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Article
Evaluating universities Twitter web pages responding to the Black Lives Matter movement
Journal of Information Studies and Technology
  • Hind Albadi, Abdulaziz University
  • Thomas Kenny, Molloy University
Author Type
Faculty
Publication Date
9-1-2023
Document Type
Article
Abstract

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in May 2020, many colleges and universities responded by making statements on their website and social media channels condemning racism. Higher education institutions began initiatives for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for faculty, staff, administrators, and students on campus. Three years later, this study investigates whether universities are still offering and promoting workshops, classes, events, and activities related to DEI to campus communities. To do so, the researchers conducted a content analysis on Twitter categorizing tweets over a one-month period, then they classified the Tweets using the top 10 colleges in the U.S. News & World Report published in 2021. Tweets were categorized by the authors with the following classifications: equality and diversity, academics, campus life, faculty and student research, campus upgrades, administrative information, community service, and others. The researchers discovered that all categories were utilized to engage current students and to attract potential new students. The faculty and student research category was tweeted the most by universities over the one month of Twitter classification. Even though the category of “diversity, equality and inclusion” was not the most tweeted category, it was still frequently utilized as higher education institutions strongly highlighted content and information related to DEI initiatives.

DOI
10.5339/jist.2023.11
Journal Title
Journal of Information Studies and Technology
Volume (Issue)
2023 (2)
Journal ISSN
2616-4930
Document Version
Publisher's PDF
Publisher's Statement

© 2023 The Author(s), licensee HBKU Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Citation Information
Cite this article as: Albadi H, Kenny T. Evaluating universities Twitter web pages responding to the Black Lives Matter movement. Journal of Information Studies & Technology 2023:2.11. https://doi.org/10.5339/jist.2023.11