An Analysis of Twitter Conversations at Academic Conferences

Academic conference organizers encourage tweeting during presentations to promote access and engagement. In this paper, I provide a methodological framework for analyzing Twitter conversations during academic conferences. An analysis of tweets archived during the 2014 Conference on College Composition and Communication is included as an example. Tweets using the #4C14 hashtag (N=12,522) were analyzed to determine 1) when people tweet during conferences, 2) what sessions they tweet about most, 3) how often participants tweet during sessions, and 4) what people tweet about at conferences during times of high Twitter activity. Results suggest conference attendees tweet most frequently during the middle of each day during the conference, presentations related to technology yield high Twitter activity, and retweeting particular sessions extended presentations far beyond the designated time blocks of each conference panel. These results provide valuable information for conference organizers and experience architects interested in promoting participatory digital spaces during academic conferences.