Academic Communication Via Twitter. The Case Of #Edenchats

The present study tries to offer an overview on the use of Twitter in scholarly communication and will focus on the #EDENchat series, offered on Twitter by EDEN NAP – Network of Academics and Professionals, since 2014. Individual researchers or Institutions may use twitter for several reasons such as advertising their research, events or publications. The use of correct hashtags increase visibility and may help interaction and exchange of ideas. No fully comprehensive studies exist on how and why scholars use Twitter and some of them highlight how little use of Twitter is made among scholars. The other issue described in the study was related to content. In fact, among those using Twitter, they did not necessarily do so for professional reasons: most of them used it just for personal reasons, in fact. It might be that the above negative attitude is connected to the limitation in characters that Twitter imposes. As we all know, Twitter is a form of free micro-blogging which allows users to send and receive short public messages called tweets. Tweets are limited to no more than 140 characters, and can include links to blogs, web pages, images, videos and all other material online. You can start tweeting anytime, from your computer, smart phone or tablet. By following other people and sources you are able to build up an instant, personalized Twitter feed that meets one’s full range of interests, both academic and personal. The question is: can a just 140 character academic communication has an impact? This paper tries to answer the question, analysing some aspects of #EDENchat series from 2014 up-to-now.