http://nathancushing.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/are-twitter-and-facebook-making-kids-better-writers/
The concept that was presented in the post that impressed me the most was that referred to the fact that young people who are involved in the social media phenomenon, are actually writing more. The post gives reference to Andrea Lunsford, who is a Stanford University Writing & Rhetoric Professor. I checked out the post's tags (Rhetoric and Writing), and was surprised to see how closely the effects of social media like Twitter and Facebook are being monitored. I also navigated back to an online Wired Magazine article by Clive Thompson. This is the article that discusses Lunsford's project the Stanford Study of Writing. The project examined writing samples of college students and came to the conclusion that about 38% of students' writing took place outside of that required for class work.
According to Thompson's article, further results of the Stanford Study of Writing project attributed the increased writing of students today to their engagement with new social media, that requires the increased use of writing today compared to pre-internet times. Prior to the advent of social media, most writing by non-professional writers, was done in an asynchronous manner, as in letter writing and essay writing. Today's writing habits of students involves conversational and public written communications in chat and discussion threads. This is writing that Professor Lunsford refers to as life writing and she further reports that students are very adept at judging their audiences and adjusting their writing style accordingly.
I found some YouTube video of the Professor. The video is of an interview with the Professor Lunsford and others, and the topic is about the impact of the digital milieu on literacy and how it affects, in particular, younger people as they pursue their college educations.
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