This is the concluding post of our intern Rob Meiklejohn’s project researching the usage of social media platforms in academia.
Previously I’ve looked at some innovative small-scale uses of social media (here) and one rather disappointing attempt to translate these early successes into a single international social media platform (here). So far I’ve been forced me to conclude that in recent years a plateau has been reached. It seems that the vast majority of academics who are inclined to start blogging, join Twitter or create online spaces for students have already done so. The question is; what would be needed for a social media platform to take the next step and turn into the essential tool and daily necessity it is so quickly becoming in other sectors?
There are four key areas any potential academic social media platform would do well to consider. Brace yourselves, things are about to get hypothetical…
Issues of privacy
A common problem for brands venturing into social media is mustering up the courage to fully launch into a large, scary digital space over which they do not have full control. For many in academia the same is true. Despite the huge potential for social media to change peer review and the ways in which academic work is researched, written and distributed, fears about reputation and plagiarism remain. Nowhere is this truer than for academic works-in-progress; the very things most needing the rapid feedback social media can so brilliantly deliver. For this reason any social media alternative to the traditional ‘research seminar’ (the reading of a work-in-progress to peers and collating feedback) would need high levels of customisable privacy. It may not be the Web 2.0 dream of unlimited knowledge sharing but it is a necessary step, at least at initially, in getting serious amounts of academic work researched and shaped within a social media space.
Accreditation and payments
Another prohibitive could well be the money some academics receive for publishing articles in online journals and the money those same journals make from selling this content. However, from an outside perspective at least, this appears to be a fractured and often poorly executed process (as this blog post rather depressingly details) and perhaps an industry ripe for the taking by the right social media platform. Facebook is increasingly monetising its content and there seems very little reason why academic social media couldn’t do the same.
The role of undergraduates
Undergraduates may be the lowest echelon of the academic world, and indeed Academia.edu had no function at all for the great unwashed undergrad masses, but they are also media savvy teenage veterans of social media. A large undergraduate presence on a platform designed for academic purposes may entice many lecturers onboard simply for reasons of practicality.
Customised creation of smaller networks
Getting departments or even whole universities to adopt a new social media platform as a major tool in their operations could be one of the kicks needed in getting the numbers online to make the platform an academic necessity rather than just an optional venture for the tech-savvy. It must also be remembered that the best success stories so far have been small, localised, even intranet, based. This tells us that maintaining a sense of independence and departmental identity is an important factor for any academic collective hoping to move into an online space. For this reason any large scale media platform hosting pages for universities and departments would do well to allow very high levels of customisation in content and aesthetics as well as privacy.
What next?
Throughout these postings I have deliberately avoided entering an undignified Ivory Tower diatribe (there’s plenty of dignified ones already available) but whatever the sluggishness of academia to adapt to new technologies we must recognise that its needs are fundamentally different to those of business.
A social media platform for academia would ideally perform two functions. Firstly, create an online space where academics can encourage their students to take a proactive approach to learning and research through the variety of social mechanics afforded by social media. Secondly, become somewhere that academics can securely upload research for peer review.
Successful and transformative social media in this sector is achievable provided we remember that academia does not share the ambitions or the needs of other sectors and will always resist efforts to map existing structures and techniques onto it.
