Massively Open Online Conversation? Examining the #mooc Hashtag
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are a hotly debated topic in educational circles; some think that they will transform access to education, while others feel that they contain a host of problems including organizational problems, copyright, student support, and so forth. The hashtag #mooc is ostensibly neutral, used by both camps. Or is it?
RQ 1: How, if at all, is the #mooc hashtag politicized?
RQ 2: Who is dominating the #mooc conversation, and in what way?
Methodology
- Pulled all mentions of #mooc from 3 March – 26 June 2013
- Used TCAT to find Top Mentions, Top Users, Top Domains, Top URLs and RT Frequency
- Manually coded Top Mentions, Top Users for Location and Affiliation
- 51,000 tweets (approx.)
- Removed #mooc*
Findings: Overview
- Conversation is an echo chamber
- Narrow geography
- Driven by news
- Unidirectional: no real conversation
Challenges:
Dataset included unwanted hashtags (#moochers, #moochelle obama)
Hashtag co-occurrence: tool fail
Time limitations: hand-coding Tweets for deeper understanding of conversational dynamics
OpenCalais: Textual issues relate to Twitter shared URLs (positional references)