Academic Tweeting

[Beebee]

I use Twitter for academic purposes (and do not allow professional contacts to friend me on Facebook, which I use for family, friends, and apparently for cat pictures, politics and mom groups). I really enjoy it for a few reasons. First, I tweet new papers and other achievements, especially those of my students. I noticed that senior people in my university and elsewhere find out about these through twitter, so it gives me more visibility. I also tweet things like group photo socials, or from conferences. I follow colleagues with similar research interests, and have added papers to my reading list through their posts. I also retweet and respond to tweets on academic subjects I care about such as increasing the representation of and support for women and minorities, career-life balance issues, scientific integrity, etc. So for me, it has been a good professional promotion tool.  I managed to lure a few other junior faculty to Twitter, so it seems we congratulate each other on it a lot?

Finally, I appreciate having a separate, science-only feed to escape the flood of politics, cat pictures and mom posts in my Facebook feed. Really, it is refreshing to have access to both at different points in time.

[fuwafuwa]

I've found Twitter and social media very useful for professional networking. I've had interactions on social media develop into real-life professional relationships and friendships. I've been invited to speak and have met collaborators with whom I've co-authored papers. I'm in the sciences.

[bibliothecula]

Please, can we not say that social media is not "the real world"? For those of us who attend and follow conferences on Twitter, have useful and in-depth discussions there, use it to begin and further collaboration, to assist others and get assistance ourselves, it is very much the real world. Thanks.

I use Twitter for all of those things and more: to support initiatives by RTing CFPs or data; to help people find jobs; to promote my own work and that of colleagues; to send useful information to students and colleagues; to get and offer advice; and to stay up-to-date with colleagues and friends who don't use other kinds of social media. As someone who cannot travel often to conferences or other events, it enables me to remain part of the scholarly communities to which I belong. It's an essential tool for disabled scholars and others who can't travel or attend as many events as they would like, and by careful curation of who you follow and who you let follow you, it can be a welcoming and morale-boosting network.

[downer]

It seems that part of the issue is whether there is a division of labor between Twitter and Facebook.

I see a lot of academic stuff on Facebook -- people promoting their work, having discussions, and all the rest of it. It is generally limited to one's FB friends, and that's OK. I find it very useful.

The distinctive feature of Twitter is that all one's posts are public. I'm definitely more cautious about public posting. I also see far less of the useful academic info sharing and discussion on Twitter than I do on FB. Maybe I am just not following the right people.

Maybe some disciplines are more on Twitter and others are more on FB?
(I do know people who link their accounts and seem to post everything to both, and Instagram too. They seem to crave attention.)

[ex_mo]

The distinctive feature of Twitter is that all one's posts are public. I'm definitely more cautious about public posting. I also see far less of the useful academic info sharing and discussion on Twitter than I do on FB. Maybe I am just not following the right people.

That's actually not entirely accurate. It is possible to set one's Twitter profile to Protected upon which anyone who wants to follow you has to request to do so. So its possible in that regard to have a more Facebook-like experience as you describe.

I find that my Twitter-self and my Facebook-self are much different from each other. Twitter makes it easy to retweet a pithy comment from someone else, which FB doesn't really do. Like, I wouldn't share (the equivalent of RT) a FB friend's cat picture, say. But that same person might tweet a funny think about their cat that I might RT if I wanted to share it with others. I guess Twitter, even if your tweets are Protected, is more public-facing whereas FB is more insular. Which is weird because one of the FB groups I'm in has almost a million members and people post VERY personal stuff there that they almost certainly wouldn't post to Twitter, even if their tweets were Protected.

[bibliothecula]

(I do know people who link their accounts and seem to post everything to both, and Instagram too. They seem to crave attention.)

They are being efficient.

[downer]

(I do know people who link their accounts and seem to post everything to both, and Instagram too. They seem to crave attention.)

They are being efficient.

Yep, that too.

[fast_and_bulbous]

They are being efficient.

http://explosm.net/comics/3283/

[glowdart]

A few of my professional contacts told me a couple of years ago about how they went around Twitter celebrating people's academic accomplishments as a means of improving the atmosphere of our profession. It's a minor little thing, but I have followed their lead and get great joy out of clicking like on people's publications, defenses, jobs, tenure, etc. I know few of the people I click, but the support is my way of combating reviewer #2 with positive energy. There's a good sized contingent in my field who does this now.

And I use it for professional networking, conference work, news, publication announcements, etc.

[AvidReader]

I joined Twitter last year because several major conferences in my field tweet on it, and because job adverts are shared freely there, and because I wanted to have a larger/positive web presence. I follow academic colleagues, scholars I admire, and research institutions. I enjoy it more than I expected to. I skim my feed every morning and note anything important; during conferences I might check in around lunchtime and at dinner. I post sparingly and "mute" anyone who strays too far off the academic topics that motivated me to join.

I tried to keep Facebook as a personal account, but an increasing number of my friends are academics, so there is some cross-over there. I un-followed all my friends when I was in graduate school. They are still my friends, but my feed is empty; if I want to see how someone is doing, I type in their name and go to their page, just as I did when I was in undergrad and Facebook was new.

AR.

[Katrina Gulliver]

I love twitter but most of my use is not academic. I do run the twitter for an academic association though. I find it useful to see where people have published books or articles, and to share CFPs. (and to congratulate people, as mentioned upthread).

I have also (in the last 24 hours) had something silly go viral (15k retweets and counting), so I have more notifications than I know what to do with. This can be a good or bad thing depending on what kind of person you are.

[nescafe]

I tweet about good books I'm reading, to share pictures related to my research, or to announce conferences, publications, or other things. I think one of the coolest things about twitter (unlike Facebook or other platforms) is that it allows for interacting with folks whose work I follow even if I don't know them personally. It's a great tool for connecting with people beyond my little corner of the discipline. I don't tend to chime in on the "academic twitter" conversations (like about the job market, PhDing, or #twitterstorians) but I often read those threads or connect to emerging scholars whose work excites me.

I have a long ongoing thread of "great history books I'm reading in 2019," which has been fun to create/add to.

[Juvenal]

All I have is a flip-phone and a FB account.  Am I "behind the curve"?  I suppose. Do I feel deprived? Not so much. But--as my account says--I'm mid-seventies and fading.  What is this "tweeting" of which so many speak?  Once upon a time I was a bird watcher before my eyesight got wonky.  Is this all about ornithology?

[mamselle]

Some tweets are by twerps, others not so much...

I have an account for my own work, and I do a separate NP account's Tweets for it, most of the time (and not very frequently for either).

Because I end up doing non-simple visuals, based on the NP's articles in its semi-annual mini-journal, and short photo-essay-like visuals for my own stuff, it can take a good bit of time to assemble a single Tweet, hence I don't do that many.

Very occasionally one gets some attention. I mostly do them just to maintain a bit of visual presence online, for myself, and because my PT job for the NP requires them.

I'd say each is semi-academic in it's own way; I start with a positive observation from the articles or from my own work, and set the visuals in conversation with them--or sometimes the reverse.

M.

[marwyn]

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...

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

Exactly my approach! Except, that I very rarely post anything personal. I prefer to keep my personal life away from social media.

Actually, I got the feeling that it matters to be on twitter in my field, since if you are not recognized and connected to some topics, you might not get cited or even noticed. Especially, if you're early-career and not well-established yet. The competition in the field is enormous. I do not have my own website, but I will probably need to have it by the end of the year. So... I post most of my research advances and interests on twitter.