The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s Ben Wieder reports on a story that most ASMH visitors probably already take for granted in “Professors With Personal Tweets Get High Credibility Marks,” but it’s worth repeating.

Kirsten A. Johnson, assistant professor of communications at Elizabethtown College, and her student Jamie Bartolino collaborated on a study (published in Learning, Media and Technology) in which they created three Twitter accounts for a fake professor.

One handle was all business, another was all fun and the third was a hybrid. “To Ms. Johnson’s surprise, when the students were surveyed, they rated the personal professor the highest on measures of competence, trustworthiness, and caring — which adds up to credibility,” Wieder writes.

Of course, there are some caveats, and the students surveyed did not unanimously agree that sharing intimate details amounts to credibility, rather than simply being creepy.

But the notion that using social media in an authentic way is something that readers appreciate is hardly surprising.