Twitter paper in the "The Right To Communicate" Celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at #ASH18 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Conference Boston 14-17 Nov 2018

1. Using Twitter to
Access the
Human Right of
Communication
Professor Bronwyn Hemsley
@BronwynHemsley
Bronwyn.Hemsley@uts.edu.au
Slides are on Slideshare
#ASHA18 #TweetReach Nov 2018
Boston USA

2. Acknowledgements
Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award,
administered through The University of Newcastle.
A/Prof Stuart Palmer; Dr Stephen Dann; Professor Susan Balandin
Participants in the study.
Dr Megan Rollo and Dr Jo Steel for assistance in the pilot phase.
Ms Wendy Goonan provided research assistance.

3. Aim To determine the impact of teaching people who use
AAC to use Twitter, on:
- follower count
- frequency of tweeting
- tweet content, and
- the development of social networks in Twitter
recruitedthroughsocialmediaanddisabilityorganisations
adultswhouseAAC(+usecomputerandinternet)
6adultsvolunteered;orderoftrainingrandomisedacross6consecutivemonths
Threeparticipantswithdrewpriortotheircommencementdateowingtocompetingdemands
Thisstudyincludedthreeadults(@User1,@User2and@User3)agedbetween35and50yearswhouseAAC.
AllhadpreviouslyusedTwitterandwantedtoincreasetheirstrategicuseofTwitter.

4. Participants
Single Case
Multiple
Baseline
Design
• Recruited through social media and
disability organisations
• 3 adults (@User1, @User2 and @User3)
aged between 35 and 50 years who use
AAC.
• All had previously used Twitter and wanted
to increase their strategic use of Twitter.
recruitedthroughsocialmediaanddisabilityorganisations
adultswhouseAAC(+usecomputerandinternet)
6adultsvolunteered;orderoftrainingrandomisedacross6consecutivemonths
Threeparticipantswithdrewpriortotheircommencementdateowingtocompetingdemands
Thisstudyincludedthreeadults(@User1,@User2and@User3)agedbetween35and50yearswhouseAAC.
AllhadpreviouslyusedTwitterandwantedtoincreasetheirstrategicuseofTwitter.

5. Results

6. No Change for @User 1 on tweets or followers
• main priority in the training was to use
Twitter for writing tweets, and this goal
was not realised.
• @User1’s Twitter activity rose briefly
after training, but rapidly returned to
baseline

7. • @User2’s and @User3’s follow count
increased from flat baseline numbers
rising at 3 and 6 months following training.
• number of nodes (people) and the
number of edges (tweets to the
nodes) increased post-training.
• @user2’s and @user3’s networks included
more communication partners (@users)
and more directed communication
paths post-training.

9. Conclusions
(1) Twitter training might be useful for people who already use Twitter and want to enhance their
strategic use of its functions to build safe and enjoyable networks with more people online;
and
(2) Twitter may support adults with disability access their rights (communication; consumer)
Twitter might benefit both people who use AAC being included in disseminating and generating
information about disability; and benefit society through “greater awareness of disability,
improved attitudes, and increased knowledge about disability and its impacts on people with
disability and the wider community”

10. Clinical
Implications
• Make goals, have a purpose, develop a
good idea of why
• Teach how to write tweets, use hashtags,
the search bar, insert links,
following/unfollowing/blocking, Re
Tweeting, Direct Message, Deleting
tweets, reporting tweets.
• Teach how to direct more tweets to more
people (use @ mentions).
• Teach how to take part in a hashtag chat.

11. Open Access:
IJSLP Special Issue 2018