometimes hostile users of social media who may engage because of professional requirements to do so, or in order to justify skepticism of the spaces and communities that inhabit them. The active skeptic may share many of the same concerns of Cautious Enthusiasts but may not be as technically literate in their use of social media spaces.

Different Spaces, Different Faces?

Research participants were asked early in the questionnaire about the tools they use most often (question 3a) and those they find most important (question 3b). There were striking differences between the responses. Most participants provided multiple examples of sites they use frequently with the diversity of answers given (Figure 5) ranging from mainstream commercial social media tools (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google+) to niche or local spaces (GitHub, Wikispaces, institutional spaces).

Figure 5: Wordle visualisation showing responses to survey question 3(a): “Please list social media spaces, websites, tools, etc. that you use most often”. The larger the font, the more frequently that word was mentioned.

By contrast, when participants were asked about the sites they found most important (question 3b) far fewer sites were mentioned, with most participants listing only one or two sites in their answers. Almost all of these are widely adopted mainstream commercial social media sites (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Wordle visualisation showing responses to survey question 3(b): “Please list social media spaces, websites, tools, etc. that you find most important?”. As in Figure 5, font size indicates frequency of word use.

Given that a majority of participants were recruited through Twitter it is unsurprising that the site has such prominence and importance for this group of participants but there are surprises here. The “most important” sites were largely mainstream commercial sites but their relative importance does not reflect their relative market positions or number of users. Facebook has the highest penetration of any social media network in the UK (where all but one participant are located) but few participants felt it to be the most important social media site, and unease with the use of this space for professional purposes was widespread, as voiced by participants such as Kate:

Researcher: Do you use Facebook?

Kate: Yes, but only with a gun to my head!

Such unease appears to reflect a conscious segmentation of social media spaces for participants as exemplified by Robin:

Robin: Employers who don't allow social media in the workspace are shooting themselves in the foot. I don't mean Facebook, which should be kept for personal interactions with family, but Twitter and Linked in are more important now than email.

This idea of different spaces being for different groups or functions was voiced repeatedly throughout both questionnaires and interviews. Some social media sites were characterised strongly as working spaces, others were consistently seen as purely social spaces. This segmentation may reflect attempts to manage and differentiate multiple performances of identity (Goffman 1959) with tensions occurring, for some participants, around potential blurring of these identities.

The stakes for such identity performances can be high with several, mainly freelance, participants talking about the positive impact of social media for finding or authenticating skills and of this leading to new paid work. Several participants also reflected on the substantial social and professional risks of performing the wrong sort of identity in a professional social media context:

Kate: A couple of times I've seen people pulled up for what would obviously be jokes in real life, but more senior people feel uncomfortable being written down on twitter... e.g. a colleague joked about credit card fraud and was hauled up for that.

Segmentation of particular identities or personas to fit the audiences and expectations of particular social media spaces seemed to be a deliberate strategy employed by a number of participants in this research. They report adopting a number of similar but differing personas (akin to the postmodern selves discussed in Usher, Bryant, and Johnston, 1997), perhaps an informal and social “facebook self” that is distinct from another semi-professional “twitter self” that they adopt at other times. Participants who reported this type of practice framed it in discussions of privacy, of personal space, of managing their identity for the appropriate audience.

The idea of segmenting spaces and identities in this way was not universal. Many participants, perhaps as a result of accessing social media frequently and in multiple contexts through mobile devices (see Ofcom 2012, Turkle 2008, Turkle 2012), reported on the benefits of blurring their professional and personal identities. Laura, who engages with close colleagues, her professional body and friends via social media, reflected that:

Laura: “If I know someone in a friendly capacity as well as in a professional one, I'm probably more likely to be interested in what they're doing and what projects they're sharing”

Laura’s comments reflect those of number of participants who saw blurred identities as providing greater opportunity for serendipitous discovery, gateways to diversifying and improving relationships with peers, mentors, etc. Laura’s sense of building up a more holistic and engaging picture of people within her network also connects to one of the strongest themes emerging from questionnaire and interview responses: the central role that trust and a sense of safety play in learning that takes place within social media spaces.

Trust and Shared Goods

A sense of trust, and the safety to take small risks without significant detrimental consequences, is central to learning, particularly in an online context (e.g. Edmondson 1999, Anderson 2008) and this was reflected in questionnaire and interview responses.

When considering what might be unique or special about social media several respondents pointed to an increased sense of trust. Robin, describes how this feels as a user of these spaces for learning:

Robin: The interactions are surprisingly intimate and revealing about people's personalities, sometimes almost like reading another person's mind. Oddly, there is often a greater feeling of trust among strangers. Trust and generosity.

Robin’s increased sense of trust was also reflected in others’ responses. Some specifically felt the asynchronous nature of many exchanges within social media was part of the reason that a greater sense of reflection and trust might be present. However not all accounts were positive, and not all exchanges are as trusting. One participant described the sense of vulnerability she felt in a dysfunctional “affinity space” where an absence of trust discouraged shared learning or dialogue:

Shirley: Flame wars started all of the time on the pregnancy forum I was on and I think that having spent many, many hours watching that happen has made me wary of ever doing such things in a public space where people can easily feel personally attacked. It's always best to take things off privately if you really need to.

Trust thus plays a crucial role in participation and the possibilities of learning and engaging in dialogue in social media spaces, whether positively through it’s presence in safe spaces for learning and discussion, or through the negative impact a lack of trust can have.

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