Melanie Mason

Knock, Knock, Who’s There? Digital Communication Via Social Media: Connecting Higher Education Departments to Students

Melanie A. Mason, MS, BFA

Lecturer

Department of Communication, College of Liberal Arts

Individual university departments are looking for ways to communicate with their student base through social media in more expedient and useful ways. How does this happen effectively with little personnel, time, or money to devote to the activity? What policies can help direct an efficient and mutually beneficial social presence online and can those advantages extend to recruitment and retention? It is self-evident that students will profit from deeper and more connected interactions from departmental generated social media and as educators , we continue to hear “meet the students where they live,” indicating an urgency to communicate with them on these platforms. My study will focus on the current University of Texas Arlington Communication Department Facebook account. Individual posts, as well as audience interactions will comprise the data which will be obtained using the open source web mining tool, Python. Analyzing and comparing this data with demographic information focusing on departmental population will help to answer the initial questions and guide departmental policy towards best practices.

Regina Urban

Thanks for an overview of your project to analyze and incorporate best practices into your Comm FB page. It was interesting to me to see what data could be obtained from Facebook analytics and from Python (for example…who are your 600+ users vs who is your core audience). It sounds like you developed an understanding of how your Facebook page is being used now, as primarily a method of dissemination of information, versus how you would like it to be used for your department (as a dialogue rather than a monologue). Thanks for sharing the handy tip about smore.com and best practices for using FB to get the result you are looking for.
- Melanie Mason
  
  Thank you for your feedback, Regina! I am anxious to identify by subgroup who we are interacting with and develop ways to connect better with our current majors.
J. T. Dellinger

Hi Melanie - great job overall! I do like the idea of having another medium to share information, but I can definitely see an issue if the newsletter goes to email. While email is the official means of communication, we are often inundated by countless messages. One thing that is interesting is that while there is speculation that younger populations aren’t using Facebook, there is evidence to the contrary (ex: http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/11/11/social-media-update-2016/), so Facebook might still be a great option if utilized differently. Has your department considered allowing students to send scripted posts and images to the admin to allow for more participation, and possibly more buy in?
- Melanie Mason
  
  Justin, I think you and I share the same misgivings about email! Most of our faculty use Blackboard to some extent and I feel like an announcement through this platform would have a greater impact. Love the idea of getting students involved (particularly student organizations) and am also, at Rafia’s suggestion, going to encourage graduate students to work with this project.
  - J. T. Dellinger
    
    Very cool. I’d be interested to hear about this down the road to see if there is greater impact!
Peggy Semingson

What a great project! Loved your display board, too, at the mini-c! I agree with what y’all are saying below about reluctance about email. I think our dept at one point was going to send basically a PDF newsletter attached to an email. I think that would be even less likely to be viewed! What is great about Facebook is the ability to post comments, like, and share. Great analysis towards problem-solving related to your department!