The social mediated age of information: Twitter and Instagram as tools for information dissemination in higher education

Abstract

Despite high levels of global connectivity, Americans are generally underinformed about the world. The US Department of Education named social media as a viable option for improving learning objectives, yet minimal research supports such a claim regarding internationalization. While what research exists exclusively investigated Facebook, no research explored the viability of other popular platforms, such as Twitter or Instagram. Through an experimental design conducted on 405 college students, this study probed how the presentation of textually based (Twitter) and visually based (Instagram) messages affected American college students’ recall of digital information. It also investigated how communicator credibility affected the way college students consumed digitally disseminated information. Results showed that information retention was most improved by visually based information published by professional news outlets. Such findings help to better understand the contributions social media are capable of making as information tools, particularly when applied to American post-secondary education.