Raiding the inarticulate since 2010

accelerated academy acceleration agency AI Algorithmic Authoritarianism and Digital Repression archer Archive Archiving artificial intelligence automation Becoming Who We Are Between Post-Capitalism and Techno-Fascism big data blogging capitalism ChatGPT claude Cognitive Triage: Practice, Culture and Strategies Communicative Escalation and Cultural Abundance: How Do We Cope? Corporate Culture, Elites and Their Self-Understandings craft creativity critical realism data science Defensive Elites Digital Capitalism and Digital Social Science Digital Distraction, Personal Agency and The Reflexive Imperative Digital Elections, Party Politics and Diplomacy digital elites Digital Inequalities Digital Social Science Digital Sociology digital sociology Digital Universities elites Fragile Movements and Their Politics Cultures generative AI higher education Interested labour Lacan Listening LLMs margaret archer Organising personal morphogenesis Philosophy of Technology platform capitalism platforms populism Post-Democracy, Depoliticisation and Technocracy post-truth psychoanalysis public engagement public sociology publishing Reading realism reflexivity scholarship sexuality Shadow Mobilization, Astroturfing and Manipulation Social Media Social Media for Academics social media for academics social ontology social theory sociology technology The Content Ecosystem The Intensification of Work The Political Economy of Digital Capitalism The Technological History of Digital Capitalism Thinking trump twitter Uncategorized work writing zizek

Interview with me in VoltEdu about academic social media after Twitter

From this North American Ed-Tech magazine:

Dr. Mark Carrigan is a digital sociologist at the Manchester Institute for Education, where he leads the master’s degree in digital education. He has spoken out about the question of whether it’s time for academics to let go of Twitter.

He said Twitter had a significant impact on the culture of academia, including the broadening of academic networks and leveling of academic hierarchies, which is why he finds its recent instability so concerning. 

“I’m convinced the site is going to die because of the debt burden and business model collapsing,” he said. 

Because of that conviction, he’s encouraging fellow academics who have become habitual users of it to face the fact that it’s in terminal decline and to consider whether it continues to be beneficial to spend time and effort on it. Part of the issue, he noted, is the disparity of experiences between non-subscribers and subscribers. 

“Unless an academic is willing to pay the subscription fee, their experience of Twitter is going to get progressively worse,” warned Carrigan. “And their ability to be seen and heard on Twitter is going to decrease over time. It’s not a very appealing prospect.” 

LinkedIn has been gaining traction as an X alternative for academics, he said, but that the norms of it are quite different and can feel constraining. “I don’t think there’s going to be just one Twitter alternative because we’re entering a very fragmented landscape,” he stressed.