A research project by Hannah Steeves (MLIS '16)

1. Hannah Steeves
@hjsteeves
School of Information Management
Background @Background
Social networking platforms have changed the way
individual legal professionals communicate, share, and
present themselves to their colleagues, clients, and the
general public. Specifically, the social networking
platform known as twitter, has become a popular tool for
engaging in legal information activities including, but not
limited to, current awareness and self-promotion.
Methodology @Methodology
25 accounts were drawn from a snowball sampling from
a compilation of lists prepared by experts in the field. The
most recent 50 tweets from each account, excluding
retweets without added content, were categorized as
Current Awareness, Self-Promotion, or Alternative.
Alternative content was analysed to determine additional
categories. The frequency of the information activities
was determined by account owners’ participation rate(s).
Acknowledgements @Acknowledgements
Thank you to Sandra Toze,
Mike Smit, and David Fraser
for their contributions and
support. Further readings and
resources available upon request.
Canadian legal professionals’ information activities:
What do they do and how do they tweee ?
Results @Results
1. Current Awareness tweets occurred most frequently
and had the most participants.
2. Additional categories included:
• General Communication with other Legal
Professionals
• Job Posting
• Opinion on Legal Topic
• Personal Political Opinion
• Unrelated to the Legal Profession
3. The most frequent additional information activity was
tweeting content Unrelated to the Legal Profession.
4. Personal Political Opinions received the most
retweets.
5. General Communication with other Legal
Professionals received the most likes.
Conclusion @Conclusion
Canadian legal professionals engagement on twitter can
be thematically categorized to provide insight into how
they need, seek, and use information. These results
support further research to determine the intention and
effectiveness of these types of information activities for
Canadian legal professionals. Further research will help
clarify best practices for legal professionals while using
social networking platforms and better define current
legal information seeking needs in a digital environment.
Demographics @Demographics
Data Visualizations @DataVisuals
Data Visualizations @DataVisuals
asdlkjalsdkjalkjlj
Objectives @Objectives
The purpose of this research is to determine and
categorize the information activities of Canadian legal
professionals on twitter. Objectives were as follows:
1. Do legal professionals make posts categorized as
current awareness and/or self-promotion? Does one of
these categories occur more frequently?
2. Are there other categories of information activities legal
professionals are engaging in? If so, what are these
categories and how frequently do they occur?