Social Media in Academia

Networked Scholars

George Veletsianos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317585725
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Social media and online social networks are expected to transform academia and the scholarly process. However, intense emotions permeate scholars' online practices and an increasing number of academics are finding themselves in trouble in networked spaces. In reality, the evidence describing scholars' experiences in online social networks and social media is fragmented. As a result, the ways that social media are used and experienced by scholars are not well understood. Social Media in Academia examines the day-to-day realities of social media and online networks for scholarship and illuminates the opportunities, tensions, conflicts, and inequities that exist in these spaces. The book concludes with suggestions for institutions, individual scholars, and doctoral students regarding online participation, social media, networked practice, and public scholarship.

1

INTRODUCTION

In this book, I explore the practices and experiences of the educational scholar on social media and online networks. My goal is to help you understand scholars’ participation in online spaces and, in doing so, provide a lens through which you can problematize the presence of social media and online networks, or lack thereof, in the life of the contemporary scholar.

Educational scholars are doctoral students, instructors, researchers, and professors. While scholarly practice may traditionally be viewed as scientific discovery, its meaning in this book is broader, and will be explored further in the next few pages. For now, any reference to the term scholarship in this book should be understood to include both teaching and research activities (Boyer, 1990; Hutchings & Shulman, 1999).

Commonplace technological activities in scholars’ lives include the use of bibliographic management software, data analysis tools, and transcription services. Social media and online networks appear to be less popular with scholars, but academic-focused online social networks Academia.edu, ResearchGate, and Mendeley boast 11, 4.5, and 3.1 million users worldwide respectively (VanNoorden, 2014). Other reports note that scholars often use Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and personal blogs (Lupton, 2014; Moran, Seaman, Tinti-Kane, 2011).

What scholars might do on these sites varies. A cultural anthropologist, for instance, might share draft versions of her research on her blog, a geographer might post his syllabus on a document-sharing website, and a political scientist might investigate relationships between social media participation and election results. Using such tools as blogs and online social networks may enable scholars to remain current in their research field, explore new approaches to teaching via networking with colleagues, interact with individuals mentioning their research/work, and expose their work to larger audiences.

Scholars who make use of participatory technologies and online social networks to share, improve, validate, and further their scholarship engage in networked scholarship and in this book are described as networked scholars. Similar practices are enacted under the labels open scholarship, social scholarship, and digital scholarship, though these descriptors differ from networked scholarship in significant ways.

Although some of the statistics regarding scholar participation on social media are impressive, there are very few reports presenting the stories behind the numbers, describing scholars’ experiences and activities, and telling the story of social media in academia. While a high percentage of faculty may be using social media, what are they actually doing with it? Are they using social media to change the ways they engage in scholarship? Or, are social media co-opted and used in familiar ways, and in the process, being stripped of their affordances? What is it like to use social media as a scholar? What do scholars share and how do they represent themselves online? What obstacles and challenges do they face?

The argument that permeates this book is that scholars’ experiences and practices on social media and online networks are not well understood and the evidence describing their experiences is limited and fragmented. My thesis is that a lack of understanding of networked scholarship and social media use is detrimental to scholars, institutions, and scholarly practice. I’m not suggesting that you should be on social media or that social media will impact practice in positive ways. Rather, I’m urging you to understand online networks in the context of scholarly practice, so that you can investigate how they are experienced and used. In doing so, I hope that you will consider how social media and online networks may be changing practice and how existing practices shape the ways social media are used.

In 1987, Papert argued that users and teachers of LOGO (an educational programming language) need to “be able to talk about LOGO, to criticize it, and to discuss other people’s criticisms.” They should be able to do more than just use and teach the language. Papert argued that technocentric questions such as “Does the computer (or LOGO or whatever) produce thinking skills?” are foolish.

In the same way, this book rejects technocentric and technodeterministic perspectives pertaining to the use of social media for scholarship. When the question, “What do scholars need to know about networked scholarship?” arises in the future, my hope is that you will be able to look beyond the question of “what social media and online networks can do for scholarship.” Rather, in aligning with Papert’s thoughts, I hope that you will be able to say that scholars need to be able to talk about social media, to criticize them, and to discuss other people’s criticisms.

To that end, this book is unique because it differs from other books focusing on social media in education and digital scholarship in two significant ways:

First, this is not a how-to book. You will find no advice in this book about how to create a blog, use Twitter effectively, or, more generally, use social media to share your research, engage students, or increase your citations.

Second, this book does not advocate for networked scholarship. My goal is to understand and problematize the concept of networked scholarship and its implications, not to convince you to enact (or reject) networked scholarship.

The relationship between technology and scholarship has attracted little empirical attention in the education literature even though it has been claimed that “participatory internet technologies … have the potential to change the way academics engage in scholarship” (Greenhow, Robelia, & Hughes, 2009, p. 252) and that “information technology and the ‘consumerization of everything’ may represent both the greatest opportunity for scholars and scholarship in human history and the greatest threat to the scholarly enterprise in the thousand-year history of the Western university” (Katz, 2010, p. 48). Kumashiro et al., (2005, p. 276) warned the education community about these issues, noting that “technological changes are going to flood how we currently think about, do, and represent research” and noted that the use of technology for scholarship “is being largely ignored in colleges of education, other than in simplistic and trivial ways.” This book rectifies the lack of attention the topic has received.

Why Is This Topic Significant?

While social media/networks have been both extolled and decried in the academic literature and the popular press, a greater understanding of the experiences and practices of scholars with social media and online networks is necessary for a number of reasons.

First, social media and online networks appeal to scholars in a never-ending array of disciplines. From psychiatrists to education scholars, from biologists to mathematicians, it seems that the potential (and drawbacks) of social media are debated across disciplinary lines. For instance, the following abstract is published in a journal aimed at cognitive scientists, but little else in this abstract (and subsequent article) is unique to cognitive science:

Cognitive scientists are increasingly using online social media, such as blogging and Twitter, to gather information and disseminate opinion, while linking to primary articles and data. Because of this, Internet tools are driving a change in the scientific process, where communication is characterised by rapid scientific discussion, wider access to specialist debates, and increased cross-disciplinary interaction. This article serves as an introduction to and overview of this transformation.

(Stafford & Bell, 2012, p. 489)

Second, the increasing use of technological solutions for educational and scholarly purposes without an empirical understanding and evaluation of that use engenders several pitfalls and shortcomings. These dangers are particularly relevant in the face of rejuvenated claims regarding the potential of technological and scholarly innovations to transform practice when past empirical evidence suggests that panaceas to educational problems are rarely successful (Cuban, 2001; Tennyson, 1994). This book therefore responds to the call by Selwyn and Grant (2009) to study the actual use of innovations as opposed to their potential. An evidence-based understanding of scholars’ digital practices will facilitate the development of educational and scholarly approaches that are sensitive to what it means to learn, teach, and research online and may foster further innovations in how individuals and institutions enact digital and networked practices.

Third, there is an almost universal recognition that higher education is at a critical junction and that educational institutions worldwide are facing enormous challenges. Given that social media and online networks permeate contemporary cultures, they may present promising opportunities for addressing a number of these challenges. An evidence-based understanding of scholars’ efforts, experiences, obstacles, and tensions with networked scholarship might help contribute to a greater understanding of the role of digital technology in the enterprise of higher education, especially as open/digital/networked scholarship, frequently performed via social media, is seen as a radical breakthrough in how new knowledge is created and shared (Nielsen, 2012; Weller, 2011).

Fourth, there’s something unique about social media – not necessarily about the technology that connects people to one another and to information – but about the ways that social media are “intertwined with neoliberal capitalism and data surveillance” (boyd, 2015) while being pervasive in higher education settings. While social in nature, the commercial nature of these technologies and the affordances they provide to observe and scrutinize others raises conundrums for individual scholars and academia alike.

A Note on the Book’s Structure

This book is divided into twelve chapters. Each chapter follows a similar structure, starting with a set of questions or a narrative/story illustrating some of the issues under investigation. Next, the phenomenon is described, and supportive evidence is presented. Each chapter is summarized below.

1. Introduction

This is the chapter you are currently reading, wherein I introduce the book and the significance of networked scholarship.

2. Networked Scholarship

In this chapter, I describe the concept of networked scholarship – the foundation of this book – and describe (a) the relationships between technology and scholarship, and (b) the technocultural pressures that exist to raise the profile of networked scholarship.

3. Anna: A Social Media Advocate

In this chapter, I present an interview with Anna, a scholar who uses social media extensively in her practice.

4. Networks of Knowledge Creation and Dissemination

I describe how scholars are using online networks to engage in knowledge creation and dissemination. I describe how academics use networks to do and share research and present examples of academics doing research online, reaching new understandings, and supporting communities in creating knowledge.

5. Jaime: The Complicated Realities of Day-to-Day Social Media Use

In this chapter, Jaime describes the complicated nature of day-to-day social media use.

6. Networks of Tension and Conflict

In participating online, scholars face tensions, challenges, and conundrums, and I use this chapter to explore and investigate these.

7. Nicholas: A Visitor

In this chapter, I present a description of Nicholas, a composite character I developed to demonstrate how the majority of academics currently use social media and technologies.

8. Networks of Inequity

In this chapter, I argue that some individuals may be more capable of exploiting social media than others as a result of a number of factors (e.g., power, wealth). This argument calls into question whether social media truly are the equalizing forces they are sometimes portrayed to be.

9. Networks of Disclosure

Academics have used social media and online networks to disclose intimate details of their lives (e.g., their struggles with debilitating diseases) and seek out support that they don’t find at their institutions. In this chapter, I discuss scholars’ disclosures and experiences of care.

10. Fragmented Networks

In this chapter, I explain that scholars’ identity online consists of a constellation of identity fragments. I argue that what individuals observe on social media is neither fully representative of authentic identity nor fully performative.

11. Scholarly Networks, or Scholars in Networks?

In this chapter I argue that to understand scholars’ online lives, researchers need to examine more than scholarly practices online and need to explore scholars’ digital activities and participation in an expansive way.

12. Conclusion

I conclude by discussing broader implications that we can draw from the investigation presented in this book.

2

NETWORKED SCHOLARSHIP

What is networked scholarship? What is its relationship with technology and openness? How does it differ from open, digital, and social scholarship? What are the sociocultural and technological pressures for scholarship to be more “networked?” In this chapter, I explain what I mean by networked participatory scholarship (or, networked scholarship) and describe the relationships between technology and scholarship. But first, a personal story.

THE COUCHES OF STRANGERS

It’s 2005. I’m a graduate student at the University of Minnesota and I live in the always beautiful, but often frigid, city of Minneapolis.

Though I don’t always enjoy driving, I am particularly fond of road trips and the opportunities they provide for learning about the world. That summer, my girlfriend and I decided to take a road trip from Minnesota to Tennessee following the roads that run parallel to the Mississippi River. The Great River Road they call it – a network of local, state, and federal roads that showcase the beauty of the states bordering the Mississippi River.

A few months prior to this trip I discovered Couchsurfing.com, and this site generated one of my early experiences with modern social media. “Couchsurfing” refers to spending a night or two on the couch of a stranger. The website facilitated interactions between individuals who were interested in hosting others and individuals who were interested in spending nights on someone else’s couch.

Given my mild disdain of driving long distances, my girlfriend and I divided our trip in such a way so as to limit daily driving to 4 to 6 hours. We arranged for accommodations driving south toward Tennessee because we wanted to follow the Great River Road, but we decided to return back to Minneapolis via a different route so as to visit more states.

Using Couchsurfing.com, we found two individuals who were willing to host us: one in Diamond City, Arkansas, and one in Kansas City, Kansas.

An elderly couple was willing to let us sleep on their couch in Diamond City, a city we knew nothing about. Once we arrived we learned that Diamond City is a small retirement town – a destination only for those visiting their parents who retire there.

We arrived in Diamond City around 5pm. We stopped at one of the two local diners prior to joining our hosts so as to have an early dinner and preempt being a burden to them. Our hosts were welcoming and friendly, and we spent the next few hours in their living room getting to know one another.

During the conversation, we learned that our hosts were as unsure as we were of this arrangement. We were the first people who had reached out to them through the couchsurfing website, and, while they were apprehensive at f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Networked Scholarship
• 3 Anna: A Social Media Advocate and Networked Scholar
• 4 Networks of Knowledge Creation and Dissemination
• 5 Jaime: The Complicated Realities of Day-to-Day Social Media Use
• 6 Networks of Tension and Conflict
• 7 Nicholas: A Visitor
• 8 Networks of Inequity
• 9 Networks of Disclosure
• 10 Fragmented Networks
• 11 Scholarly Networks, or Scholars in Networks?
• 12 Conclusion
• References
• Index