{"id":214,"date":"2011-08-30T19:27:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-30T18:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk\/?p=214"},"modified":"2011-08-30T19:27:00","modified_gmt":"2011-08-30T18:27:00","slug":"what-would-wholesale-academic-adoption-of-social-media-look-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk\/?p=214","title":{"rendered":"What would wholesale academic adoption of social media look like?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A
Crowded out?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last week, the LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog was asking for its readers and followers to nominate their favourite academic tweeters<\/a>.\u00a0 This got me thinking.\u00a0 While that’s a sensible question to ask now, and one that could create a valuable resource, I wonder whether the question would make as much sense if asked in a few years time?<\/p>\n

The drivers for academics (and arguably academic-related types like me) to start to use twitter and to contribute to a blog are many – brute self-promotion; desire to join a community or communities; to share ideas; to test ideas; to network and make new contacts; to satisfy the impact requirements of the research funder; and so on and so forth.\u00a0 I think most current PhD students would be very well advised to take advantage of social media to start building themselves an online presence as an early investment in their search for a job (academic or otherwise).\u00a0\u00a0 I’d imagine that a social media strategy is now all-but-standard in most ESRC ‘Pathways to Impact’ documents.\u00a0 Additionally, there are now many senior, credible, well-established academic bloggers and twitterers, many of whom are also advocates for the use of social media.<\/p>\n

So, what would happen if there was a huge upsurge in the number of academics (and academic-relateds) using social media?\u00a0 What if, say, participation rates reach about 20% or so?\u00a0 Would the utility of social media scale, or would the noise to signal ratio be such that its usefulness would decrease?<\/p>\n

This isn’t a rhetorical question – I’ve really no idea and I’m curious.\u00a0 Anyone?\u00a0 Any thoughts?<\/p>\n

I guess that there’s a difference between different types of social media.\u00a0 I have friends who are outside the academy and who have Twitter accounts for following and listening, rather than for leading or talking.\u00a0 They follow the Brookers and the Frys and the Goldacres, and perhaps some news sources.\u00a0 They use Twitter like a form of RSS feed, essentially.<\/p>\n

But what about blogging, or using Twitter to transmit, rather than to receive?\u00a0 If even 10% of academics have an active blog, will it still be possible or practical to keep track of everything relevant that’s written.\u00a0 In my field, I think I’ve linked to pretty much every related blog (see links in the sidebar) in the UK, and one from Australia.\u00a0 In certain academic fields it’s probably similarly straightforward to keep track of everyone significant and relevant.\u00a0 If this blogging lark catches on, there will come a point at which it’s no longer possible for anyone to keep up with everything in any given field.\u00a0 So, maybe people become more selective and we drop down to sub-specialisms, and it becomes sensible to ask for our favourite academic tweeters on non-linear economics, or something like that.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, it might be that new entrants to the blogging market will be limited and inhibited by the number already present.\u00a0 Or we might see more multi-author blogs, mergers etc and so on until we re-invent the journal.\u00a0 Or strategies that involve attracting the attention and comment of influential bloggers and the academic twitterati (a little bit of me died inside typing that, I hope you’re happy….).\u00a0 Might that be what happens?\u00a0 That e-hierarchies form (arguably they already exist) that echo real world hierarchies, and effectively squeeze out new entrants?\u00a0 Although… I guess good content will always have a chance of ‘going viral’ within relevant communities.<\/p>\n

Of course, it may well be that something else will happen.\u00a0 That Twitter will end up in the same pile as MySpace.\u00a0 Or that it simply won’t be widely adopted or become mainstream at all.\u00a0 After all, most academics still don’t have much of a web 1.0 presence beyond a perfunctory page on their Department website.<\/p>\n

That’s all a bit rambly and far longer than I meant it to be.\u00a0 But as someone who is going to be recommending the greater use of social media to researchers, I’d like to have a sense of where all this might be going, and what the future might hold.\u00a0 Would the usefulness of social media as an academic communication, information sharing, and networking tool effectively start to diminish once a certain point is reached?\u00a0 Or would it scale?<\/p>\n

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Last week, the LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog was asking for its readers and followers to nominate their favourite academic tweeters.\u00a0 This got me thinking.\u00a0 While that’s a sensible question to ask now, and one that could create a valuable resource, I wonder whether the question would make as much sense if asked in … Continue reading “What would wholesale academic adoption of social media look like?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,20,21,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-career-young-researchers","category-research-impact","category-social-media","category-university-culture"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t