Tyler Nagel (tyler.1nagel@royalroads.ca) is an Associate Faculty member in the School of Communication and Culture at Royal Roads University, Victoria BC Canada. Chaseten Remillard (chaseten.remillard@royalroads.ca) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication and Culture at Royal Roads University, Victoria BC Canada.

“You know my methods. Apply them…”― Sherlock Holmes, from Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of the Four

Students need to learn research methods, but often these methods are presented in the context of academia only. Application of research skills in solving real-world problems can be one of the most important professional skills a student can learn.

In our undergraduate social media course in the Bachelor of Arts in Professional Communication at Royal Roads University, students are required to research, compile, and contextualize best practices for social media strategy and production using only sources found publicly on the internet. Students learn to critically evaluate a variety of non-scholarly “alternative” sources of research, including blogs, social media, and corporate sites. They then interpret these sources for professional contexts, mirroring the work they might perform as practicing social media professionals.

Rationale

The internet has become a default space for academics and lay audiences to begin research. Despite access to traditional scholarly sources through institutional libraries, the first places many researchers visit when researching topics for assignments are the web and social media. Conducting effective internet and social media searches and discerning reputable sources are important research skills for undergraduates (Poore, 2014).

Discernment is particularly important in an environment outside the borders of the traditional university library. In a library (physical or online), a student is less likely to encounter unauthoritative or maliciously misleading material. Indeed, librarians are on the front lines in the fight against misinformation (Sullivan, 2019). But as students research independently on the web or on social media, material may come from sources that mistakenly publish incorrect material (misinformation), or seek to intentionally mislead the audience (disinformation) (Jack, 2017; Leeder, 2019).

For some, an expedient solution might be to direct undergraduates to university libraries as their primary source of information. In fast-moving technical fields, however, scholarly articles may lag mainstream, web-based resources by months or years (Brock, 2019) and social media is becoming an important part of the academic research workflow (Greenhow & Gleason, 2014; Rowlands et al., 2011).

Two frameworks inform our solution to these problems: a scholarship model by Boyer (1990) and a communication model by Berlo (1960). In answer to previously narrow views of research, Ernest Boyer (1990) proposed a four-dimensional model for scholarship: discovery, integration, application, and teaching. These are appropriate descriptors of various types of scholarship that our students (and graduates) must apply in their research activities. Especially in applied and technical domains, students must learn to search for, evaluate, and discern the authority and accuracy of non-scholarly sources on the internet: Boyer’s discovery. As graduates transition from student to professional, they must know how to integrate newly discovered information with their previous learning: Boyer’s integration; applying the synthesis to solve real-world problems: Boyer’s application. Boyer’s teaching category stands apart and will be discussed at the end of this chapter.

Boyer’s four-dimensional model for scholarship also has strong links to a communication-specific framework: Berlo’s (1960) sender-message-channel-receiver model of linear communication (SMCR). Berlo describes a process through which information is communicated, starting with information gathering by the sender, then information translation and synthesis to create the message, and information broadcast through a channel, where it eventually reaches the receiver (1960). Boyer’s discovery is parallel to Berlo’s sender; Boyer’s integration parallels Berlo’s message; and Boyer’s application parallels Berlo’s channel and receiver. Our learning activity applies Boyer’s and Berlo’s frameworks to a student research assignment.

In the realm of our course, Advanced Digital Communication, where students form social media strategy and produce social media content, three specific challenges emerge as we seek to simultaneously equip students with professional skills in social media and develop their professional research acumen.

The first challenge is discernment. In the discipline of social media content creation, the chance of encountering misinformation or disinformation is magnified because of a preponderance of bad actors keen to provide dubious social media management services to unsuspecting or naïve organizations and individuals. Exacerbating matters is the nature of social media as a distributed medium, where “flat” information may flow not from a handful of accredited and authoritative sources, but an algorithmically-moderated ecosystem of diverse views composed by a wide variety of contributors (Gayo-Avello, 2015).

A second challenge is that graduates will cease to have access to institutional libraries upon graduation. Although open resources exist in the panoply of scholarly writing, a study by Piwowar et al. (2018) found more than half of scholarly literature is only accessible through purchase or subscription. To be effective professionals in fast-moving fields, students must be equipped with skills needed to find information online, from non-scholarly sources.

A final challenge lies in information ownership and attribution. Just as it is expected in academia, it is essential for professionals in non-scholarly settings to acknowledge and credit the sources of their interaction. Students, too, must learn this. This need is further magnified in social media environments, which are notoriously (and correctly) sensitive to members that “steal” information from others (Bailey & Trudy, 2018).

We have attempted to address each of these challenges by implementing an assignment that simultaneously develops search and discernment skills through praxis. Students are asked to find authoritative non-scholarly literature online, then evaluate, adapt, and summarize it for use in a particular industry sector to make useful social media posts (crediting the original source) that contribute to the professional discourse.

Overview

In our activity, students are first primed with internet search acumen. They learn about the various types of non-scholarly information that is available on the internet, including blogs, videos (from YouTube and other sources), and “pure” social media posts from social media sources such as Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and Twitter. Critical thinking is encouraged, using frameworks such as Potter’s cognitive model of media literacy (Potter, 2004) and the Stony Brook IMVAIN model for news media literacy (Fleming, 2014; Stony Brook Center for News Literacy, n.d.). The Stony Brook model prompts students to consider the following dimensions/points:

1. Independent sources are better than self-interested sources.
2. Multiple sources are better than single sources.
3. Verified sources (citing evidence) are better than sources who assert.
4. Authoritative / Informed sources are better than uninformed sources.
5. Named sources are better than unnamed sources.

In the learning activity, which runs for the duration of the semester, students are placed in teams of three or four, which form notional communications consultancies. Each team is assigned a sector of general industry to focus on. For example, a team might be assigned to be a communications consultancy focusing on serving not-for-profit organizations or small retail businesses.

Teams participate in a branding exercise for their notional consultancies, including formulating a vision, values, mission, community, and contribution brief. These briefs ensure that students have a firm idea of the characteristics of their audience, and how best to address their audience’s needs. They complete the setup by creating social media accounts for their communications consultancies (currently Twitter and Instagram, but the activity can be adapted for posting on nearly any social media platform).

Students are then provided with a list of topics or categories about which they must make posts. Over the 10-week semester, student teams must make 48 social media posts, divided between two social media platforms. Examples of categories for which students must make posts are presented below:

• Hashtags: Find two different pieces of content on how to better research or use hashtags, on any platform. Post a link to the content, follow the creator on Twitter or Instagram and mention the creator in the tweet or post.
• Broadcast or engage: Find and post two pieces of content that discuss the difference between using social media as a tool to broadcast information versus a tool to engage with audiences. Post a link to the content, follow the creator on Twitter or Instagram and mention the creator in the tweet or post.
• New platform: Find an article or blog post on a “new” social media platform, (introduced within the last two years) that discusses the applicability of that new platform to public relations or professional communication.

When students find appropriate sources to fulfill these categories, they create social media posts to interpret the information for the specific sector that their communications consultancy is targeting. These posts must be spaced out at the pace of no more than one per day, mirroring professional practice of creating a steady stream of social media posts, instead of an “information tsunami” followed by a drought. The source must be acknowledged and linked. This translational activity demonstrates an understanding of the source material, comprehension of the interests of a sector targeted by the student teams, and a contextualization skill essential for communications professionals.

Students submit a social media debrief for evaluation twice during the course. The debrief document (a Microsoft Word template) reports each social media post made by the team, the source of the information, and statistics on any real-world engagement generated (likes, retweets, etc.). Teams receive feedback on the quality of the sources, their ability to translate it for their targeted sector, as well as the praxis of the social media posting techniques.

There is an evolution in the social media posts made by teams throughout the course. Because of the relentless pacing requirements, students are forced to become efficient with their time. The beginning posts reveal the greatest time spent finding appropriate sources and interpreting them. As the semester evolves, we observe an increase in post quality as students develop research skills and have more time to devote to the development of the actual social media presentation, including the graphics associated with the posts.

Teaching evaluations and informal feedback received directly from students suggest they enjoy this activity and learn a great deal from it. Combining research acumen with active, real-world learning appeals to students in a program with a professionalization focus.

Reflection

Revisiting the Boyer (1990) and Berlo (1960) models reveals that by the end of the exercise, students have performed activities at many levels. First, they discover and vet information (Boyer’s discovery and Berlo’s sender). They then integrate, apply, and adapt the information to a specific purpose (Boyer’s integration and Berlo’s message) and then broadcast this information to their audience (Boyer’s application and Berlo’s channel and receiver). Students simultaneously practice scholarship (à la Boyer) while they practice professional communication (à la Berlo).

Although the student feedback and the predictable evolution in the quality of the posts shows that the exercise is effective in achieving the desired learning outcomes, we did make some changes and continue to improve the course and activity. Initially, the marking load was onerous, with instructors evaluating hundreds of individual social media posts over the course of the semester. This prompted a transition from individual work to a team-based assignment.

The team-based approach has yielded benefits beyond marking load reduction. Distributing the workload across a team has given students more time to focus on branding their consultancies; better defining their mission, vision, and values; and developing a communication strategy suited to their sector. An additional benefit is the teamwork skills students develop, mirroring a professional work environment. Transitioning to a team-based assignment has also allowed enough “space” to expand from a single social media platform to two platforms.

A final opportunity lies in moving the student social media posts from a linear model of communication to a transactional one such as that proposed by Barnlund (1970). Students could actively engage with real-world audience members of their target sector on social media. Beyond the scope of the current assignment, such an addition would replicate an essential task of the social media professional: authentic engagement with the audience. Receiving feedback from a real-world audience could provide students authentic opportunities to gauge the impact of their research activities. In fact, the reflection resulting from such audience feedback has the potential to address learning in the fourth category in Boyer’s model of scholarship: the scholarship of teaching.

References

Bailey, M. & Trudy. (2018). On misogynoir: Citation, erasure, and plagiarism. Feminist Media Studies, 18(4), 762–768. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1447395

Barnlund, D. C. (1970). A transactional model of communication. In K. K. Sereno & C. D. Mortensen (Eds.), Foundations of Communication Theory (pp. 88–102). Harper.

Berlo, D. K. (1960). The process of communication; an introduction to theory and practice. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. http://archive.org/details/processofcommuni0000berl

Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Brock, J. (2019, July 30). Out of date before it’s published. https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/living-systematic-reviews-emerging-solution-problem-superseded-research-zika-virus

Doyle, A. C. (1890, February). The sign of the four. Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine.

Fleming, J. (2014). Media literacy, news literacy, or news appreciation? A case study of the news literacy program at Stony Brook University. Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 69(2), 146–165.

Gayo-Avello, D. (2015). Social Media, democracy, and democratization. IEEE MultiMedia, 22(2), 10–16. https://doi.org/10.1109/MMUL.2015.47

Greenhow, C., & Gleason, B. (2014). Social scholarship: Reconsidering scholarly practices in the age of social media. British Journal of Educational Technology, 45(3), 392–402. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12150

Jack, C. (2017). Lexicon of lies: Terms for problematic information. Data & Society, 3(22), 1094-1096. https://datasociety.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/DataAndSociety_LexiconofLies.pdf

Leeder, C. (2019). How college students evaluate and share “fake news” stories. Library & Information Science Research, 41(3), 100967. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2019.100967

Piwowar, H., Priem, J., Larivière, V., Alperin, J. P., Matthias, L., Norlander, B., Farley, A., West, J., & Haustein, S. (2018). The state of OA: A large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of open access articles. PeerJ, 6, e4375. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4375

Poore, M. (2014). Studying and researching with social media. Sage.

Potter, W. J. (2004). Theory of media literacy: A cognitive approach. Sage.

Rowlands, I., Nicholas, D., Russell, B., Canty, N., & Watkinson, A. (2011). Social media use in the research workflow. Learned Publishing, 24(3), 183–195. https://doi.org/10.1087/20110306

Stony Brook Center for News Literacy. (n.d.). Introducing IMVAIN. Stony Brook Center for News Literacy. https://digitalresource.center/content/introducing-imvain

Sullivan, M. C. (2019). Leveraging library trust to combat misinformation on social media. Library & Information Science Research, 41(1), 2–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2019.02.004