It's All About Information? The Following Behaviour of Professors and PhD Students in Computer Science on Twitter

In this paper we investigate the role of the academic status in the following behaviour of computer scientists on Twitter. Based on a uses and grati cations perspective, we focus on the activity of a Twitter account and the reciprocity of following relationships. We propose that the account activity addresses the users' information motive only, whereas the user's academic status relates to both the information motive and community development (as in peer networking or career planning). Variables were extracted from Twitter user data. We applied a biographical approach to correctly identify the academic status (professor versus PhD student). We calculated a 2× 2 MANOVA on the in uence of the activity of the account and the academic status (on di erent groups of followers) to di erentiate the in uence of the information motive versus the motive for community development. Results suggest that for computer scientists Twitter is mainly an information network. However, we found significant e ects in the sense of career planning, that is, the accounts of professors had even in the case of low activity a relatively high number of researcher followers both PhD followers as well as professor followers. Additionally, there was also some weak evidence for community development grati cations in the sense of peer-networking of professors. Overall, we conclude that the academic use of Twitter is not only about information, but also about career planning and networking.