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Social Mediation of Higher Education: The Public Visibility and ‘Celebrification’ of Academia in the Cyberspace
Alenka Jelen
University of Central Lancashire
Introduction•Can you work with the ‘stars’?
•Celebrity culture and celebrification of academia
•Social media: visibility, production and reproduction of the ‘stars’
•Changes and impacts?
The concept of ‘academic fame’?
• Work publicly well known• Media profile: authoritative and expert comments• A name that guarantees a publishing/research contract (a
Hollywood star funding for a movie)• The discourse of fame in lectures, conference
presentations etc. (a figure that ‘dresses, talks and walks for the part’): to amuse and keep the audience interested (PPT, images, jokes, reflections etc.)
• Academic ‘fans’ and para-social relationships• The stairway to stardom: talent, ‘specialness’, hard work
and professionalism• Awards for outstanding achievements • The world of interpersonal competition, inflated egos,
justification of expenditures (Herrick, 2005)
Academics as celebrities
Still a ‘silly’ idea?
Concepts in sociology of fame• Adulation, identification and competition• The desire for fame • Originates from the primary need to be wanted • Encouraged by egoistical, fractured and
incomplete (post)modern identity• Fame offers material, economic, social and
psychological rewards (and working around the clock)
• Access to social space and the centre of meaning generation
• If you are not famous: periphery of power networks, ‘fan’ status, co-produce impressions
Differences between academic and celebrity culture• Public vs. private disclosure (maintenance of a
‘private world’)• Invasion of privacy• Academics usually strive to remain impersonal,
‘objective’, detached, and admired as ‘wise’ • The level of intimacy in relationships with the
‘fans’
• Less image and possessive-self domination (?)• Less psychological damage (?)• Loneliness and destructive devices (?)
Social media and academic circulation• Production, circulation and consumption of
‘academic fame’ transformed by new media
• New spaces and dimensions of public visibility
• Shifting the line between public and private• New reputation management?• ‘Fame’ and visibility manufacture and
construction?
Constructing an on-line ‘self’
•Blogging•LinkedIn •Facebook •Twitter•Academia.edu•Google Buzz?•Private vs. public
The importance of self ‘on-line’
•The power of Google: students googling us before joining university/courses/classes
The presentation of self on-(everyday)line• Institutional:
▫ Official university website
• Personal:▫ Blogs, Facebook, Twitter etc.▫ Academia.edu▫ Own websites (Teun A. van Dijk)
• Positive stories in building academic image: PR?• Preference for university profile websites (‘third
person’ endorsement)
Co-construction of ‘self’
• Twitter: quotes• Facebook:
▫ Status updates▫ Facebook groups etc.▫ To be or not to be friends?
• Blogs written about us by our students/ followers/ listeners/ opponents
• You have been YouTubed:▫ Lectures▫ Social situations
Reputation management?• It is not just you who defines your reputation
▫ How often students and other people who discuss things about you on-line?
▫ What are they saying? Why?▫ With who?
• Management and control of our on-line presence and appearance?
• Hire a PR consultant/assistant?
Issues for consideration• High potential visibility in the cyberspace
▫ Students as ‘ambassadors’ of our image (the level of control?)
▫ High self-monitoring: Be careful what you say or do, you might end up on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc.
▫ How to manage personal information/reputation on-line?
• Increasing visibility and ‘celebrification’ of academia in the cyber space
• ‘Panopticonisation’ of academia• The same route as politics?
Future research
•Potential research:
▫Visibility of PR academic community on-line?
▫Comparison with other fields?
▫How well do we practice what we preach?