Social Media

I have posted a draft of Chapter 6, Social Media, on SocArXiv.

My goal for a chapter on social media and citizen scholarship is to offer a model for how scholars can use these tools and platforms to disseminate their work, but also to listen and learn – to find the balance between these multiple types of information flow, to make meaningful a complex set of interactions across the collapsed context of overlapping audiences. Since I first pitched this idea, of course, social media blew up (again), especially the app formerly known as Twitter, which was the network tool for which my model was designed and upon which it was tested. Twitter was the one place, especially, where academics, journalists, and political people talked to each other in public – a situation that might or might not be reconstructed on another platform again. But the key concept underlying my goal is the multiplicity of audiences, so I think – and, tentatively, hope – that such a situation will persist in whatever form wherever the current platform wars land.

The chapter includes general analysis and specific advice, and recounts some experiences from researchers I interviewed last year.

As always, all feedback and criticism is most welcome!