When discussing online social networking in some academic settings, it is easy to find negative opinions. I really liked Cathy Davidson’s engagement with the New York Times piece on “digital distraction”, precisely because it resists this tendency, debunking common assumptions and proposing more serious approaches to dealing with the influence of digital media in our everyday lives and especially our learning processes.
Having finally finished my PhD dissertation, I thought I owed my Twitter timeline an acknowledgement. Without my Twitter account, my thesis would have looked completely different, and most surely would have taken me a different type of effort and time to complete. I say this in a positive sense: my Twitter ‘timeline’ developed over time, and was the result of a both conscientious and serendipitous process of curation.
A curated, research-purpose Twitter timeline or network can be an amazingly rich source of information, feedback, inspiration, critique and positive work experiences in the offline world. Whereas it is clear that online networks impose certain discourses and practices, they still allow a great degree of customisation that can transform them from being an extra social and emotional weight to carry to becoming positive alternative research work spaces (which are “social” too!).
It is a very limited view to think of Twitter as a vehicle for casual social interaction with people we already know. If curated properly and if there is the honest will to share work, information and knowledge; to collaborate and interact beyond professional fears, envies and selfishness, a Twitter timeline can become a lively combination of seminar, workshop and library where academia is no longer preaching to the converted, and where academics can learn from those outside their inner circles. The possibilities are too good not to be explored. For me, they’re certainly more appealing than “a digital death.”
Read all HERE.