Jusayan 1

Arianne Jusayan
Professor Tyler Branson
Writing 2 Spring 16
27 May 2016
Social Media and Academics: A Writing Habits Analysis
Introduction
As a part of human nature, writing has always been apart of my life: from the time I
would practice writing out my full name in kindergarten to writing two major research papers for
my second quarter in my freshman year of college. Having been brought up in an environment in
which writing existed mostly within formal settings, like school, I thought of writing as a
mundane entity. My teachers, peers, and even my parents would practically use writing actively
and daily within the classroom or at home.
Then I discovered what I view as an important part of my life: social media; Twitter,
Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and countless other platforms. I probably have a surprisingly
high cumulative number of posts from all of these sites thus far in my life. As I matured in a
dynamic environment, I became increasingly dependent on writing through social media
platforms as the primary outlet of expressing myself, and began to simultaneously stray away
from formal, academic writing. I have observed that starting in my senior year of high school, I
would only complete writing assignments for classes if they were a necessary component of my
overall grade in the class. Having taken four years of both advanced English and history classes,
I began to view writing essays as bland, unexciting, and dreadful. With this negative mindset, I
thought that the amount of formal, academic writing I would accomplish was decreasing as my
sociability increased, as seen through my rising usage of various social media platforms. I
wonder, therefore, whether my usage of social media has an effect on my writing, especially for
my academics. It also makes me want to learn more about my writing habits on social media
itself.

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There are many research findings about writing on social media platforms and its
correlation to ones performance in school and academic writing. In her research study
Assessing the Efficacy of the Rhetorical Composing Situation with FYC Students as Advanced
Social Media Practitioners, for example, Elizabeth H. Buck conducted a survey and found that
there were different reasons for posting or sharing certain content onto a social media site: 57%
of participants indicated that they want to share thoughts or images with other users on the
Internet, while 26% noted that they don't give much thought to why they post. Only 10%
indicated that they want my friends to comment on or respond to my post. (Buck). In another
article about writing and literacy, Fishman, Lunsford, and Otuteye write that college students
produce tremendous volume of writing through various social media tools (Fishman, Lunsford,
McGregor, 224-252). In fact, a similar study by Mehmood and Taswir indicates that the use of
social media networks and the Internet is one of the most important factors that can influence
educational performance of students positively or adversely (Mehmood and Taswir, 111-125).
Jerey Mingle and Dr. Musah Adams, however, find a very different correlation between social
media and academic work. In their study Social Media Network Participation and Academic
Performance in Senior High Schools in Ghana, they found that despite the benefits that come
with the participation of students on social media networks, it could impact negatively on their
academic performance if not used properly (Mingle and Adams 48).
With these newfound facts, I wanted to learn more about my writing habits for social
media and school. By comparing my writing for the two different genres, I hope to see whether
my activeness through social media affects, and even impairs, my academic performance. In the
following sections, I will describe how I sought to analyze and compare my writings for both
social media and for school and whether my findings mirror that of Mingle and Adams.
Methods

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In order to analyze and compare my social and academic writing, I kept daily writing logs
of every writing instance I would complete for a period of seven consecutive days. I began
keeping track of my writing on Monday, May 2nd after my Writing 2 lecture, and stopped
Sunday night, May 8th. After each instance of writing, no matter how minimal or significant it
may be, I would open the application Google Docs on my laptop and create a writing log onto a
designated document named Writing Logs solely for the purpose of this study. Under headers
dedicated to the different days of the week to organize the writing logs, I would record the
numerous amount of times I would write throughout that day. There were times, such as on
Monday May 8th, in which I would create a writing log immediately after a writing activity. As
the week progressed, however, I became increasingly less persistent about recording my writing
logs, and would thus complete them at the end of the day each day.
My writing logs consisted of the following topics in order to fully and accurately describe
the writing instance: what I write, why I am writing it, the audience for the writing, a description
of the genre expectations, technologies I used, where I am physically, and the writing process.
Although I opted to stick to the given writing log topics religiously, I also decided to add the
topic of what time of the day I am writing.
At the beginning of my research, I practically recorded every instance of writing: text
messages, calendar re-writes, Facebook comments, lecture notes, homework assignments, etc.
But as I found the focus of my research, social media and academics, I began to record writing
logs for instances that belong to the genres of academics and social media. As I will mention
later in the Results section of my research paper, I did not have use for writing log topics of
physical location and time of writing instance.
There is a variety of topics that my writing logs cover: Facebook posts; Tweets on
Twitter; Instagram captions; lecture notes for Psychology 3 (PSY 3), Probability and Statistics
5A (PSTAT 5A), and Writing 2 (WRIT 2); section and lab worksheets; text messages and more.

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Most of my writing logs are similar to one another according to genre type, especially those of
the academic genre. For this reason, and in order to save time, I would copy certain writing logs
and paste them accordingly to the days later in the week in which I would have to write a similar
log. The academic writing logs would follow a pattern similar to that of my course schedule this
quarter. For example, for the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of the week, my first writing log
of the day is for my PSTAT 5A lecture notes, since that is mostly my first writing act of the day.
On Tuesday and Thursday, I would first have a writing log for my PSTAT section or lab,
followed by a log for my PSY 3 lecture, which is then followed by a log for my PSTAT CLAS
session. Since I typically copied and pasted these writing logs onto the accorded days, I did not
exert a great amount of effort into the writing logs. For the social media genre, however, I input
more effort and thought into the writing logs I recorded.
Before disclosing the results of this study in the following section, I must acknowledge
certain discrepancies in the methodology of recording the writing logs. For Friday, the day of the
week in which I would typically have my PSTAT 5A lecture as my only class of the day, I did not
feel well, and therefore the number of writing logs is less than the number of writing logs for the
previous days of the week. I also did not record as many writing logs on Saturday and Sunday
since I went back to home for Mothers day weekend. If I had not gone home, there would be
more writing logs from notes that I would have taken for PSY 3, for I had an exam the following
Tuesday. Instead, I chose to spend the weekend to halt my academic writing and continue my
writing on social media.
Results
After completing my research, I recorded a total of 55 writing logs. But since the focus of my
study is writing logs of the academic and social genre, I used only 29 of the sample logs, which
is only 52.73% of the total writing logs I have recorded.

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Figure 1: Genres of the Writing Logs

Academic

45%

Social

55%

I
analyzed my writing logs for the genre and purpose of each writing instance. The two recurring
genres that became the focus of my research study are the academic (and formal) genre and the
social media genre. 13 of the 29 sample writing logs (or 44.83% of the total sample writing logs)
belonged to the academic genre, whereas 16 of the 29 logs (or 55.17%) belonged to the social
media genre. The number of logs belonging to the two different genres can be visually given in
the following chart:

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Figure 2: Subgenres of the Writing Logs

PSY 3

7%

WRIT 2

13%
3%

PSTAT 5A
Other

17%

40%

Facebook
Twitter

10%

Instagram

10%

I further
categorized the logs under the academic genre by classes, and the logs of the social genre by the
appropriate social media application. Under the academic genre, there are 4 writing logs for my
PSY 3 course, 1 log for my WRIT 2 course, 5 logs for my PSTAT 5A course, and 3 logs that fall
under the academic genre but are do not belong to once class alone. Under the social genre, there
3 writing logs from Facebook writing activities, 12 logs from Tweets on Twitter, and 2 logs from
Instagram captions. The following chart visually summarizes this information.
After analyzing the 29 writing logs, I found a variety of different cumulative purposes,
and for some of the individual logs, there was more than one purpose indicated by the log. I
counted at least 10 different purposes, a fairly large number to possibly organize the writing logs
for this study. Instead of accounting for all of these purposes, I organized my findings and chose
to categorize them into the following categories: the purpose of gaining something from an
audience, the purpose of showing something to an audience, or no purpose or thought at all. 14
writing logs illustrated the purpose of gaining something, 17 illustrated the purpose of showing
something, and one illustrated no thought. Note that a writing log can indicate more than one

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purpose. The following table organizes the number of writing logs according to the respective
genre as well as the previously listed purposes of completing that certain activity, along with the
total amount of logs from each section:
Figure 3: Genres vs. Purposes of the Writing Logs
Academic

Social

TOTAL

To gain something

11

14

To show

16

17

No purpose

TOTAL

13

19

32

something

The general purposes of the writing logs (to gain something, to show something, and no purpose)
are further broken down into subcategories. Logs illustrating the purpose of gaining something
were further categorized into the following subcategories: gaining knowledge (or learning) and
eliciting a response. 11 of the logs illustrated the purpose of learning and belong to the academic
genre, whereas 3 of the logs illustrated the purpose of eliciting a response while belonging to the
social genre. The following table illustrates these findings.
Figure 4: Logs Illustrating the Purpose of Gaining Something
Academic
To learn
To elicit a response

Social

11

Logs
3

illustrating

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the purpose of showing something to an audience were further categorized into the following
subcategories: ranting/venting/judging, being cool/witty/funny, and
appraising/appreciation/flaunting. 16 of the 17 writing logs indicating the purpose of showing
something were of the social genre. 6 writing logs of the social genre indicated the purpose of
ranting and venting. 3 logs also belong to the social genre indicated the purpose of being witty
and funny. 8 logs, 7 of them belonging to the social genre, indicate the purpose of appraising,
approving, or flaunting. The following table illustrates these findings for logs that illustrate the
purpose of showing something.
Figure 5: Logs Illustrating the Purpose of Showing Something
Academic

Social

To rant/vent/judge

To be cool/witty/funny

To

appraise/appreciate/flaunt
To compare my writing of the social genre to the writing of the academic genre even
further, I compared the number of writing logs of the social genre I would complete throughout
the week versus the number of logs of the academic genre throughout the week. The following
graph illustrates the finding that as the week progresses, the number of times I wrote for the
academic genre decreased as the number of times I wrote for the social genre increased.

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Figure 6: Logs throughout the Week

Academic Genre
Social Genre

Discussion
After recording my writing habits during a seven-day period and analyzing the writing logs
accordingly to by its appropriate genre and purpose, I came to several conclusions about my
writing habits. Contrary to what I believed before my research study, most of my writing is not
geared towards social media and social purposes. I found, to my surprise, that there is generally
little to no difference between the amount of writing done for school and the amount of writing
done for social media, as seen by the pie chart in Figure 1. I have a healthy amount of writing
dedicated towards school, and this may be due to the fact that I became increasingly active in
writing for my classes, especially since I started my prerequisite courses to fully declare as a
psychology major. I compared my writing that I have done for my classes this quarter to the
writing I have done last quarter, and there is a significant difference. The reason I did not fully
succeed in my courses I took Winter quarter is because I did not dedicate as much time for
writing notes for those courses as I do for the courses I am taking this Spring quarter. This

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research study illustrates the imperative need to write numerous notes for my classes if I want to
succeed and excel in those courses.
Figure 2 illustrates that the academic subgenre I write for the most is my PSTAT 5A
course, having completed a total of 5 logs for the course. This is an appropriate result of my
research, considering how I write many lecture notes, section notes, and CLAS notes for this
course in order to practice and master different topics we cover. The social subgenre I wrote
for the most is Twitter, having written 12 logs for the site. This is also an appropriate result of my
studies because I use the social media app to express any thought that comes to mind.
I also discovered that, according to Figures 3 through 5, the writing logs that indicated the
purpose of gaining something were mostly of the academic genre, while writing logs that
indicated the purpose of showing something mostly belonged to the social genre. According to
these findings, I write for classes mostly to gain knowledge, and I write through social media to
illustrate something to my friends and followers. These findings serve as a viable clause because
the purpose for writing for school really is go gain something, and the purpose for writing on
social media outlets really is to be social and to illustrate to an audience parts about your life,
whether it would be through photos, Tweets, or Facebook posts.
Figure 6 illustrates how throughout the week, the amount of academic writing I have done
slightly diminishes, whereas the amount of writing I complete for social media increases. This
trend can be the result of several different reasons. I skipped my one PSTAT lecture because I
was feeling sick, illustrating the lack of writing logs of the social genre. I did not continue to
write additional notes for my Biopsychology course in preparation for an upcoming exam I had
the following Tuesday for the course since I went home for Mothers Day weekend. The amount
of writing I completed for the social genre may have been especially high during the weekend.

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(specifically Sunday) because it was Mothers Day weekend. In relation to the finding that 16 of
the 19 writing logs of the social media (84.21%) indicated the purpose of showing something to
an audience, I posted mostly on Mothers Day to appraise my wonderful mother.
The findings of this research study between social media writing and academic writing
correlates with the research findings previously mentioned in the Introduction. The findings
summarized in Figure 5 agree with Bucks findings that users of social media write for different
reasons. Fishman, Lunsford, and Otuteyes finding of the tremendous volume of writing
produced through social media is further supported by my own finding that I write a lot as a
college student through social media. These findings disagree with Mingle and Adams research
that social media negatively impacts ones academic performance. As illustrated by Figure 1 and
Figure 6, there seems to be no correlation between my academic writing and my social writing;
there is a healthy amount of writing for both genres. The lack of correlation surprises me because
often there are professors who forbid the use of social media during class, as it would serve as a
distraction for students.
Further research may help me to better understand the outcomes of my research study. To
expand on my findings, I could conduct a study on my peers writing habits to see if the trends
that I found in my study are present with their own writing habits. I may even conduct a study
with the whole school participating to get an accurate sample of data to analyze. If I could do a
different study, I am also interested in the social media genre alone and analyzing my writing
habits for that genre even further by completing writing logs for a longer period of time, such as
a month. With the insight I have gained from this study, I am now able to recognize that little to
no correlation exists between writing academically and writing socially, and I may freely
exercise writing tendencies under both genres without any concerns of one affecting the other.

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Works Cited
Buck, Elizabeth H. "Assessing the Efficacy of the Rhetorical Composing Situation with FYC
Students as Advanced Social Media Practitioners." Technorhetoric.net. Dreamweaver,
n.d. Web. 27 May 2016.
Fishman, J., Lunsford, A., McGregor, B. and Otuteye, M. (2005). Performing writing,
performing literacy. College Composition and Communication. 2(57), 224252.
Mehmood, S. and Taswir, T. (2013). The Effects of Social Networking Sites on the Academic
Performance of Students in College of Applied Sciences. International Journal of Arts
and Commerce, 2(1), 111-125.
Mingle, Jerey and Adams, Dr. Musah, "Social Media Network Participation and Academic
Performance In Senior High Schools in Ghana" (2015). Library Philosophy and Practice
(e-journal). Paper 1286.