So you want to be a publicly engaged academic? It’s an exciting time for doing public social science but to make it work you have to avoid the trap of the impact machine and the social media machine. Don’t get caught in their tendrils!
This board game charts your progress towards your ambition, as you start to use social media to take on a public role. But watch out if you start to care too much about social media because you’ll soon be pursuing followers rather than what you set out to do. Likewise if you get identified as an impact champion then before you know it, you’ll be trying to make your employer happy rather than make a difference to the world.
Escape is always possible but the more you’re caught in the impact machine, the harder it is to get out and the more likely it is you’ll end us as what Liz Morrish calls the Trump Academic. The more you’re caught in the social media machine, the harder it is to get out and the more likely it is you’ll become a self-replicating media node rather than a public digital scholar.
Mark Carrigan 