Tuesday 3 June 2014

Social Media for Academics

Today I went to a talk on 'social media for academics'. Apparently, the cardinal rules of academic blogging include:

1) don't create new content.
2) don't care about statistics; it doesn't matter if no one reads your blog, because you should only be doing it to make contact with future job or funding opportunities.

And there was me, thinking it was about the sharing of ideas and knowledge. I've been doing it wrong all these years...

8 comments:

Steffen said...


I'm fairly certain you and I are of the same mind on this issue, so I won't start preaching to the choir. But yes, obviously we are not sufficiently adept at prostituting ourselves in social media. Who do we ask for help?

Anonymous said...

Your blog has contributed to keeping me sane while I have been guiding my daughter through various science courses (I teach her at home) by reminding me that the things I am interested in are still out there waiting for me......

'Sharing ideas and knowledge' has proved a valuable service to me, definitely - I hope it proves useful for future job and funding opportunities for you as well!

Clerk of Oxford said...

Steffen, I had a feeling you'd agree with me on this ;) Fortunately, there's no shortage of social media experts around to teach us how to exploit our 'personal brand value'...

Anonymous, that's great to hear! Blogging does quite a bit to keep me sane, too. And thank you :)

Caecilia Dance said...

How very strange! I can't think of anything worse - other than bad content of course.

Clerk of Oxford said...

I know - to me it seemed the exact opposite of advice you'd want to give a blogger! The expert's theory was that you should only be 'repackaging' your existing content, because no one would be reading anyway except the two or three hypothetical people of a future job search committee. No sense at all of blogging as communication, academic outreach, sharing of ideas, or anything like that. It was bizarre.

Christene said...

I just stumbled across your blog via some mutual followers on Twitter and coincidentally the same day you wrote this I wrote a similar blog post lamenting the current atmosphere of sharing in academia where I have now been warned by friends and professors to cease blogging new material for various reasons.

While I heeded their warnings, and their intentions were good, I felt I was losing the opportunity to collaborate, obtain feedback from strangers with similar if not identical interests, and for improvements to my work - all of which would have been gained through these social media interactions.

I too have been doing it wrong all these years...

Clerk of Oxford said...

I just read your post, and I agree it's a real shame that there's a culture in academia which actively encourages us to be selfish with our ideas. It just doesn't seem to me what the whole process should be about, and as you say, we lose a lot in not talking to other people about work-in-progress. At the same time, I know it's a reasonable concern, and I'm not honestly sure that blogging is a wise thing for me to do - though it mostly feels like the right thing to do. It might come back to bite me some way down the road!

It's hard to know what's the right decision, especially early in an academic career.

Caecilia Dance said...

Obviously I can't comment on the potential risks and advantages of blogging for academic historians, only being an undergraduate, but I will say that if academics stopped blogging, it would make the history blogosphere an emptier place.