  Purpose: This study shows that there were differences in the use of Twitter
by professors at universities in the Association of American Universities
(AAU). Affordance use differed between the personal and professional tweets of
professors. Framing behaviors were described that could impact the
interpretation of tweets by audience members. Design/methodology/approach: A
three phase research design was used that included surveys of professors,
categorization of tweets by Amazon's Mechanical Turk workers (i.e., turkers),
and categorization of tweets by active professors on Twitter. Findings: There
were significant differences found between professors that reported having a
Twitter account, significant differences found between types of Twitter
accounts (personal, professional, or both), and significant differences in the
affordances used in personal and professional tweets. Framing behaviors were
described that may assist altmetric researchers in distinguishing between
personal and professional tweets. Research limitations/implications (if
applicable): The study is limited by the sample population, survey instrument,
low survey response rate, and low Cohen's kappa. Practical implications (if
applicable): An overview of various affordances found in Twitter is provided
and a novel use of Amazon's Mechanical Turk for the categorization of tweets is
described that can be applied to future altmetric studies. Originality/value:
This work utilizes a socio-technical framework integrating social and
psychological theories to interpret results from the tweeting behavior of
professors and the interpretation of tweets by workers in Amazon's Mechanical
Turk.
