What images do universities use on Twitter and Instagram?

My notes on What image types do universities post online?

Twitter has become a mainstream activity for universities in the UK and the US, with most institutions now having a presence. The platform has taken an image based turn over the last few years, since native photo sharing was introduced in 2011 and Twitpic et al vanished, in common with social media more broadly. This presents us with a question: what types of images do universities tweet? Emma Stuart, Mike Thelwall and David Stuart analyse the use of images by university twitter feeds in the UK and consider what this can tell us about how universities see the platform and how they seek to relate to the audiences found through it.

This twitter activity is connected to rising competition, as universities compete against each other to increase enrolment following the reduction of government support. Social media offers a means for universities to differentiate themselves, including through the use of images which express a visual identity. Platforms differ in what they offer for this. As Stuart et al observe, Instagram images tend to “focus more on the aesthetics of individual images, whereas images on Twitter tend to supplement or complement the text of a tweet”.

Their study is a companion to a 2016 investigation in which 51 Uk universities (out of 128 with multiple units of assessment in REF 2014) were found to have an Instagram account. It focuses on the Twitter presence of the same 51 in order to facilitate comparison. A random sample of 20 images was taken from a date range overlapping with Instagram activity (I presume for each university) to produce a final sample of 1,020 images. They undertook a content analysis using a coding scheme developed in a previous study of Instagram use within organisations by McNely (2012) given below. Images were classified based on their content, accompanying text and the interaction they generated.

1. Orientating: “The primary focus of the image is of specific and unique university (and university associated) locations, landmarks, or artefacts (e.g., buildings/public areas/statues/university affiliated objects)” (4.8% of Twitter images, 14.3% of Instagram images)
2. Humanising: “The primary focus of the image is of things that add more of a human character or element of warmth/humour/or amusement to the university’s identity” (20.9% of Twitter images, 31% of Instagram images)
3. Interacting: “The primary focus of the image is centered around people interacting at university (and university associated) events rather than people merely posing for a staged photograph” (2.1% of Twitter images, 5.7% of Instagram images) 
4. Placemaking: “The primary focus of the image is concerned with the university ‘placing’ their identity within locations or events” (2.7% of Twitter images, 12.8% of Instagram images)
5. Showcasing: highlighting some event, success, course, service or product of the university (61% of Twitter images, 28.8% of Instagram images)
6. Crowdsourcing: “The primary purpose of the image is that it has been posted with the intention of generating feedback, interaction, engagement, and online interaction with viewers/followers” (7.7% of Twitter images, 7.5% of Instagram images) 

They found that 41.8% of images had no retweets, with an average of 2.7 retweets per image. It was interesting that showcasing images (most popular type) were significantly more likely to be retweeted than humanising ones (second most popular type) but I wonder how much of each can be explained in terms of staff and students at the university retweeting an expression of support or loyalty rather than an endorsement from those outside the institution? They found far more Twitter images than Instagram images overall from the time period under investigation (7,583 to 3,615) yet a few universities shared more images on Instagram. Does this suggest the influence of an Instagram enthusiast on a university’s comms team? They suggest the discrepancy has its roots in the norm of posting less on Instagram, the service being newer and the restrictions on how one can post to it.

They suggest the popularity of showcase images on Twitter accords with it being an information source rather than networking tool. The two most popular categories of humanising and showcasing seem to be externally-orientated towards potential students. Interestingly, they suggest that not only might universities benefit from posting more of the other categories, doing so “could be aligned with the practice of content curation, whereby the staff member(s) in charge of the Twitter account would specifically attempt to highlight a range of interesting and meaningful content that they think would appeal to their followers”.