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Using social media platforms to build informal learning processes and social networks is significant in academic development practices within higher education. We present three vignettes illustrating academic practices occurring on Twitter to show that using social media is beneficial for building networks of academics, locally and globally, enhancing information flows, inspiring thinking, and motivating academic practice. Using a reflective and diffractive methodology, we illuminate how different flows of forces and relations are enacted. We argue it is in this fluidity of informal learning that perspectives are contested and shaped, and that academic developers can benefit by encompassing such practices.

Many higher education institutions around the world are increasingly motivated to incorporate social media for pedagogical benefit. At the same time, many institutions are also attracting an ever-growing number of students from overseas countries. With this in mind, researching how the use of social media applications impact on international students’ experiences of new cultural and pedagogical contexts in the host country is relevant. This article is a systematic review of current literature on international students in higher education and their use of social media, focusing on both the personal and educational aspects of use. This analysis reveals three central themes related to the role of social web technologies for international students, that is creating bridges, boundaries, or hybrid spaces.

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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the growing use of Twitter in academic and artist practices. The authors explore commonalities, overlaps and differences within the reflections on the initial and ongoing motivations, usage and learnings the authors have encountered whilst immersed in this environment. Design/methodology/approach – The authors locate the particular inquiry by drawing on the literature surrounding digital identities, academic literacies and digital scholarship. Departing from other studies, the focus is on a narrative inquiry of the lived experiences as academics and as artists using Twitter. Findings – Academics use of Twitter plays a distinctly social role enabling communication that connects, and fostering accessible and approachable acts. It enables a space for challenging norms of academic ways of being and behaving. In addition, the authors draw conclusions about the “messiness” of the interconnected space that incorporates multiple identities, and highlight the risk taking the authors associate with using Twitter. Research limitations/implications – Academic practice is ever changing in the contemporary university. This initial study of academic and artist practices and the use of Twitter suggests future developments including participants using similar questions to elicit notions of practice to engage in a deeper understanding of motivations and behaviours. Practical implications – In using social media tools such as Twitter, individual academics and their practices are modified; the impact of this practice is visible. Originality/value – The authors contribute to emerging discussions and understandings about academics, social media and identity. The authors argue that by participating in the use of Twitter, the authors are part of the collective process of challenging what it means to be an academic and artist.

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