Education in times of global crisis: How private actors use momentum to gain power in online social networks

Author(s)	Johannes Schuster; Nina Kolleck
Institution(s)	Leipzig University
Contact	Beethovenstraße 15, D-04107 Leipzig nina.kolleck@uni-leipzig.de
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Theoretical framework/approach	Social Network Theory
Research questions	Which actors are influential in the social media discourse on digital learning alternatives? How have different public and private actors responded on Twitter to the sudden demand for digital learning alternatives in times of the COVID-19 crisis?
Themes / topics	digitalization; Twitter; education policy; social network analysis; COVID-19
Main findings of study / highlights	Twitter network is dominated mainly by individual education-related actors as well as by small and medium-sized enterprises Twitter is used as a forum to promote products and platforms, also by globally operating companies such as Microsoft and YouTube Public actors remain barely visible
Methods	quantitative social network analysis
Analytic Appraoch	descriptive; explorative
Desig of data collection	collection of publiclly available Twitter data using R package rtweet
Time(s) of data collection	8-23 March 2020
Kind of sampling, kind and number of sample	Twitter data: 7,426 tweets; 18,824 retweets; 3,627 twitter accounts
Geographical area	German-speaking area
Publication(s)
Project website	https://www.sozphil.uni-leipzig.de/institut-fuer-politikwissenschaft/arbeitsbereiche/politische-bildung-und-bildungssysteme/
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