Using Social Media for Learning and

Professionalization

November 27, 2014

How and why do academics

interact?

What are the results of those

interactions?

Which interactions result in

productive conversations?

Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you

arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged

in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to

pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the

discussion had already begun long before any of them got

there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all

the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until

you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument;

then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him;

another comes to your defense; another aligns himself

against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of

your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally's

assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The

hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with

the discussion still vigorously in progress.

--Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form, 1941

Avenues of AccessBurke characterizes participation in the conversation as open.

Avenues of AccessFor academics entering 70 years later, the open parlor

becomes more akin to an endurance course.

How do you prepare

for becoming active

in the conversation?

Who is qualified to

participate in the

conversation?

When?

How many conversations

are there?

Opening assumptions

• Professionalization is communication.

• Learning to be social is a skill in itself -- and a

process, rather than something that happens

instantly.

• Your value as an academic is more than

merely your finished articles or dissertation.

• Scholarship is cyclical, not linear.

Applicable DH Values

•Multimodal

•Adaptive

•Ad hoc

•Social

Most social media

platforms are made to

encourage sharing and/or

conversing.

Sharing platforms• Encourage you to upload durable and sizable

content

• Provide infrastructure that encourages you to

organize content in specific/customizable

ways; and develop individual aesthetic design

preferences

• Allow others to navigate freely through present

and past content as it accumulates

Conversing platforms• Encourage you to upload smaller,

transient content

• Provide infrastructure to help you

interact, rather than organize

• Focus on the present, and allow limited

views of past content, especially to

anyone other than you

SharingConversin

g

Sharing platforms feel more

similar to traditional academic

publishing structures, but

require greater commitments

and more skill.

Conversing platforms are

dissimilar to traditional

academic publishing

structures; but are more

conducive to experimenting,

and learning online

communication techniques.

While both sharing and

conversing platforms are

useful, you need to be skilled

in conversing platforms in

order to use sharing platforms

to the greatest effect.

Why start with

Twitter?• It’s free!

• It’s flexible, but technologically simple to use.

• It comes with a large, curious, and supportive

community.

• It provides you with a rehearsal space.

• It allows you to control information overload easily.

• It’s popular enough that junior and senior academics

from a wide range of disciplines use it, and are

accessible through it.

Ingredients for social media

participation

• Curiosity/desire to engage with people you don’t

know

• Varied interests and playfulness, which allow more

than academic interactions

• Awareness, which allows you to choose how

you’re using various tools

What do you do when you tweet?• Report on what you see, hear, or read

• Ask questions (to specific people, or as part of

thinking out loud)

• Describe what you’re working on

• Experiment with different ways of phrasing

ideas

• Agree, and disagree

• Share content that you think other people

should be aware of

What are you doing when you’re

on Twitter?• Discover what other people are learning and doing

• See academic and public contexts side by side

• Watch projects and ideas evolve through conversation

• Find out about processes and practices at other institutions

(academic and non-academic)

• Support peers and colleagues by showing interest in their

work

• Find content through your contacts (rather than through

search engines)

• Learn through dialogue and interaction

What are academics

discussing?Academic labor

Accessibility

Race & Social Justice

Privilege

Contingencies & Budgets

Comparative Pedagogies

The Value of Scholarship

Accounts & Hashtags to explore

• #twitterstorians

• @tressiemcphd

• @erik_kwakkel

• #academia

• @roopikarisam

• @JeffSharlet

Questions of identity

• Will you interact as yourself, or under a

pseudonym?

• Will you tweet with a specific focus? (an

aspect of your research, of your

discipline, etc.)

Building your own Twitter topic list

(pick one of the following q’s)What are you working on currently?

What would you like to work on in the future?

What’s the last thing that you read and enjoyed?

What did you like about it?

What’s a non-academic thing that has a connection with your

academic interests?

What would you like to know about using social media?

What topics/activities could you help people understand? (academic

or non-academic)

What would you put on your Twitter profile page?

What’s the most valuable advice you’ve been given recently?

What’s a photo you took recently?

If you were to tweet as a parody of your field/specialty, what would

your persona be?

Are academics hacking social

media?• Hacker: n.

• 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of

programmable systems and how to stretch their

capabilities, as opposed to most users, who

prefer to learn only the minimum necessary.

• 7.One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of

creatively overcoming or circumventing

limitations.

• --The Jargon File, http://www.jargondb.org

Are academics hacking social

media?• How do you measure the value of social

media?

• Commercial: through quantitative

metrics, i.e., number of followers, site

visits, etc.

• Academic: through qualitative results,

i.e., confidence and experience gained,

contacts made

Are academics using

Twitter to hack the

academy?

Social media encourages

the larger academic

conversation to become

more inclusive of multiple

voices.

Participating in social

media can help you

become more aware of

your own privilege, as

well as broader issues of

marginalization within

academia.

Understanding how the

academy manifests

beyond your own

immediate experience of

it is central to academic

professionalism.

PROFESSIONALISM:

MORE THAN JUST GETTING A JOB

Building your own Twitter topic list

(pick one of the following q’s)What are you working on currently?

What would you like to work on in the future?

What’s the last thing that you read and enjoyed?

What did you like about it?

What’s a non-academic thing that has a connection with your

academic interests?

What would you like to know about using social media?

What topics/activities could you help people understand? (academic

or non-academic)

What would you put on your Twitter profile page?

What’s the most valuable advice you’ve been given recently?

What’s a photo you took recently?

If you were to tweet as a parody of your field/specialty, what would

your persona be?

Basic Twitter Toolbox• Twitter’s List function: for filtering different types

of content

• HootSuite, TweetDeck: account management

platforms for reading and managing multiple

feeds

• Storify: for archiving tweets and conversations

• Tweet-a-friend: ask Twitter!

Ways to keep

tweeting• Reading a Twitter list, or feed

• Live-tweeting events

• Participating in weekly chats #fycchat,

#prodchat, etc.

• Schedule Twitter time: 15 minutes per

day? 2 hours per week?

Other strategies• Use search.twitter.com to find people

tweeting about things that interest

youLive-tweeting events

• Find a twitter list curated for a particular

theme (googling is a good way to locate

these)

• Set goals: respond to 2 people per day;

share one link per day, post one thing

you've learned

Considering other social media

platforms?• Read and explore them first, in order to get a

sense of the culture of participation.

• Investigate your options for exporting/backing

up your content.

• Think about how your audience will find you,

and what sort of commitment the platform

requires of them.

• Consider integrating with Twitter in order to

promote and discuss your project.

“No! Try not. Do, or do

not. There is no try.”--Yoda, Star Wars

Episode V: The Empire

Strikes Back

(adapted)

Final questions (for now)

• Who are the people that you want to connect

with?

• What knowledge/information would you like to

have access to that you don’t currently have

access to? Who can give you that information?

• What aspects of discussing your work give you

energy? How can you create more

opportunities for that sort of discussion?

Next time...

• Non-threatening coding exploration

• Learning to think like a programmer

• You’ve got data! What kind of data is it?

Demystifying Digital Scholarship:

Exploring Programming for Digital Scholarship

January 2015