Review of Social Media for Academics

I have written many times on this blog about my own experiences of using social media and other digital tools for academic work and my research focusing on how other academics are doing this.

One of the people I have encountered along the way is Mark Carrigan, an early career British sociologist. Appropriately enough, we first met on Twitter a few years ago, around the time I began experimenting with various digital tools for professional purposes. Since then, we have had many discussions there and on other online forums, as well as by email, about using social media in universities (and a couple of in-person meetings as well). Mark has now written a book on Social Media for Academics. It is the first book I know of to present a ‘how-to’ manual combined with reflections on the wider implications of  academic social media engagement.

Mark is a great example of someone who has strategically used social media while still in the very early stages of his career (completing his doctorate) to create a high profile for his work. He has now built on this experience not only to work in various positions involving promoting academic journals, departments and organisations, but to produce this book. In its chapters, Mark employs a casual, chatty style to painlessly introduce readers to the art of academic social media.

The book is distinctive because Mark’s sociological training allows him to contextualise the social, cultural and political implications of academic social media use. Yes, he offers  a multitude of helpful tips and advice about how best to communicate online, what platforms and tools are the most effective, how to develop your own voice, how online engagement helps in promoting one’s research and reaching wider audiences outside academia, building networks, curating interesting material you have found on the internet, finding time to use social media and so on. But there are also reflections offered on what academic social media means for professional identities and for academic work in general. In addition there are many pithy remarks drawing on Mark’s observations, for example, of the awkwardness that sometimes accompanies the experience of colleagues meeting in the flesh after having developed a hitherto purely online relationship, or the potential pitfalls of live-tweeting conferences or writing a tweet or blog post in haste and anger that then becomes widely circulated well after the initial irritation has subsided.

This book is highly recommended for higher degree students and faculty staff members who are interested in the possibilities of academic social media for both research and teaching, as well as researchers interested in future directions for the university workplace and academic identities.

 

The academic quantified self

Last week I put together two abstracts for the British Sociological Association’s conference next year. One abstract is for a panel on digital public sociology and the other is for a workshop on the quantified self. In the digital public sociology abstract I refer to the need to take a critical sociological perspective on engaging in public sociology using digital tools. In the abstract on the quantified self, I focus on the conditions that have come together to make the quantified self assemblage possible.

As I was thinking about what I wanted to discuss in these papers, it struck me that there are strong connections between the two. Engaging as a public sociologist using digital media invariably involves some form of quantifying the self. Roger Burrows has employed the term ‘metric assemblage’ to describe the ways in which academics have become monitored and measured in the contemporary audit culture of the modern academy. As part of configuring our metric assemblages, we are quantifying our professional selves.

Academics have been counting elements of their work for a long time as part of their professional practice and presentation of the self, even before the advent of digital technologies. The ‘publish or perish’ maxim refers to the imperative for a successful academic to constantly produce materials such as books, book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles in order to maintain their reputation and place in the academic hierarchy. Academic curricula vitae invariably involve lists of these outputs under the appropriate headings, as do university webpages for academics. They are required for applications for promotions, new positions and research funding.

These quantified measures of output are our ‘small data’: the detailed data that we collect on ourselves. Universities too engage in regular monitoring and measuring practices of the work of their academics and their own prestige in academic rankings and assessment of the quality and quantity of the research output of their departments. They therefore participate in the aggregation of data, producing ‘big data’ sets. The advent of digital media, including the use of these media as part of engaging in public sociology, has resulted in more detailed and varied forms of data being created and collected. Sociologists using digital media have ever greater opportunities to quantify their output and impact in the form of likes, retweets, views of their blogs, followers and so on. We now have Google Scholar, Scopus or Web of Science to monitor and display how often our publications have been cited, where and by whom, and to automatically calculate our h-indices. Academic journals, now all online, show how often researchers’ articles have been read and downloaded, and provide lists of the most cited and most downloaded articles they have published.

In adopting a critical reflexive approach to all this monitoring and measurement, we need to ask questions. Should the practices of quantifying the academic self be considered repressive of academic freedom and autonomy? Do they place undue stress on academics to perform, and perhaps to produce work that is sub-standard but greater in number? However it is also important to consider the undeniable positive dimensions of participating in digital public engagement and thereby reaching a wider audience. Academics do not write for themselves alone: being able to present their work to more readers has its own rewards. Quantified selfers can find great satisfaction in using data to take control over elements of their lives and also as a performative aspect. So too, for academics, collecting and presenting data on their professional selves can engender feelings of achievement, satisfaction and pride at their accomplishments. Such data are important to the academic professional sense of self.

As I argued in my abstract for the digital public sociology panel, as sociologists we need to stand back and take a reflexive perspective on these developments in academic life: not simply to condemn them but also to acknowledge their contribution to the ‘making up’ of academic selves. We should be alert to both the pleasures and the privations of academic self-quantification.

See here for my blog posts on using digital media as an academic and here for my other posts on the quantified self.

Academics online: what are the risks?

I have written several times on this blog about the benefits and possibilities of engaging as an academic in using social media and other digital media. I have recounted my experiences of using social media for professional purposes, outlined the reasons for why I blog, discussed why I think academics should write for Wikipedia and advocated for open access publication.

I have also discussed some negative implications for academics using social media, including the possibility that academics will become increasingly subjected to metric assessments based on their success in using social media (via altmetrics) and the reluctance of some to take up new activities in an already very demanding working life. Academics may also find confronting the lack of control they are able to exert over their digital writing once it has been released onto the internet.

In this post I want to elaborate some more on what might be called the risks of online academia, something I have been thinking about in working on my forthcoming book Digital Sociology.

Academics who engage in such activities of public engagement, as part of receiving wider public attention may be subjected to public criticism, unfounded or legitimate, of their ideas. Early career researchers are more vulnerable to trenchant criticism of their views at a time when they are still establishing their careers and seeking employment. More than established academics, who have less to lose, such junior academics are caught in a double-bind. Using social media such as blogs can be an important way to establish a foothold in a field, get one’s name and research known, establish valuable networks with colleagues and demonstrate to potential employers that one is engaging with the public in approved ways. On the other hand, however, some early career academics, particularly if they also come from marginalised social groups or are working in less prestigious universities, may find their opinions open to attack in ways that more senior and socially privileged academics may not.

The phenomenon of ‘trolling’, or the posting of deliberately malicious comments about individuals online, has been experienced by some academics. Those who express their opinions on controversial issues or who challenge powerful institutions or commercial interests are often the target of comments questioning their professional integrity (as well abuse related to more personal attributes). This has happened frequently to a colleague of mine, Simon Chapman, a public health advocate who has received a high level of public attention for his work in confronting such corporations as Big Tobacco and the gun lobby (see Chapman’s account of his experiences here).

There may said to be a ‘politics of digital engagement’, in which academics, particularly those who are members of marginalised social groups (women, minority ethnic or racial groups, gays or lesbians, with disabilities) or who are junior academics seeking tenure or those in short-term employment contracts, may need to be very cautious about the types of opinions they express in open digital forums (see Fullick on these points). Academics from marginalised minority groups can use social media networks as systems of support, but at the same time these very tools, in their public nature, can be sites of attack.

Sexual harassment has been experienced by some female academics who have engaged in debates in public forums or who have used social media to communicate their research findings. Some women have detailed their experiences of their appearance and their sexual attractiveness being remarked upon by anonymous commentators in often hurtful or threatening ways (see Beard and Mitchell on this). I have observed that female academics who engage in fat activism using online forums or traditional media outlets are frequently targeted by vituperative comments about their appearance, lack of self-discipline and the like. (Ironically, these comments often serve only to demonstrate further the contentions of these academics concerning fat stigma and discrimination.)

Abusive and overly racist, misogynistic or homophobic comments, which are often on public display and can be accessed via search engines, may be very confronting and disturbing for their targets, particularly if sexual violence or other violent acts against the targets are suggested. This is a wider problem of the affordances of online technologies: anyone who engages online is open to abusive comments that cannot easily be removed from internet archives.

It is vitally important that universities develop systems for protecting and supporting academics, particularly in the context in which they are increasingly expected and encouraged to engage in public engagement as part of their work. As Cottom Mcmillan notes, ‘While universities are quick to promote public scholarship they are loath to extend their responsibility to refereeing the behavior of academics in the public sphere’. There is a need for guidelines to be drawn up for engaging online in public spaces as an academic, including not only the type of content one disseminates or creates, but also how one interacts with other academics in response to their content. Academics should be supported by their institutions to build online networks and communities but also need to be protected against the risks of engaging as a digital public scholar.

Why should sociologists study digital media?

Why should sociologists be interested in the new digital media technologies? This is a question I have been thinking and writing about recently in developing my next book project on digital sociology (to be published by Routledge next year). Here are some of the reasons that have emerged in the literature:

• Social life is increasingly being configured through and with digital media.
• What counts as ‘the social’ is increasingly framed via digital media.
• Digital media use and practice is structured through gender, social class, geographical location, education, race/ethnicity and age, all social categories with which sociologists have traditionally been interested.
• Digital media are integral parts of contemporary social networks and social institutions such as the family, the workplace, the education system, the healthcare system, the mass media and the economy, again phenomena that have long been foci for sociological research and theorising.
• Digital media configure concepts of selfhood, social relationships, embodiment, human/nonhuman relations, space and time – all relevant to sociological inquiry.
• Digital media have instituted new forms of power relations.
• Digital media have become central to issues of measure and value.
• Digital media offer alternative ways of practising sociology: of researching, teaching and disseminating research.
• Digital media are important both to ‘public sociology’ (engaging with people outside of academia) and ‘private sociology’ (personal identities and practices as sociologists) (see here for my previous post on this).
• Digital media challenge sociologists’ role as pre-eminent social researchers: sociologists need to address this.
• Digital media technologies can contribute to ‘live sociology’ and ‘inventive methods’, or new, creative ways of practising sociology.

As this list implies, digital sociology goes well beyond simply a focus on ‘the digital’. It raises major questions about what should be the focus and methods of contemporary sociological research and theorising. As such, sociologists writing about digital media are important contributors to debates about the future of sociology and how the discipline can remain vibrant, creative and responsive to new developments and social change.

Digital sociology, public sociology, private sociology

Today the British Sociological Association’s Digital Sociology study group is holding its first event in London. Sadly I won’t be able to attend, living as I do on the other side of the world. However I will be following proceedings with interest, via Twitter and any blog posts that may result from the event.

The meeting will discuss the topic of ‘What is digital sociology?’ I have recently contributed to this debate in various forums: on this blog, in a collection of writings based on the blog that I put together and self-archived, in a preprint of a book chapter (available here) and in a Wikipedia entry that I wrote on digital sociology. I am developing these nascent ideas further in an introductory book on digital sociology that will be published by Routledge.

One aspect of digital sociology about which I am currently writing is the challenges for sociologists of the new digital technologies. In the chapter referred to above I have started to discuss these issues, and will do so in expanded form in the new book.

Several interesting articles have been published in recent years by sociologists about the implications for sociology itself of the affordances of digital media. Digital media technologies and data are social artefacts and thus are obvious sources of research for sociologists. Not only that, they allow sociologists to engage in public sociology – communicating their ideas to public audiences outside the academy — more easily than ever before, through the use of open-access forums and social media.

But digital media also contribute to what I am calling for the moment ‘private sociology’, or the professional personae and lived working lives of the academics themselves who use them. As sociologists such as Roger Burrows, Mike Savage and Dave Beer have pointed out, such platforms as digital citation indices has resulted in sociologists’ (and other academics’) professional worth and accomplishments becoming ever more metricised and scrutinised. Those academics who fail to engage in public sociology via digital media may find themselves disadvantaged in their private sociology lives. Yet many academics feel confronted by what they perceive as the technical challenges of learning to use digital media for academic purposes or the time commitments involved to blog or tweet or follow others’ blogs or tweets (an issue that constantly is raised whenever I present workshops on social media for academics).

Those sociologists who do take up the gauntlet and actively use social and other digital media may find themselves confronted with ‘the politics of circulation’ (Beer’s phrase), or the re-use and transformation of their intellectual property via social media in ways to which they are not accustomed. Here again there may be implications for their ‘private sociology’ lives: how sociologists perceive their work and what they think about its use by others in non-academic forums.

Sociologists’ and other academics’ working lives are also being challenged by the introduction of massive online open access courses (MOOCs) and by the open access movement, provoking universities and scholars to rethink teaching, learning and publication traditions.

More broadly there is a much bigger question of how sociology as a discipline might be transformed by digital technologies and data. Burrows and Savage have contended that in the face of the digital data industry that has developed to harvest and analyse these data, sociologists may find themselves sidelined as pre-eminent empirical social researchers. Another issue is to what extent sociologists are able to make use of digital data and analyse the ever-changing platforms and devices of Web 2.0 and the emergent Web 3.0? Susan Halford and Mike Savage have pointed out sociologists may need to become more technically proficient or alternatively collaborate with computer scientists to fully understand new digital media.

There is much here to discuss, and I look forward to the proceedings of the BSA Digital Sociology group meeting. 

Where are all the sociology blogs?

When I was preparing to set up this blog, like a good sociologist I did some background research first. I checked what other sociological blogs were out there on the web. I found strangely few of them. The blog that was listed first was ‘The Everyday Sociology Blog’ (http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com), which looks quite interesting with various sociologists posting. Closer inspection, however, reveals that it is part of an academic publishing house’s publicity efforts. Nothing wrong with that, but I was also interested in reading independent sociological writings from academics working in the area.

Other sociology blogs I found were very specialised, had wound up or had a particular barrow to push. I came across one post by Jon Smajda, who writes about the sociology of technology. His post, entitled ‘Why don’t more sociologists blog’?, argues that sociologists are rather diffident about blogging.

According to Smajda, many sociologists are wary of new computer technologies and self-promotion. They are also unsure about reaching out to a wider audience beyond the narrow confines of their academic discipline and writing for a potentially larger, unknown audience (http://jon.smaja.com/2008/08/25/why-dont-more-sociologists-blog).

I personally think that an important part of being a sociologist is to attempt to convey your research findings and views on social issues to a general readership.

Of course, I may have entered the wrong search term (I used ‘sociology blogs’) and there may be dozens  of interesting sociology blogs out there that I have yet to explore. Some I have found include ‘Sociology in Focus’ (http://sociologyinfocus.com), which has some lively posts about popular culture, ‘The Grumpy Sociologist’ (love the name!), which focuses on sports, masculinities, popular culture and violence (http://thegrumpysociologist.blogspot.com), ‘Sociology for the People’ (http://sociologyforthepeople.wordpress.com) by an advocate of public sociology, ‘BodySpaceSociety’ (http://www.bodyspacesociety.eu), looking specifically at digital technologies and ‘Monclair SocioBlog’ (http://montclairsoci.blogspot.com.au), which covers a range of topics by several sociologists.

Welcome to my blog. Given my current interests in medicine and public health, risk, parenting culture and childhood, food and critical weight studies, I will probably be blogging most about these topics. But we’ll see what happens!

Addendum: Since writing this blog, I have discovered some other interesting sociological blogs. Check them out on my Blogroll (scroll down the right side of this page to find it). Also see my Pearltrees ‘Blogs I like‘ and Dave Purcell’s list of sociology and other social science blogs here.