Teaching Credibility with Twitter

This in-class exercise/discussion gets students to think about author credibility. It familiarizes them with concepts and terminology they will need 1) when researching and writing papers and 2) for rhetorical analysis.This lesson plan is based on a paper studying the credibility of Twitter users ("Tweeting is believing?", available online: http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/155374/tweet_credibility_cscw2012.pdf). In this study, participants rate the credibility of tweets such as the following:

First step: To start things off, students rate the credibility of these tweets (or bring your own). They then come up with criteria that influenced their ratings.

In the study, among the most important indicators of credibility are:
1) "verified author topic expertise", "author often tweets on topic",
2) "personal photo as user image", "credible user name"
3) "non-standard grammar/punctuation".
4) "is a RT [retweet] from someone you trust"

The students will come up with similar criteria. To illustrate, teachers can then show made-up tweets such as:

@SillyKitty95
There is life on Mars.
v.
@NASA
There is life on Mars.
v.
@SillyKitty95
RT @NASA: There is life on Mars.
v.
@NASA
There is life on Mars ;).
v.
@NASA
Their's life on Mars.

For each example, students discuss which feature affects the tweet's credibility in what way.
Second step: The point, obviously, is then to point out how these criteria apply to TV news, newspaper editorials, books, research articles, and other publications that students work with every day. Since a lot of students work with newspaper editorials in RHE 306, I try to make it explicit for that genre: What is the equivalent to a credible user name? How do we assess "verified author topic expertise" in this context? Can we find out whether the author often "tweets" about this topic? What is the newspaper equivalent to a retweet? A short discussion of differences (edited content v. social media) could/should/might follow.
As a third step, students should try to apply these ideas to their own writing. Some, such as "non-standard grammar", will be obvious. But what are other ways of improving credibility? They might discuss how to signal author expertise (e.g. by citing external research), how to present a "personal photo" in writing (e.g. discussing personal experience and background) and how the use of non-standard grammar/punctuation will affect their credibility.