As academic conferences and events re-emerge after a period of COVID-19 induced absence, Mark Carrigan, takes stock of the new post-pandemic world of academic meetings and provides four strategies for how academics can productively navigate and build n…
Category: Social Media
Aphorism and twitter – A distinct medium for constructing knowledge
Twitter can be written off as a distinctly unserious medium, a place for fads, bullying and the latest cat videos. However, as Steve Fuller discusses the unique format of a tweet can also be a space for concision, constructive ambiguity as well as a te…
The focus on misinformation leads to a profound misunderstanding of why people believe and act on bad information
Misinformation has been a prominent paradigm in the explanation of social, political, and more recently epidemiological phenomena since the middle of the last decade. However, Daniel Williams argues that a focus on misinformation is limiting when used …
Fun(ny) facts: Humour as a research communication strategy
If you have read any research produced by universities, civil society organisations or think tanks, you will most likely have struggled to find any good jokes. However, throughout history, humour has played an important role in critiquing society and r…
Finding your niche in the four styles of research communication
Research communication can often seem like a monolith, if you want to take your research beyond the walls of the university then do x-y-z. As Andy Tattersall describes, there are in fact many hands and styles of work that contribute to effective resear…
Polarisation and the network harassment of science journalists.
Reporting on their qualitative research into the online abuse faced by science journalists in the USA, Lisa Palmer and Silvio Waisbord, find an uptick in the online harassment of science journalists alongside a lack of institutional support, especially…
Leave, Adapt, Resist – Time to rethink Academic Twitter?
As Twitter moves to become a private company owned by the billionaire Elon Musk, Mark Carrigan, reflects on the increasing importance academic social media and academic twitter has secured in universities for building academic communities and for publi…
Are personal academic blogs a thing of the past?
The personal blog was a defining feature of the early internet and there are still a number of high-profile academic blogs studiously maintained by lone scholars. However, for researchers new to academic blogging, is it still worth setting up your own …
Want to make your research credible online? Image matters
Whether it is via videos, blogs, social media, or mainstream news outlets, research findings are communicated in many formats and media other than the traditional research article. However, especially when they are divorced from standard markers of aca…
Mobilising Historical Knowledge without Master Narratives: How historians are correcting the record in a complicated political moment
Across the world and particularly in the USA, historical evidence has become increasingly central to certain contemporary political and policy debates. Drawing on a survey of US media sources, Dustin Hornbeck and Joel Malin, discuss this trend and desc…