This paper argues that social media can function as an informal community of practice in writing scholarship where knowledge is absorbed into a user’s identity and practice through storytelling. Social media has increasingly attracted academics and educators as a method of trialing new research ideas and classroom strategies, seeking early peer review, and as a knowledge translation strategy for sharing research findings. Platforms such as Twitter and blogs work in tandem to provide exposure, encourage reflection, and build community. Storytelling becomes a form ofpersuasion, through use of literary strategies, to influence change. This argument recognizes how social media writing is situated in a unique genre and requires writing strategies that may be unfamiliar to academic writers. A social media storytelling interlude demonstrates a case of social media persona development for writing scholarship and acts as an example of the voice, tone, and literary strategies of social media writing. The paper concludes with a discussion of strategies aligned with researching the impact of social media on pedagogical practices.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Mitchell, K. M., (2025), "Social Media Storytelling: Using Blogs and Twitter to Create a Community of Practice for Writing Scholarship", HSSCommons: (DOI: 10.31468/cjsdwr.726)

  Copy Citation | Export metadata as... | JSON | CSV | RO-Crate | BibTex | EndNote

1. Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie

Original publication: Mitchell, Kim M. "Social Media Storytelling: Using Blogs and Twitter to Create a Community of Practice for Writing Scholarship." Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie, vol. 29, 2019, pp. 1-23. DOI: 10.31468/cjsdwr.726. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie. Copyright © the author(s). Work published in DW/R is licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY-SA license