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| Dr Nadine Muller |
Technology
is changing the way we access information, and how we communicate. Nowhere is
this more apparent than in academia. Social media sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and blogging platforms such as Blogger and Wordpress, are increasingly being used to
raise profiles, to disseminate research, and to make links with potential
collaborators.
Is
it possible to embrace the new technology without compromising your integrity
or short-selling your research? Yesterday Dr Nadine Muller,
a Lecturer in English Literature and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University, spoke to the Early
Career Researcher Network about both the difficulties, but also the
potential benefits, of using social media.
Many
in academia are hostile to social media. It’s an additional demand on your
time, and there is expectation that you need to be available and responsive all
the time. It’s like time’s
winged chariot, always at your back, harrying and harassing you. But Muller
pointed out the benefits:
- Resources: there is a culture of sharing on the
internet. Although it goes against the commercial imperative of publishers, you
can seek out articles direct from authors, and get access to resources that
wouldn’t be available conventionally;
- Knowledge: it gives you access to additional
knowledge beyond academia. For instance, Muller has an interest in the cultural
understanding of widowhood; by engaging with widows groups on Twitter, she was
able to disseminate her work more widely (see below), but also to gain access
to a more immediate well of experience;
- Writing: many academics find it difficult to start
writing, to face the blank page. Writing a blog post about your research and
your ideas is a good way of corralling your thoughts and drafting your article.
It doesn’t have to be perfect; as Muller said, ‘you don’t have to be brilliant
every day’;
- Thinking: similarly, drafting your research via blog
posts helps you to refine your research questions, and receive useful feedback;
- New Audiences: Social media reaches beyond academia, to
the engaged and interested generalists, to policy makers, to teachers, and to
anyone else who might benefit from your research;
- Networking: research, especially in the humanities and
areas of the social sciences, can be quite isolating. Social media allows you
to connect, to discuss and to interact whilst still remaining at your desk;
- Opportunities: Social media raises your profile, and creates and opens up opportunities that you may not
otherwise have.
Beyond
research, social media is increasingly important as a teaching tool. For
instance, Muller encourages (and sometimes requires) her students to engage
with each other through Twitter, through creating a blog, and through critical debate on
discussion boards.
The
difficulty with this is twofold: firstly, we make the assumption that
students are naturally adept at using social media, and yet we provide very
little training for them. The same is true for staff, who are encouraged to
tweet and blog without any initial hands on support or training. Secondly, if
students are more formally being assessed on their social media work, what
criteria should be used?
Throughout
the session the audience had been questioning Muller, and a number of issues
were raised, such as the how to avoid plagiarism and balancing private and
public personae. Through discussion it became clear that these weren’t the bête
noires that they had been built up to be: if anything blogs helped avoid
plagiarism by putting your thoughts into the public domain at an early stage,
and the private/public divide could be handled by using different platforms, or
different accounts, for different parts of your life.
Muller
finished by highlighting two key problems with social media:
- Firstly, it lends itself to procrastination. Whilst blog posts
could be used to kick start your writing, the potential for diversion and delay
is endless;
- Secondly, exploitation. Social media is
often seen as an ‘add on’ to your duties, and there is often an expectation
within your department or centre that you would be willing to build a web
presence for free. The sooner that social media skills are professionalised,
the better.
Muller
used Prezi for her presentation, consisting of
a series of images that sparked different issues. For that reason the slides
won’t be available afterwards. However, I would encourage you to read her excellent website, and follow her on Twitter, to find out
more about social media and the new academic.
