Incorporating Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook in Economics Classrooms

Abstract

Social media is one of the most current and dynamic developments in education. In general, the field of economics has lagged behind other disciplines in incorporating technologies in the classroom. In this article, the authors provide a guide for economics educators on how to incorporate Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook inside and outside of the classroom. The authors’ aims are to discuss the potential benefits of social media for economics curricula, explain how to effectively use social media, and reduce some of the concerns associated with implementing new technology.

Keywords:

• economics
• education
• information technology
• social media

JEL code:

• A22

Notes

For films, see Becker 2004; Dixit 2005; Formaini 2001; Leet and Houser 2003; Mateer 2005; Mateer and Li 2008; Sexton 2006. For television shows, see Al-Bahrani and Patel 2014b; Ghent, Grant, and Lesica 2010; Gillis and Hall 2010; Luccasen and Thomas 2010. For music, see Hall and Lawson 2008; Hall, Lawson, and Mateer 2008; Mateer and Rice 2007; Tinari and Khandke 2000. For literature, see Hartley 2001; Kish-Goodling 1998; Watts 1998.

Al-Baharani and Patel (2014a) conducted a survey asking students about their social media use. They found that social media preferences were ranked as follows: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. We believe economic educators are familiar with the benefits and use of YouTube and therefore we focus on the other three platforms.

For a more detailed description of these platforms, see the text under the section entitled, “Getting Acquainted with Social Media.”

While the ability to connect with students is available to faculty members, we recommend not exercising this option. This helps create clearer boundaries and better identifies the purpose of the social media connection.

For more information, see https://about.twitter.com/company.

Our Twitter usernames are @teach_econ and @patelnomics.

See table 1 for a definition of retweet (also abbreviated as RT).

For more information, see http://instagram.com/press/.

For more information, see http://investor.fb.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=861599.

Please contact the author for a checklist of items to discuss on the first day of class and for a sample rubric to assess student posts.

The instructor may also want to direct a specific class's attention to the tweet. For example, topics that are important to students in a macroeconomics course may be followed by #macro. This informs students that this tweet is especially important to them.