The question of what value social media, particularly blogging, holds in academia is ongoing and at times controversial. This is well illustrated over at The Guardian Higher Education Network where articles are still being produced in reaction to a comment by Leonard Cassuto in a live chat on the Guardian Higher Education Network – “I have nothing against [blogs], but I don’t read them, either” – which sparked a great deal of discussion. Academic Rohan Maitzen blogged about Cassuto’s attitude to blogging and publishing, and Cassuto then posted his response, ‘The measure of blogging’. Charlotte Frost, Founder and Director of PhD2Published, also gave a response to Cassuto which can be found here. This week The Guardian published my take on the issue, ‘Don’t doubt the value of blogging in academic publishing’. Like Charlotte I admit I am not as established as Cassuto, but I do believe that blogging has a place in academia, particularly for early career researchers.
However, blogging is only part of the picture, thus to blog or not to blog is only one question early career researchers should be looking at. I believe that early career researchers should engage with a range of social media tools, but for it to be effective it needs to be done strategically. In this post I look at the things to remember when developing your online identity.
1. Why are you here and what are you trying to achieve
This seems fairly obvious but it is an important question: are you engaging with social media because everyone else is, or because you can see a strategic need/usage for you to do so? I admit I love playing about with technology, particularly social media applications, but I don’t use them just because they are there.
My digital persona now consists largely of three main parts: Twitter – for networking, sharing ideas and being part of a community, particularly using the hashtag #phdchat. Writing for edited blogs such as thesiswhisperer, Guardian Higher Education Network and LSE Impact Blog. I also manage Networked Researcher. Writing for edited blogs enables me to participate in instant debates around topical issues, which in turn stimulates people’s interest in me as a researcher through being able to view my writing. The turn-around time for a blog to go from author to published is infinitely quicker than it is for a journal article. Then there is my personal blog. My personal blog is where I can cover issues not related to my academic work, introduce people to what makes me, well, me. I believe my work is an extension of myself and thus to know and understand my work it makes sense for me to present an element of me with my work. That may scare some people, but a lot may be written about you anyway, so it is probably safer to be in control of what is put out there. In relation to its potential impact on job applications, I think putting a little of yourself out there is no bad thing, as the people hiring you do actually have to work with you – so if they get to understand you a little beforehand that’s good. However, always remember everything you put online can be found, so think you are introducing yourself to a complete stranger – how much do you want them to know?
2. Engaging with digital media introduces new ethical questions
By its very name social media is inherently social and therefore interactive. Thus engaging in and with social media for research purposes raises a number of new ethical questions. There has been a great deal of debate over the ethics of multimedia and e-research projects specifically in relation to issues surrounding consent (something that I will come back to in a future post). If you are using your blog as part of your research people interacting with you must be aware if their engagements could form part of your thesis.
3.The digital is there to complement the traditional
In most debates on blogging there seems to be this misunderstanding that blogging or digital publishing should make traditional outputs redundant. I personally don’t think this is the case. The blog, as I said above, is for making instant impact. Think of it as the highlighter of academic publishing: it is done to give people a taste of the way you write and think. It is there to complement your traditional output. To be a successful academic you will need to be able to be published in a range of mediums in order to maximise your impact and engage the widest possible audience with you and your work.
4. Writing for a blog is also a different skill, one which takes time to develop
In my opinion it is one that enables you to be able to check off that ‘can convey complex information to non specialist audiences’ box on job applications. If you visit my personal blog you will see a little experiment I did where I wrote about my PhD research in ‘plain English’ and asked for people to comment on it, to see whether they really did understand. The first piece can be viewed here and the second here. You can see from the comments on the first piece that people really didn’t understand what my thesis was about. To be an effective researcher you need to be able to communicate your research and this is something that takes time to develop.
5. Establishing your identity will take time
Any articles or blogs on blogging, of which there are many, will tell you it takes a number of months for a blog to become established and for your identity to become known online. Don’t worry if it takes a while for your blog or twitter account to pick up followers, the more you write the more will be read and, hopefully, the more you will be asked to write. It is too easy to pour all your time and energy into crafting your online identity and at the same time forget about your analogue one. Try to remember to maintain balance and don’t become over-committed in any one area.
4 Comments
I compiling this post I was looking to illustrate how you can use social medis, new media, web 2.0 or whatever you want to call it within academic research and professional development strategies. It is not a sociological critique neither am I trying to add to a body of sociological thought, I am a Human Geographer who integrated these tools and applications into their PhD research and has established an online ‘identity’ for promoting my work etc. The above post is based on my own experiences of using these technologies within my PhD and within my post-doc career to date and is provided for those who may want to look at what technology can offer them.
I’d opine that there is NO “social media”. In point of fact, the whole notion that there is truly any- thing of a genuine “social” nature about blogging, texting, or otherwise feigning communication with a social being is ludicrous. It is, at best, a substitute for real interaction and, at worst, a pathetic ruse.
I’m more than just a little suspicious of my own involvement in this site: On the one hand, I am starved for some insight and reasonably intelligent social science dialogue, since what I’m subjected to at this so-called university is little more than consensus academics and the meanderings of biased and socially (historically) stunted PhDs who live in the lack-luster world of a dilattante’s opinionated view of the “real” world of today. (May the Great Pumpkin save us all from sociology of dead theorists and theories, especially when they are so far from practicable that you can’t even excuse them. Though there is nothing wrong with history, and there is certainly nothing wrong with understanding how we “got here from there”, there is something very wrong with a blanket expectation of the acceptance of yesterday or the day before as the only path to tomorrow.)
I’ve been searching for some wisdom or, at least, some insight; my delusion, being self-imposed, is rapidly getting the best of me.
I don’t know if anyone else can relate, but I am in two 400-level sociology classes that are so close to my high school sophomore course that I am bored and pis—, at the same time. I really can re-learn or learn at a library, the same as most anyone else who really wants to. It isn’t of any known worth to spend thousands of dollars to be told that the assumptions and perspectives of a bunch of dead guys
are all there is of functional social science, or a foundation of understanding how and why cultures succeeed, fail, or change. (I’m still loking for a “professional”: that would be, in my “unscientific” view,
a so-called scholar who, at the very least, didn’t stop thinking – learning – when (s)he received the PhD.
Even someone with one, and working on the second, would be a real treat. I’ve actually had a couple of friends who held multiple doctorates and, to my knowledge, are still working or various other degrees. Such people spoil life, in their own way. And, they are just as outcast, because of their ambition, drive, and unrelenting pusuit of knowledge, as anyone who is excluded for not “achieving” whatever the norm might be. Norm? I’ve witnessed the norm…It is of no value to anyone, except maybe those who feel superior for having marginally exceeded it.)
My academic interests in sociology are about to come to an end, unless I can discover a way, place, or person that will somehow “show me the money”. I am about to quit the discipline, forever. In reality, I have done my time and have come up short and disappointed.
I realize that my ludicrous experiences at the hands of adults who haven’t learned anything or had an original thought in 30-40 years, is likely something of a fluke; however, at this juncture, it is all I have to go on and I’m stuck with it…Woe is me, right?
As to an “identity”, I have, in the past, spent about 25 years teaching people things that could, literally, save their lives; I’d estimate that only about 8% of them took much of the information or the newly-developed skill-sets very seriously, for any longer than about two weeks; so, I really doubt that there is a whole cohort of people who would ever really “follow” much of anything I have to offer. (I’ve also become somewhat disinterested in trying to influence anyone: People do whatever they please. They really have little abidding interest in anyone or anything that make them feel as though they didn;t know something or had to learn something that they somehow feel “entitled” to…This is why women make better “self defense” student than men.)
I’ll check back from time to time. And, if anyone has any suggestions as to how or where I can find one or more intelligent, unbiased, and forward thinking source of sociological theory and development, I’d appreciate some assistance. The topic is too broad and the world is too populated to imagine that the prejudiced, cowardly, and incomplete consensus model of education that I’ve found myself involved in is all that there is. If I ever wanted to be wrong about something, this is it !
David Jackson
Dear David,
I sympathise with many of your views, having had an unprecedented experience as a PhD in philosophy in recent years. Getting original ideas and perspectives that lead others to them is my ambition, but that has proved a rather difficult thing to do. People vigorously defend their turf, resisting arguments that threaten their postions, somehow forgetting that and how knowledge is produced, disseminated and understood. Clearly, on-line publishing doubtless has an important role to play, however, it must not be confused with mere self-promotion. See my own work, for example, which analyses the concept of Narcissism as a trope of reflection par excellent; where it is up to each of us to enlighten our life to ‘reality’, casting off those previous unworkable delusions of grandeur and focus on appearance. Ultimately, humility is the lesson, but one that may leave a lesion, a dissapointment of one’s previous narcissistic dispostions which is in fact the affirmity of our existence as a ‘self’ amonst others.
In short, the answer you seek is through philosophy, but not necessarily as it is conventionally understood, rather how it is for all of us.
Here are somelinks
http://socyberty.com/philosophy/pretending-to-be-yourself/
http://socyberty.com/philosophy/rousseaus-narcissus-problems-of-self-love/
http://socyberty.com/psychology/narcissism-freuds-baby/
http://socyberty.com/advice/the-importance-of-narcissism-to-the-good-life/
http://socyberty.com/psychology/self-love-and-the-trope-of-reflection/
http://socyberty.com/psychology/narcissism-self-knowledge-and-freedom-in-social-interaction/
http://socyberty.com/philosophy/rousseaus-narcisse-or-the-self-admirer/
http://authspot.com/thoughts/narcissism-mastery-and-imagination/
http://socyberty.com/psychology/narcissism-and-reflection/
My thesis, ‘Reflection: the concept of Narcissim in philosophy’ is (surprisingly) to be published
in the journal Philosophy Study shortly.
4. – “writing for a blog is a different skill” – I can relate to this comment and it is how I have always tried to write, particularly as most of my professional life, I have written for and about bureaucrats and politicians in turn conveying their information to the general public/taxpayer – you have to be able to write to the lowest common denominator. A university professor once told us that he didnt want us to regurgitate the text book in our thesis. If we can write so that our mother can understand, then we truly understood the intent and the message of what we were trying to write. It has always stood as a very valuable piece of information.
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