Reflecting on Twitter’s trajectory under the ownership of Elon Musk, Charlie Beckett, suggests recent events have highlighted both the value of the platform for mass-communication and how pre-existing tensions on the platform are similar to those exper…
Category: Twitter
Requiem for a Tweet – Is there a future for the academic social capital held on the platform?
As the real possibility of platform death looms for Twitter, Mark Carrigan reflects on the role of the platform as stage for the accumulation of academic social capital and urges academics, learned societies, funders and those involved in the field of …
As Musk takes control are we heading to an ‘everything app’ or the break-up of academic twitter?
After much speculation, Twitter has been acquired by Elon Musk. In this post, Mark Carrigan asks, if now is the time to rethink academic twitter by separating out the knowledge exchange and academic community building functions that have up to this poi…
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…
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…
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…
Can Twitter data help in spotting problems early with publications? What retracted COVID-19 papers can teach us about science in the public sphere
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought science into mainstream public and political debates in novel ways, notably through the widespread use of social media to share and discuss new findings. In this post, Robin Haunschild and Lutz Bornmann discuss their r…
Using Twitter as a data source an overview of social media research tools (2021)
In this edition of Wasim Ahmed’s long-running series on using Twitter data as a research tool, Wasim considers the significance of the newly introduced Twitter ‘academic research product track’ and the different ways in which Twitter …
Socially distanced networks – 5 Reasons PhD students should engage with social media now
Peer support, finding a place within academia, staying up to date with the latest research, communicating research to wider audiences and navigating life after PhD. Ema Talam and Jon Fairburn outline five ways in which social media, and in particular Twitter, can make all the difference to PhD research at a time when regular academic … Continued
In 2021 let’s do institutional academic social media better.
Chances are you dutifully follow a number of poorly managed institutional academic social media accounts, producing infrequent, unengaging and perhaps occasionally important content. In this post, Andy Tattersall, provides advice on how to approach institutional academic social media in a more productive way and makes the case for its vital role in keeping academia connected … Continued