Ex-Edchat: Historic retrospective of X/Twitter #Edchat

Abstract

For more than a decade, education-related X/Twitter hashtags facilitated networking and resource-sharing among educators with related interests and needs, resulting in self-reported impacts on practice. #Edchat was one of the first such hashtags and attracted substantial attention as an affinity space for educators. This study retrospectively explores long-term and large-scale digital trace X/Twitter data associated with #Edchat from October 2008 to May 2023, analyzing more than 15 million tweets in terms of changes in volume (e.g., daily tweets) and content (e.g., questions, replies, hyperlinks, co-occurring hashtags, language features). Findings suggest that #Edchat’s initial success led to impressive growth, followed by change in the nature of content and a long period of steady decline. Specific social dynamics associated with the hashtag, such as the decline of its associated synchronous chat, as well as technical factors (e.g., platform updates, policy changes) appear to have influenced #Edchat’s volume and content. Quantifying the shifting nature of this long-standing affinity space contributes to understanding the opportunities and challenges educators may encounter on social media broadly and highlights the importance of supporting and developing educators’ digital literacy.