Twitter Assignment
Your assignment is to prepare a twitter thread summarizing the empirical results of the paper Exporting and Firm Performance: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment. Your thread should be 5-8 tweets long, and each tweet must be no more than 280 characters. A pdf of the assignment is available here.
The first tweet needs to include a hook of some sort that will grab the reader’s attention. Do not begin with “I am going to summarize…” Your first tweet should also include a link to the paper as well as either the title or the names of the authors.
The subsequent tweets should summarize the empirical analysis presented in the paper, including the main takeaways. To do this, you need to read the paper carefully, both to understand what the authors have done and to make sure you grasp their main message (as a hint: the conclusions that the authors want you to draw will always be highlighted in the paper’s abstract). You need to be concise and correct, and to provide the reader with concrete information about the context and data used in the paper as well as the findings.
Twitter threads should be fun to read. You should illustrate your threads with tables and figures from the paper, or in some cases a relevant photo or meme. Since you are not summarizing your own research, you should also make sure to indicate at least one thing that you liked about the paper.
What I am looking for in this assignment:
- Have you summarized the analysis and main results of the paper correctly in your own words? People do not have time for generalizations or word salad on twitter. Be clear and intentional about your wording in every tweet.
- Have you gotten the reader’s attention at the start of your thread? Have you provided them a link to the paper?
- Have you covered the main contribution(s) of the paper in no more than eight tweets?
- Have you used visualizations effectively, both to illustrate your points and to make the thread enjoyable to read? Have you chosen the right figures/images to help the reader understand the results of the paper?
- Is your thread creative and insightful? Is it original enough that I want to read it?
To get you started, here are some examples of twitter threads summarizing applied micro papers:
Information and Strategy in Lemon Markets: Improving Safety in Informal Transit
Measuring Preferences for Local Governments
How debit cards enable the poor to save more