Curating tweets: A framework for using twitter for workplace learning

Cybersecurity is a rapidly evolving field where professionals constantly need to keep up with new technologies and retrain. In this paper, we present a study that analyzed social media data and use the findings to aid professionals and students to learn more effectively using Twitter. We analyzed 23,000 cybersecurity related tweets posted on Twitter across two hashtags #cybersecurity and #infosec. Our analysis created a framework that explains how using descriptive, content, and network analysis can generate information that can help professionals learn. In addition, our analysis provided insights on the tweets and the cybersecurity community that use them. These insights include: Most tweets covered multiple topics and used three or more hashtags. Companies and other organizations had the highest numbers of followers, but individual users, experts in the field, were the most retweeted. Popular users, based on follower counts, were not necessarily the most influential (based on retweets). In terms of content, popular tweets consisted of infographics that packed a lot of information. Tweets were commonly used to announce file dumps of hacks and data leaks. Many highly used hashtags represented current threats and the overall sentiment of cybersecurity tweets are negative. Highly connected users on Twitter served as hubs across the three primary sub communities identified in the data. Insights from his study can assist with improving workforce development by guiding professionals in getting pertinent information and keeping up to date with the latest security threats and news.