I first joined Twitter some two and a half years ago
following a course I attended on research leadership. (Crucible Cymru if you
are interested @welshcrucible ) One of
the sessions was on academic use of social media. I had used Facebook previously and although I
had never really engaged with the platform I had found it useful for research
purposes, particularly for staying in contact with research participants.
During the presentation on Twitter one of the other course attendees turned to
me and said “Twitter is for idiots who just like the sound of their own voice
and have got nothing to say” and that made me think it was probably a well
suited medium for academics.
When I first started using Twitter I wasn’t quite sure what
to make of it, particularly when it came to Tweeting myself. I really didn’t know what to say or how to
say it, 140 characters is quiet alien to the academic school of writing which valorises
wordiness over brevity. My intention when
I first signed up was to use it mainly for academic interests, finding out
about other research and publicising my own, as reflected by my use of Twitter
name @DrNostromo.
It didn’t
take me long however to find out that Twitter was a very powerful tool for engagement
and engagement with various audiences.
As I have built up my followers I have been lucky enough to link with some
leading academics in my field such as Graham Scambler (@GrahamScambler) and
Peter Beresford (@BeresfordPeter ) and at the click of a button I can interact
with them if there might be some issue I want to discuss. On the other hand I can just as easily
interact with other “ordinary” people whose opinion and take on events I also
value, such as @devine__ a young woman
living in the north of England who works as a waitress and in childcare and @EastAnglear
who works as a volunteer in a Citizens Advice Bureau and daily deals with the
impact of recent government policies on the lives of everyday people. Twitter is a great leveller in this respect, unlike
journals or other forms of publishing all you need to get your voice heard on
Twitter is access to a mobile phone or a computer.
I can just imagine that there are some of my academic colleagues
reading this huffing and puffing and rolling their eyes and thinking to
themselves “ well why should I possibly
want to engage with such people, what use would it be to my research, what use
would it be to my career?” I’ve got no real answer to that question but when I
was asked to write this short piece I asked my Twitter followers what they felt
I should say and what was their opinion of academic Tweeters. One of the best
observations came from @ItstartswithBee who tweeted “many an academic speaks
excellent academia but poor layman and humanity.” For many a layman the world
of academia is a remote and mysterious one and in relation to day to day
activity is more often than not an irrelevance.
I don’t think academia is an irrelevance
or should be thought of as one but unless academics engage as academics in the growing
social media discourse through the likes of Twitter and Blogging I fear that
they will increasingly be viewed as such.
March 2014
