The first day of the International Symposium on Online Journalism ends with a panel, called “All About the Tweet and More,” which will focus on social media research.

Led by chair Cindy Royal of Texas State University, the panel will explore the ever-changing social media landscape, including the fast-paced world of Twitter.

Royal, a professor at the School of Journalism at Texas State, researches the effects the Internet has on communication and culture. Being very active on the web, Royal hosts an Internet talk show and music blog at onthatnote.com, as well as a blog that focuses on tech issues.

Joining Royal on the panel, which takes place from 3:45-5:15 p.m. on April 1, are four researchers with diverse interests in Twitter. Abstracts of all the research papers to be presented at the online journalism symposium can be found here.

Dave Blasingame is a two-time Lone Star Emmy award winner and a graduate student at Texas State University. The former producer of News 4 WOAI in San Antonio will present a paper called “Twitter first: Changing TV news 140 characters at a time.”

Carrie Brown, who teaches at the University of Memphis and is a director of the city-wide high school newspaper Teen Appeal, will represent a group that penned a study called, “New opportunities for diversity: Twitter, journalists and traditionally underserved communities.”

Another group, this one from Virginia Commonwealth University, led by Marcus Messner, will present research titled, “Shoveling tweets: An analysis of the microblogging engagement of traditional news organizations.”

Elvira García de Torres, from the Universidad CEU Cardenal Herrera, Spain, will talk about research his group compiled called, “See you on Facebook or Twitter? How 30 local news outlets manage social networking tools.”

ISOJ 2011: All about the Tweet (part 2) Q&A, from Knight Center on Vimeo. (click for Part 1 and 3).