( I N ) C I V I L I T Y I N A C A D E M I C S PA C E S

A D E L I N E K O H

“ U N C I V I L ” A C A D E M I C S

• Steven Salaita

• Said Grundy

• Melissa Click

• Diva Nair

• Mirelle Young

H O W H A S T H I S C H A N G E D T H E W AY Y O U U S E S O C I A L M E D I A ?

T O D AY

• Difficult conundrum of feeling the need to participate for ethical reasons, but being hamstrung

• Discuss how there is no universal solution to this; much of the reactions are contextual and rely on certain situations, etc. (political/state context; race, ethnicity)

• What does a “public” discussion mean on social media?

• Different affordances of social media tools and their advantages/liabilities

• Summary and Suggestions

M E L I S S A C L I C K & M I R E L L E Y O U N G

Melissa Click video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=xRlRAyulN4o

Mirelle Young Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=sLemX9QtUa4

S I M I L A R C O N T E X T S , D I F F E R E N T O U T C O M E S

• Click has been fired summarily without due process, a decision upheld by the Board of Curators at U of Missouri

• Young’s university (UCSB) paid for her defense fees; did not consider her in the wrong

W H AT I S AT S TA K E ?

• Different academic institutional/geographical-political contexts

• Different race/ethnicity

• Will administration protect you? Or use you as a scapegoat?

• Administration not equipped to deal with these 21st century issues

• importance of creating your own paper trail/records

W H AT I S P U B L I C ? H O W P U B L I C I S P U B L I C ?

P U B L I C S PA C E ?

P U B L I C S PA C E ?

Dorothy Kim (@dorothyk98): “please as you would in a social group at a public plaza that you do not really know and they do not know you, introduce yourself and ask politely if you can join in the discussion because you are very interested in x and y topic. Also, make sure you know what the conversation has actually been about before just jumping in. Be informed, be polite, and listen.”

Kim, “The Rules of Twitter”

A F F O R D A N C E S O F D I F F E R E N T S O C I A L M E D I A : FA C E B O O K A N D T W I T T E R

T W I T T E R

• Jessie Daniels (@jessienyc): “Facebook is a walled garden, Twitter is the Street”

• Positives of using Twitter Why is participating in conversation on the street important/career building?

L I M I TAT I O N S O F T W I T T E R

• Hard to follow conversations/get to read everything that’s been spoken in a conversation (will demonstrate an example, please do not live tweet this)

• “Hashtags” can be difficult to follow, if people aren’t using them

• The @ function

• Easy to take out of context

T W I T T E R A S R H I Z O M AT I C N E T W O R K

• Short character length makes it difficult to see whole context

• Some tweets get magnified out of proportion to other tweets, becoming perspectives from which an entire event is viewed

T W I T T E R ’ S P U B L I C N E S S : A D VA N TA G E S A N D L I A B I L I T I E S

• Publicness—easy to be surveilled, e.g. Saidy Grundy being “hunted” by white nationalists

• Problem of engaging with a public that has not had education in issues of systemic privilege/difficult to even have a conversation

FA C E B O O K

• The “Walled Garden”

• Importance of privacy settings

• Issues of screenshotting

• Does not have the ability of Twitter to be as impactful as getting to know people outside of your own circle

I S S U E S S O C I A L M E D I A P O S E S F O R R E S E A R C H

• Majority of people still hold that Twitter is “public”, but is it?

• Said Grundy: “I wanted to speak to a bubble. I was not trying for a mass conversation.”

T W I T T E R A N D E T H I C S

• Harvesting data and republishing it (e.g. tweets that make up an argument) = involves ethics because human subjects are involved

• Publishing research using hashtags may be profiting of people with less power/stature, while putting the crosshairs on them, especially women on Twitter (who often get rape/death threats/doxxed for speaking in public)

• We have not developed an IRB for humanists/social scientists specifically in the social media space

S U M M A R Y: T H I S I S A D I F F I C U LT C O N U N D R U M

• Sometimes institutions support/praise outspoken faculty/staff if it benefits them; sometimes they participate in their censure

• tl;dr: you are always being surveilled, no matter how “private” a space is

S U M M A R Y A N D S U G G E S T I O N S

• When embroiled in a public argument as someone precarious/contingent, smartest thing to do is to step away from conversation. Do not further engage publicly, follow up privately.

• Importance of creating your own paper trail/records/screenshots if necessary, to protect yourself, and curate an argument that will be legible to others.

• Useful apps: skitch.com for screenshots, storify.com for creating stories from social media, evernote.com for saving webpages