Comparing Digital Genres: Facebook, Twitter, and Text Messaging
Purpose: This activity provides students with a chance to develop and apply genre knowledge to digital genres to see how they are both similar to and different from each other and“analogue” genres. By comparing the digital genres of the Facebook status update, the tweet, and the text message, students are able to see how digital writing responds to diverse purposes and audiences.
Description: In this activity, students compare (their own or others’) the Facebook statuses, tweets, and text messages and complete a series of writing and discussion tasks to look at the genres that shape their own (and others’) writing in digital media.
Suggested Time: 20-30 minutes, but flexible
Procedure:
First, have students collect a certain number of Facebook statuses, tweets, and texts messages—either their own or from others. If you are in a computer classroom, this can be done in-class. If not, it may be useful to give students a homework assignment in which they collect—and maybe even print out—these snippets of text.
Next, have students take a moment to write about if and how they use these three kinds of writing. You might prompt them with one (or several) of the following questions:
Do they Facebook? Tweet? Write text messages? When and with what digital technologies? Do they use them for the same purposes? Do they use them for different purposes and in different situations? Who do they plan to reach when they write a Facebook status, tweet, or text message? In short, how do they decide whether to write a Facebook status, tweet, or text? How do they write across these platforms -- do they have the same style, syntax, topic, etc.?
Third, have students take a minute to write about how these genres are both similar to and different from each other. You might prompt them with one (or several) of the following questions:
What kind of writing does each venue allow you to do? What are the genres' affordances? What doesn’t it allow you to do (that is, what constraints does it put on you)? How does each genre allow you to connect texts with each other? How do they incorporate (or not) images? What do you think is the history of this genre?
Finally, bring students together for a discussion and reflection. What kind of patterns emerge as they share what they’ve written? Are there generalizations that can be drawn about the way we use these particular digital genres? And, finally, how do the uses of Facebook statuses, tweets, and text messages differ from the genres they use in school? And why might that be?