This poster represents findings from a study of high school student and teacher use of social media within the school and personal context, focusing on the role that drama plays within their description of personal and in-school use of social media. This study included interviews from 37 students and 18 adults from a local high school in Leon County, Florida. We expect that findings will suggest that most individuals feel social media has a profound presence in the high school context. However, the participants will position and identify drama as an act that others engage in, rejecting the notion that the participants may be the executioner of drama themselves.

1. Vanessa Dennen, PhD1
Stacey Rutledge, PhD1
Anthony Boucher2
Catherine Cosgrove1
Tristan Cravello1
1
College of Education, 2
Department of Psychology, Florida State University
Drama: Students’ Interactions with Social Media
and their Implications Within School Communities
● We examined the transcriptions of the 37 student
interviews with the goal of answering two questions:
● How do students at the school define drama?
● What is their role in drama?
● We posed these questions with drama defined as a
social conflict, which can be divisive or unifying, that
raises emotions and often attracts the attention of
bystanders.
● The possible roles in drama we analyzed were
instigator, participant, victim, or non-participant.
● Few students positioned themselves as perpetrators or
victims of drama, yet drama still maintains a strong
presence within high school community context.
● This study is ongoing, gaining interview from
administrators on the topic, and by completion this study
should have implications for school and teacher policies for
social media use to teach students behaviors and principles
to go forward with on this new form of social network.
● The study was also limited to one school in Leon County,
which restricts available participants.
Graphs
Discussion and Implications
Methods
Introduction
Abstract Findings
● Most of the students described seeing social media drama as
a way to gain attention and with a lot of students seeking this
behavior. They also described seeing drama as a
self-involved act, meaning other students willfully brought
themselves into the situation for attention.
● Almost all of the students that participated in the research
indicated that they are a bystander in terms of their relative
position to drama, which means they claimed to only witness
it and not partake in it or be a victim of it.
● By placing drama as an act that typically involves others, the
accounts most of the teenagers reported to have was a
positive experience and we found just that.
● Many students positioned drama to be created by and
participated in only or mostly by girls, however findings
disproved this stereotypical assumption.
References
Participants
● All students part of a local K-12 charter high school with a population that
represents the diversity of the city where it is located.
● 37 students (16 male and 21 female) from 10th and 12th grade classes were
randomly selected.
● 3 administrators and 15 teachers from the high school also interviewed.
Procedure
● Individual interviews were recorded with participants to gauge their social
media use and its presence inside and outside of the classroom.
● Questions asked about level of social media use, types of social media
used, overflow of drama from social media into school, and social
media’s impact on the school community.
● Sessions were recorded and transcribed digitally. Interviews were
subsequently coded for types of learning & positive or negative
experiences.
Dennen, V.P., Rutledge, S.A., Bagdy, L.M., Rowlett, J.T., & Burnick, S.
(2018, July 18). Avoiding Drama: Student & Teacher Positioning within a
School’s Social Media Ecosystem [Scholarly project]. Retrieved March 4,
2019
Figure 1. Instances of Drama from Social Media in School Settings
Graph created to show the number of instances of reported drama, and whether the person reporting this instance was an instigator,
victim, or participant/witness of this drama. We also included Non Participants so that the entire population was represented.
This poster represents findings from a study of high school
student and teacher use of social media within the school and
personal context, focusing on the role that drama plays
within their description of personal and in-school use of
social media. This study included interviews from 37
students and 18 adults from a local high school in Leon
County, Florida. We expect that findings will suggest that
most individuals feel social media has a profound presence
in the high school context. However, the participants will
position and identify drama as an act that others engage in,
rejecting the notion that the participants may be the
executioner of drama themselves.
[About drama] “Yes, it’s a girl thing. No guy is ever in
arguments, and if they do, they do it at school, and they just
get over it the next day. But girl drama lasts forever. I’m
like, get over it.” - Tenth grade female student