Presentation Developing Information Literacy through Social Media: Using the Trump Twitter Archive to Enhance Academic Writing and Critical Thinking more

This paper examines a pedagogical approach to fostering information literacy among second language learners in academic writing courses at a Japanese university. The study utilizes the Trump Twitter Archive, a searchable database containing all of U.S. President Donald Trump’s posts on X (formerly Twitter), as a tool to explore how social media can not only support academic research but also provide students with a practical framework for developing information literacy by engaging with real-world sources of information. The research addresses three key areas: 1) how students identify and assess the credibility and biases in online sources; 2) how students leverage online information to contextualize their research, explore diverse viewpoints, and organize data to construct coherent, persuasive arguments; and 3) metacognitive insights into how students apply these skills to future writing tasks. The findings suggest that analyzing social media sources, such as tweets, enhances students’ understanding of rhetoric, sharpens their ability to critically evaluate source credibility, and strengthens their skills in identifying bias and rhetorical intent. Student reflections reveal significant gains in their capacity to recognize biases and integrate online sources into academic writing, ultimately improving their ability to produce nuanced, evidence-based arguments.