Blogging and tweeting… research in the social media age
PhD student Anthony Stepniak reports back on the intriguing talk he and Professor Matthew McCormack, from the Faculty of Education & Humanities, presented on the use of Twitter in academia
First up was Professor McCormack, professor of History at the University of Northampton, he contextualised the popularity of Twitter and the way it has been harnessed in academia on an institutional, subject area and individual basis. Using his own Twitter profile as an example, Professor McCormack discussed ways of navigating an online academic identity on the site and detailed the differences between personal and professional academic Twitter accounts such as his own.
This section of the talk opened up debate on the pitfalls of an academic being on Twitter as an individual, especially if it is an professional account, and Professor McCormack advised on how to ensure you keep a professional identity when representing your institution, with advice on avoiding controversial Tweeting, tagging in your intuition in your bio, and the function of the popular ‘retweets are not endorsements’ disclaimer.
Finally Professor McCormack spoke on his relationship with blogging and how Twitter can be used as an promotional tool for blogs. He also outlined the importance of a subject-area blog site and partner Twitter site — in which the latter can promote blogs from the former. Professor McCormack demonstrated this through the History at Northampton blog site on Wordpress and its fellow Twitter site, the latter run by history at Northampton’s subject lead.
Following Professor McCormack, PhD student from English and Creative Writing at the University of Northampton, Anthony Stepniak presented two models which enable Twitter and blogs to assist with conference promotion and institutional subject-area promotion which could help with research dissemination and recruitment.
Aware of the pitfalls individual professional social media accounts can pose for academics, including misinterpretation of retweets, receiving abuse online and finally expressing staunch political opinions etc, Anthony proposed Twitter should be used in academia on either institutional and/or subject-area levels. He explained how this not only side-steps the problems of individual accounts through the inherent depersonalisation a shared, subject area Twitter has, but also can be beneficial to the institution as a whole.
Anthony explained how a subject area or even research centre Twitter can be used as a promotional tool — only tweeting links to staff and student blogs from within the subject area, reviews of conferences and events and news of staff publications etc. With the Twitter site functioning in this notice-board like fashion it need not tweet/retweet anything unrelated to the aforementioned elements of self- promotion and do so from a depersonalised and non-individualised voice.
As part of his presentation and to support his suggested model, Anthony showed images of subject-area Twitters for other competing institutions along with their self-promotional only tweets. The Success of this model was clear in the high number of followers which the Twitter sites had.
Anthony suggested further how such sites would be a useful recruitment tool especially on events such as open days and discovery days. Having worked supporting the English and Creative teams at Northampton in their course talks and taster sessions on open days for 4 years, Anthony shared the benefits of a subject area Twitter for potential candidates alongside the main institution app and social media sites. With strong links to BBC Radio Northampton, due to the English and Creative Writing team’s involvement in their book club, and along with all the aforementioned ways a subject-area Twitter could be used for promotion Anthony argued it would provide a great way for potential applicants to see evidence of all the impressive goings on in their department which staff tell them about on the open day.
With an detailed run through of the current official University of Northampton English and Creative Writing subject area blog site, which Anthony has worked as site builder on for the past three academic years, he explained how it’s already impressive views for its’ conference reviews, promotional pieces on staff research, as well as the upcoming series the site will host detailing the great work of the subject areas PhD students, would benefit from a sister Twitter page to draw more readers to the blogsite. Again, Anthony supported this as he exposed the blogs with the highest number of reads as being those which had been promoted on the institutional and other relevant Twitter sites.
Finally, Anthony, through the Twitter site for Identities in YA — an international conference he co-organised with Dr Sonya Andermahr which was held on the 16/12/17, established how Twitter can be used to promote academic conferences. Detailing how, after he set-up the site, he followed selected academics working in the area — he then managed to build a network of interested academics and research students who followed the conference Twitter. The conference Twitter was then used to promote the call for papers, any developments and news in the build-up to the conference such as the announcement of the keynote and special event with a YA author.
Anthony demonstrated through the Identities in YA site how you are able to generate great interest in a conference, draw international speakers and attendees and then after the conference how the site would provide an audience for any conference reviews and follow up publications.
Both Professor McCormack and Anthony Stepniak gave intriguing presentations, providing suggestions of how Twitter and blogging is being used by academia currently, can be harnessed in academia going forward, and the risks that they can include if not carefully thought about. Both talks resulted in lively debate and left much to think on for the staff of the Faculty of Education and Humanities at the University of Northampton and beyond.
