#CMU: Students reflect on the infamous Twitter hashtag
Twitter is becoming more routinely used by students and faculty members at Central Michigan University.
With Twitter, along come the tweets and the hashtags that inhabit those tweets. Some common tweets may consist of ranting, explaining what just happened at a party, or where one is going, written in 140 characters or fewer.Often times, tweets end with a hashtag that helps users search for the content of their tweet. Hashtags are usually whatever phrase is trending at the moment. Some of the most popular hashtags include: #Makeithappen, #firstworldprobz, #LetsGetWeird, #TheWalkingDead, and #yolo are a few examples.
CMU has several Twitter accounts including @CMUniversity, @CMUathletics and @CMUWBBall. The universit also has thousands of current students. What are they tweeting about, or using Twitter for?
One of the main reasons why CMU students claim to use Twitter is the usually instantaneous school updates that are posted.
Junior Brianna Rimmer uses Twitter when she wants to find out about class cancellations, or “if there is a big event going on." When talking about school in particular, she uses hashtags such as #CMU and #FireUpChips for sporting events. Checking for school closings was found to be one of the main reasons students have a Twitter, since the updates are usually timely.
Even some students who don't have their own Twitter accounts check the media source for school updates.
Junior Ahmed Battikh is one of those students, he said, checking CMU’s main Twitter account for weather updates and school closings, as well as emergencies.
But, students who use Twitter don't seem to be talking about CMU.
“I try to make clever comments (on Twitter),” junior Kevin White said. White said he never tweets about CMU or uses any hashtags involving CMU. When he does tweet, and isn’t trying to be clever, he usually communicates with friends.
But what if you don’t use Twitter at all? Or American social media websites whatsoever? One international graduate student, who chose to go by “YH” after explaining that her name was too complicated to be translated from Chinese to English, is not a Twitter user.
“It’s a waste of time – I can use my time to do more important things,” YH says. She adds that she only sometimes uses her Facebook account.
Some of the social media sites YH says she uses were all in Chinese. She uses websites like RenRen and Weibo, although a translator would be needed to read them. She also notes that when she does get on these websites, she doesn’t normally post about CMU.
