PhD researchers using social media:

Trajectories of academic identities

Dr. Antonella Esposito

London, 25th September 2015

Is there life (as a researcher) after the PhD?

Starting conversations

Providing help and collaboration

Posting papers

Organizing publications

Who’s afraid of the PhD candidates?

Engaged in “creative mixes of education, training,

research, work and career development” (Cumming, 2010, p. 26).

Asked “to define their own destinations”

(Cornelissen et al., 2007, p. 132).

Required to rely on “self-dependence and entrepreneurial thinking” (Selwyn, 2011, p.13).

The PhD students: more choices, more challenges

Facing unprecedented opportunities of building on ‘personal ecologies’ of people and resources (Andrews & Haythornthwaithe, 2011), across social media.

Challenged to combine “participation in technologically mediated informal learning activities and more formal educational environments” (Barron, 2006).

PhDstudent

Today Questions

1. What are the actual social media practices of the PhD researchers?

2. How can PhD researchers’ digital engagement be Conceptualized and how is digital identity related?

3. Which forms of resilience can be drawn from the PhD researchers’ narratives of social media practices?

An exploratory study on PhD researchers

Focus of the research is on the self-organized activities undertaken across Web 2.0 and social media environments by PhD researchers.

The unit of analysis relates to individual PhD researchers. The aims do not include any comparison among university contexts or national settings.

The endorsed perspective is on the socio-cultural entanglements of the PhD researchers using the digital tools in situated contexts, rather than on the socio-technical relationships between individuals and social media.

Empirical settings: a convenience sampling

Università degli Studi di Milano: about 1.400PhD students (multidisciplinary fields).

Università degli Studi Milano-Bicocca: about 600 PhD students (multidisciplinary fields).

Politecnico di Milano: about 900 PhD students (Engineering, Architecture, Design).

Institute of Education (now merged with the UCL): about 900 PhD students (Educational and Social Research).

Methods and type of data

Methods Type of data Validity

Questionnaire

(624 IT and 44 UK respondents)

Quantitative data: Web 2.0 tools adopted; research training and support received.

Qualitative data: actual digital practices and expectations.

Maximizing variation (Larsson, 2009).

Individual interviews (Total = 26; 18 Italian, 8 UK-based interviewees)

Individual accounts of the self-organized digitally-mediated activities.

Reflexivity among quality criteria, along with member checking (Charmaz, 2006).

Focus groups

(4, one per each university)

Collective narratives expanding and cross-checking previous findings.

Checking ‘theoretical saturation’

(Morse, 2007).

Question 1

What are the actual social media practices of the PhD researchers?

Types of digitally-mediated activities

PhD activities Tools/Venues Focus

Updating GScholar, Twitter, discipline-specific db, Facebook

Searching for relevant materials

Networking Email, Facebook, research-focused SNs

Seeking research bonds for future collaboration

Disseminating Academia.edu, Linkedin, Twitter, blogs

Building reputation

Discussing research issues

ResearchGate, Linkedin groups, Skype

Increasing self-confidence

Pursuing personal development

MOOCs, YouTube Expanding knowledge and first hand experiences

Social media uses: expected and unexpected

Supporting practices Expanding practices

“I set up some keywords in Twitter and check them daily for relevant content, but just ten minutes a day”.

“I’ve just presented a paper at a seminar just because I replied to a post in Twitter and a short chat started with a researcher”.

“You can receive notifications in real time if the researchers you follow have just published something there”.

“When reading some stuff, I am used to search for any related lectures on YouTube. It’s like getting to know the author”.

“I posted a question closely related to my research and just this sparked a heated discussion thread”.

“I realized on my own a series of video-lectures. I received some comments and discussed with the viewers for a while”.

Social media uses: expected and unexpected

Supporting practices Expanding practices

“In my research field Academia.edu is acknowledged as a reliable venue for disseminating published research”.

“It comes up that someone reads my papers there, contacts me and a collaboration may start”.

“Everyone is on Linkedin, no interaction, just business cards, this is its value”.

“It’s like an augmented email. Just focus on the topic when skyping with my supervisor. I can show my data and share documents”.

“I often consult or post on LinkedIn groups where my colleagues are used to hang out”.

“I was able to manage a whole research project with an overseas researcher, just using Skype and email”.

Question 2

How can PhD researchers’ digital engagement be conceptualized and how this relates to digital identity?

Digital engagement: Typologies vs Orientations

Identifying a set of typologies of digital learners/users is seen as reductive compared to the complexity of digital engagement (e.g. Gourlay & Oliver, 2013).

Thinking of digital engagement as variation patterns shaped by historically and socially situated orientations (interplay of individual agency and contextual elements).

Visitor & Resident approach for mapping online engagement

White & Le Cornu, 2011: space metaphor, orientations rather than typologies of fixed behaviours, no dichotomy btw V&R but fluid multiple orientations, useful to map individual behaviours in context.

BUT

Is the only space metaphor sufficient to map out digital engagement?

Is the Resident approach implicitly assessed asthe “appropriate” approach toward social media?

The Digital Engagement Variation Framework

Digital identity: Disclosing or not disclosing

Disclosing Not disclosing

“I strive to do this, to have one clear, not misleading academic identity online, but you know, at end of the day you have multiple online identities scattered across social networks and not aligned…this might be dangerous and indeed makes me anxious”.

“I think all this discourse of active and passive digital behaviours…I don’t agree at all…searching resources is a form of active digital behaviour that relates to the knowledge you embed in your research…and it’s an affordable form of digital identity…it’s so odd in a PhD, you’re never sure if you are allowed to disseminate something in a blog or such”.

Digital identity: Weaving or splitting

Weaving Splitting

“I find it obvious to have no separation between my use of social media in everyday life, and professional and academic use. It’s all encompassing, the issue is to be able to switch off, to draw your attention to the printed books in the library”.

“As a teacher I’m really concerned of my digital identity and I’m very careful of splitting private and professional accounts”.

“I’m researching teenagers’ digital behaviours…I feel a strong responsibility. I’m terrified by the chance they may discover my private social media accounts. Splitting your online identity is tyring indeed. For now my identity as a digital researcher is the only really active”.

Digital identity: the role of the successful examples

Emulating Keeping distance

“I think there is a stage in-between, when you see people blogging with other people incredibly well…researchersblogging with research assistants and research teams andeventually they take over…there’s quite a nice way to step in”.

“My supervisor is an authority in her field, but she also has 2.000 Twitter followers…I’d love to do the same on Twitter”.

“I know people who tweet a lot and people who post on Facebook a lot…I’m not sure that all package worth (…). I think it’s really overwhelming…if I had time to spend I would spend it for an article, to have a conversation with someone, I guess”.

“I really admire a couple of young researchers who publish a lot, formally and informally across social networks…but it’s not for me…I mean, you have to find your own way to be there, to raise your voice”.

Space: searching for a place in the digital engagement

Converging Choosing a drop-in approach

“I think it’s a key issue to let all your posts and lit searches converge to one venue, one domain where your identity as a researcher becomes more visible. It’s not easy at the start of the PhD, but it’s better that scattering your posts across lots of social media”.

“I have my account on Academia.edu, ResearchGate, Linkedin, Twitter…on a bunch of social networks, just for exploring them and, yes, also for a sort of ‘bulimia’”.

“I’ve learnt to follow the experts/peers I’d like to contact across the SNs they prefer. So, I often have a nomadic approach, shifting from one tool to another, if needed”.

Time: choosing own pace in the digital engagement

Tinkering with a strategy Fragmenting engagement

“I am designing a research blog and piloting a series of posts, asking the researchers in my group for feedback. If I make it, this blog will reveal my identity as a social researcher”.

“I would like to have a strategy in these things, to have a plan but, I’m afraid that my approach is mainly reactive rather than proactive”.

“I think that you should preserve your freedom of using or not using these tools, using them when you have time, also to play with them, without any goals or defined type of engagement.

Socialization: drawing individual or collective benefits

Individual benefits Collective benefits

“I started this blog because I had to re-qualify myself as an apprentice researchers againstmy professional background as a librarian…toward a tentative academic identity”.

“We started a collective page in FB because in our institutional website we didn’t exist anywhere as doctoral researchers. We managed to start having identity as group of young researchers in cultural studies”.

“I think that blogging makes sense if you take part in a collective blog and contribute to develop discussions, to let ideas spread out, as a research group”

Stance: identifying a prevailing approach

Embedding Diverging

“I often use social media or other tools in the open Web to solve practical problems as they come up in the PhD”.

“I definitely think you should been doing this, it’s integral part of your academic identity…as you advance in the PhD”.

“We should free ourselves from the utilitarian logic…NOT ‘I run a research blog to get this’, BUT ”I’m posting in a blog and observing what happens’. Only after that I’m be able to understand if my blog has met my initial objectives or has enabled me to find new goals I haven’t thought of at the very beginning”.

Tensions: relationship with contextual pressures

Combining Competing

“There is a lot of pressure on that…They tell you if you don’t do it you will not get any academic job. This was not clear in the PhD agreement, at the beginning”.

“If you try to stand out posting a lot on social media…this is not appreciated. They let you understand that it is worthwhile keeping a low profile”.

Question 3

Which forms of resilience can be drawn from the PhD researchers’ narratives of social media practices?

The forms of resilience

Forms of resilience

Description Mode

Staying afloat Surfing across tools without any planned directions, embedding digital flexibility but waiting for the mainstream.

Dialogical

Pursuing convenience

Coping with the digital day-by-day, aiming at solving occasional, practical needs.

Goal-oriented

Embedding the digital

Outlining a strategy for an online presence as a researcher.

Goal-oriented

Researcher as a bricoleur

Deliberately hanging out and lagging behind, leaving all the possibilities open.

Dialogical

Thank you for your kind attention!

@antoesp