The (Coming) Social Media Revolution in the Academy

Abstract

A revolution in academia is coming.New social media and other web technologies are transforming the way we, as academics, do our job.These technologies offer communication that is interactive, instantaneous, global, low-cost, and fully searchable, as well as platforms for connecting with other scholars everywhere. Scholarship: Knowledge Production and Use in a Networked SocietyScholars now completing PhD's have likely never known a world without the Internet and social media.For them, GoogleScholar is where you go to begin a search for articles, not a brick-and-mortar library or its bound journals.For scholar-activists, social media offer additional promises of public sphere engagement with other specialists beyond one's discipline through blogs and Twitter.As barriers to long-distance travel increase, scholars are creating virtual conferences through digital video and web conferencing or follow conferences from afar via Twitter hashtags.For those who travel to conferences, backchannel Twitter communications can be important ways to extend the hallway conversations with colleagues.Scholars are experimenting with crowd-sourcing in ways that supplement old forms of peer-review.As publishing moves to ereaders, academic publishers face challenges to keep up with revolutionary changes.Ultimately, this technological transformation is going to have major implications on expert knowledge.The Internet increases voices and knowledge available to all.Elitism in the expert knowledge world is declining; the Internet democratizes knowledge building and use.Much more knowledge has become available, and the distinction between experts and ordinary folks, what Gramsci might have called "organic intellectuals," is declining.However, new problems arise.The ability of those without critical-methodological training to deal with data smog (including fake, misinforming, and corporate-propaganda websites) is a serious barrier to peoples' understanding.Many Internet "analyses" remain superficial, even among supposedly expert analysts.The Internet provides the world with great new opportunities at democratization, open-source information and collaborative of scholarly knowledge production, while also containing serious, often hidden, pitfalls. Online Research in the AcademyNow, academics do so much research online that it is difficult to remember a time when this wasn't the case.In the dark ages before the Internet, doing research involved a library, searching drawers of card catalogs and bound volumes, and reading hard-copies of printed books and journals.This was supplemented by searching microfilm of newspapers and magazines, and much standing over a copying machine.Today, much work of academics has been transformed.Young professors and graduate students go to libraries, but rather than look in card catalogs, they look at library computers and their own wifi-ed laptops.There are still books on shelves, but librarians tell us these are The (Coming) Social Media Revolution in the Academy

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