Friday, March 3, 2017

Social Media in 2042 and the Present

Carleton is having an event that, among other things, ponders the future of public affairs stuff 25 years from now.  I was on a panel on:Academics in the Media Landscape: The Role of Scholar-Columnist-Bloggers with Stephanie Carvin, my colleague and frequent twitter banterer, Mira Sucharov,Hayden King,Dwayne Winseck and Frances Woolley (who is frequently wrong about bags of milk).

What did I say about the future of blogging?  I started with humility as I am not sure what 2042 will look like.  I put up pics of computing 25 years ago, now and the future (but blogger didn't like them so you can't see them here).


To suggest that 25 years ago, we had no idea what computers/the internet would look like in 2017 and thus we can't predict 2042 too well.

My second point is that we can't be too humble--we need to put ourselves out there even if we might be wrong, and so I displayed my post predicting a reasonably big Hillary Clinton victory.  Ooops.

I then suggested what will remain the same and what may change. In short, more academics will do some kind of social media to communicate their work, but not all as we are a varied group of folks, that how we do it will change quite a bit (who knows what the successor to twitter may be), that politicians will still be upset when academics say things about them, but that universities will eventually learn that trying to sit on bloggers is counter productive.  I also made a clear statement that tenure in the future, if it still exists, will still be focused on reserach and not engagement.  Oh, and that the media will rely on us even more since we provide heaps of content, including for those reporters who just want to cut and past a few tweets.

I concluded by saying our (academics) role is and will be:
  • Translate academic knowledge into digestible bits for broader audiences (the public cares not for lit reviews or methodology discussions).
  • Provide media with content/expertise
  • Engage--it can be a two way street, not just lecturing but interacting
  • Embrace academic freedom--who else can speak with few consequences?  

The other panelists said smart stuff, that I storify here.
















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