Academic Tweeting

[downer]

Do you use Twitter for any academic purposes? How do you make it useful for you?

I know that some people use it for promoting their articles and maybe some discussion. But most academic twitter seems about as useful as 4chan. I.e., occasionally entertaining as a horror show, but mostly just horrifying.

I know some people take it seriously as a social force. But my sense is that the people who take it seriously are those with huge egos (a sort of Trump phenomenon maybe). Their use of Twitter just shows their narcissism.

Of course, I'm long in the tooth and high in cynicism. Maybe the enthusiasts see something that I am missing?

[adel9216]

I often look at Academic Tweeting posts, I like learning form more experienced doctoral students or scholars who can post great tips in what we call "Twitter threads". I don't post much myself, because most of my following are people who aren't in academia.

[monarda]

I follow conferences that I'm unable to attend. The highlights of the meeting get tweeted. I also follow some folks who recommend good papers in my field. I don't follow very many people. Be selective!

[eigen]

I dabble, by which I mean I'm slowly growing a network of people with interesting things to say, and contributing occasionally.

I do find it useful- less for keeping up with my niche field of research, but much more so for keeping up with broad trends in my discipline and academia as a whole.

[fast_and_bulbous]

I rid myself of all social media a couple years ago (I was never very much into it) and you couldn't pay me to start using it again. Part of it is a matter of principal. Sometimes my work ends up on my employer's social media sites, and my grad students will sometimes post stuff from our research that gets a lot of attention. As far as two way engagement goes, social media is worse than awful: A bunch of mewling puking howling yawping horseshit, half of which is fomented by bots and bad actors, swirling around like a cyclone of sewage. It divides your attention, turns you into the equivalent of an ADHD riddled gnat with brain damage. No, I'm not cynical...

[wellfleet]

I use Twitter a fair amount for academic stuff. I tweet conferences *I* attend and then follow other people interested in those same sessions. I then get to see other conferences/events that I can't go to, but am likely to be interested in. I also follow other academics who tweet (productively--no whiners!) about responding to student writing, interesting assignment/course ideas, and hot new publications in my field.

I follow Twitter communities in some disciplines where I am interested in a field, but don't work there myself. I am fast to follow if I like someone's last few tweets, but quick to unfollow later if I'm not interested in what I see later on.

Overall, academic content represents less than half of my total Twitter usage, but I appreciate it a lot.

[aside]

I rid myself of all social media a couple years ago (I was never very much into it) and you couldn't pay me to start using it again. Part of it is a matter of principal. Sometimes my work ends up on my employer's social media sites, and my grad students will sometimes post stuff from our research that gets a lot of attention. As far as two way engagement goes, social media is worse than awful: A bunch of mewling puking howling yawping horseshit, half of which is fomented by bots and bad actors, swirling around like a cyclone of sewage. It divides your attention, turns you into the equivalent of an ADHD riddled gnat with brain damage. No, I'm not cynical...

So, tell us how you really feel!

I am a social-media troglodyte.

[youllneverwalkalone]

Do you use Twitter for any academic purposes? How do you make it useful for you?

I know that some people use it for promoting their articles and maybe some discussion. But most academic twitter seems about as useful as 4chan. I.e., occasionally entertaining as a horror show, but mostly just horrifying.

I know some people take it seriously as a social force. But my sense is that the people who take it seriously are those with huge egos (a sort of Trump phenomenon maybe). Their use of Twitter just shows their narcissism.

Of course, I'm long in the tooth and high in cynicism. Maybe the enthusiasts see something that I am missing?

While I am very far from a science Kardashian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashian_Index) I regularly use Twitter to promote my papers and keep up with those of others, among other things. I also occasionally have some pretty good conversations, especially since they expanded to 280 characters.

At my institution social media presence is encouraged (as part of the wider outreach we are required to do), and I am pretty sure that (coeteris paribus) social media exposure is correlated with citations so, while not a must, academic tweeting is pretty recommendable.

[polly_mer]

Do you use Twitter for any academic purposes? How do you make it useful for you?

When I was teaching intro STEM classes to non-majors, I followed a lot of people teaching similar college classes and high school.  Those folks would often show a demo or link to materials they were revising based on recent experience in a classroom.  For new demo ideas and new video clips, I found Twitter useful enough to check my feed a few times as I revised the upcoming unit.

Following science outreach groups similarly was useful for pedagogical purposes and my own outreach activities.

For research, I found very little useful in Twitter.  Following science news aggregators to skim headlines and click to the occasional blurb has taken the place of reading Chemical and Engineering News and APS News.  Nothing has replaced reading real, peer-reviewed articles found through a targeted literature search for my current research project.  As I get older with a better network, I am more inclined to contact a colleague to arrange lunch/dinner/mid-afternoon snack at the upcoming conference to chat as a way for more random thoughts related to the field.

[ab_grp]

I follow and read on Twitter but rarely post anything or even retweet.  To some extent, I am just nervous about how absolutely anything can be misconstrued, piled on, and immortalized these days.  There are a lot of people I follow in various fields, and I have learned a lot and have developed some new areas of interest.  I think some of my own work has improved due to this exposure to better methods or more critical ways of thinking.  Being able to follow conference hashtags is also helpful (doing that currently for one that I always have FOMO about). 

Like most social media, though, I spend too much time worrying about whether what I'm about to contribute is important or written well enough (even here).  Any tips for how to get better about that and connect more? I am mentioned once in a while if I have new research come out, and I think it's very valuable to share, but it's hard for me to feel comfortable posting about my own work! I always appreciate when others share theirs.  I also feel guilty about unfollowing people once I've followed them.  Maybe I'm just not cut out for social media.

[ex_mo]

As an elderly Millennial, I am on Twitter as is our custom. I use it for pseudo-academic purposes. I like following other academics in my field and those adjacent to mine for interesting tidbits of information. I also follow jokesters and other "famous" people.

My most engaged tweet to date has been a picture of a student throwing up off of a balcony with our university's slogan as a caption. I'm pretty proud of that.

[0susanna]

I'm not an influencer or anything, but I enjoy following other academics in my field who are more influential--or who have more time to come up with entertaining content. Twitter has been a helpful way to follow conferences from afar or conference sessions from down the hall. I also follow and occasionally interact with accounts engaged in a few book and TV fandoms. I've encouraged, and even assigned students to explore academic or professional ways to use Twitter, and a few have found it enlightening, though most remain dedicated to Instagram (for now--something else will probably emerge soon). At least one of my former students now uses Twitter very efficiently to promote her freelance business. I also created a little [well known author] daily tweet that I mostly maintain during the academic year. It's up to about 600 followers now--more than I personally have.

So far, I haven't enraged anyone or endangered my career, but it's impossible to avoid politics on Twitter, and it can get dark. I avoid posting anything more controversial than opinions about my discipline (and even that can be political, these days), but with an election looming, I'm seriously considering creating a separate account to share with students.

[downer]

When people say that they follow conferences on Twitter, what does that mean? Is there live video, or live commenting? Is there a conference organizer actively Tweeting everything that happens? Or is it commentary from the attendees?

How is all that better than looking at the conference program and the abstracts of the talks being given?

[ab_grp]

Downer, I usually follow the conference hashtag (e.g., #SIPS2019).  Some conference goers will live tweet a summary of a session, others tweet pictures of slides, some might point out a great panel discussion and link to a paper or project site.  I haven't attended a conference since I started following these kinds of hashtags, but I know people also use the hashtag to call attention or advertise an upcoming session for attendees.  For the example I gave above, there are also meet ups, get togethers, and sessions that are scheduled more on the fly (during the conference), so that's a way to get folks together and also announce the sessions.  Overall, I would say it gives a nice summary of what is going on at the conference, and there are ad hoc items at conferences (e.g., interesting or probing Q&A) that wouldn't be included in the program and abstracts.

[scamp]

Like most social media, though, I spend too much time worrying about whether what I'm about to contribute is important or written well enough (even here).  Any tips for how to get better about that and connect more?

Like with real world people, a good way to start connecting with people is to ask them for advice. I use my Twitter network regularly for technical questions, suggestions for references, and things like that. I have received lots of great suggestions - so many of us are siloed at our institutions where our research needs are so specific that we can't ask someone else in our department.

Sure, I have used my real life network to ask questions as well, but you can get some great crowd sourced answers and you aren't reliant on someone replying to e-mail promptly. If I want a quick answer on how to build something or a lab thing or if someone knows of a good R/LaTeX/whatever resource for something, then Twitter gives that to me and I get it from people who understand the context of my request.

There are enough well established scientists in my field who are on Twitter, so it isn't some backwater of useless academics or anything like that. Also, I got some free stuff from a company once when I tweeted about them. Bonus!