{"id":44643,"date":"2018-07-27T13:15:48","date_gmt":"2018-07-27T20:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=44643"},"modified":"2018-07-27T13:15:48","modified_gmt":"2018-07-27T20:15:48","slug":"social-media-support-needs-to-go-beyond-self-branding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/social-media-support-needs-to-go-beyond-self-branding\/","title":{"rendered":"Social media support needs to go beyond self-branding"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nTimes Higher Education<\/i>\u2019s timely and thought-provoking feature article on the ups and downs of social media in academia<\/a> struck a loud, resonant chord with me. A few years back I deleted my Twitter account, subsequently blitzed my personal YouTube channel, and put my blog on an extended hiatus. This act of social media suicide \u2013 as my soon-to-be-teenage daughter likes to refer to it \u2013 was prompted by a number of the factors described, or alluded to, in the article: the toxicity, the time-wasting, and the sheer, utter stupidity of indulging in pointless playground spats<\/a> online.<\/p>\n

My personal Twitter nadir<\/a> came in a 1:00 am exchange with Louise Mensch where her riposte to a carefully crafted tweet was \u201cLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!\u201d. Followed by a tweenage meme. Sigh. What was I doing<\/i> with my life? (On the plus side, I was blocked by the legend-in-his-own-lunchtime that is Milo Yiannopoulos after just two tweets. With Deepak Chopra, one tweet was enough\u2026)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to\u00a0repeat the reasons behind my disconnection and distancing from social media. For those masochistic enough to be interested in all the tedious detail, it\u2019s available at the now resurrected blog<\/a>. Nor am I going to trot out some trite, patronising, vacuous, TED-esque \u201cTwelve Reasons You Too Should Shut Down Your Social Media Accounts\u201d self-help guff. Not this time, at least. I\u2019m not entirely blameless when it comes to the listicle thing<\/a>, however.<\/p>\n

Social media platforms are just tools for communication. And, as Sara Custer highlighted, not only do most academics like to communicate, communication is our core \u201cbusiness\u201d. We also tend to be a fairly argumentative species. From that perspective, the social media ecosystem is our natural habitat in many ways.<\/p>\n

But one aspect of social media engagement that is still not sufficiently recognised by universities in their headlong rush to encourage as many of their academics, and, increasingly, students, to connect online (so as to maximise that all-important impact factor) is just how toxic it can get.<\/p>\n

And that toxicity can bleed offline into real life. While Custer\u2019s article highlights how universities consider the potential effects of social media posts and profiles on their brand, both positive and negative, many of those august institutions seem less concerned about highlighting the downsides of a social media profile to their staff. Even more worryingly, they are not always as supportive as they could be when things go wrong. That\u2019s not a veiled criticism of the my own institution, the University of Nottingham, by the way. The school here is very supportive and our HoS<\/a> is active on a variety of social media platforms and well aware of the risks.<\/p>\n

What used to be the preserve of cesspits like 4chan is increasingly now overground, polluting mainstream sites such as YouTube and Twitter.<\/p>\n

Whitney Phillips, Angela Nagle, and Mike Wendling have each convincingly argued this point in This Is Why We Can\u2019t Have Nice Things<\/a><\/em>, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right<\/a><\/em>, and Alt-Right: From 4chan to the White House<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And yet when I speak at academic meetings and workshops whose focus is the application and exploitation of social media, I find that there is often a worrying lack of appreciation of just how bad it can get.<\/p>\n

Mention of GamerGate and Anita Sarkeesian<\/a>, for example, draws blank stares and a lack of raised hands when I ask those in attendance if they\u2019re familiar with the torrents of abuse and threats that Sarkeesian and others have received. Here\u2019s just one week of Sarkeesian\u2019s Twitter feed<\/a> from a few years back. I also strongly recommend this video<\/a> to any student or academic thinking about posting their research online.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a middle-aged physicist whose research focuses on pushing, poking, and prodding single atoms. And I\u2019m a bloke. As compared to a female PhD student in, oh, let\u2019s say, gender studies, I have it ridiculously easy indeed when it comes to communicating my research online.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just gender studies that\u2019s in the firing line. Certain online gurus, including the lobster- and dragon-fixated Jordan B. Peterson<\/a>, would have it that entire schools of education, sociology, English, and swathes of the humanities are all deeply suspect at best, fundamentally corrupt at worst and, as befits those champions of free speech, should be shut down forthwith<\/a>. Peterson, for one, has a substantial flock hanging on his every word.<\/p>\n

University management and funding bodies need to inform themselves about how toxic it can get on social media. Too often, their perception seems to be that there\u2019s an adoring public \u201cout there\u201d waiting with bated breath to hear about the latest research findings. This is breathtakingly naive. For many, academics and experts are part of the problem, not the solution. Universities need to start thinking beyond the brand.<\/p>\n

Author Bio: <\/strong>Philip Moriarty is a professor of physics at the University of Nottingham.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Times Higher Education\u2019s timely and thought-provoking feature article on the ups and downs of social media in academia struck a loud, resonant chord with me. A few years back I deleted my Twitter account, subsequently blitzed my personal YouTube channel, and put my blog on an extended hiatus. This act of social media suicide \u2013 […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":44644,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15645],"tags":[209406],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-44643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-social-media-in-academia"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSocial media support needs to go beyond self-branding - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/social-media-support-needs-to-go-beyond-self-branding\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Social media support needs to go beyond self-branding - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Times Higher Education\u2019s timely and thought-provoking feature article on the ups and downs of social media in academia struck a loud, resonant chord with me. 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