What’s next for #AcademicTwitter?

by Janet Salmons, Research Community Manager for SAGE Methodspace
Dr. Salmons is the author of Doing Qualitative Research Online, which focuses on ethical research and writing, and What Kind of Researcher Are You? which focuses on researcher integrity. Use the code MSPACEQ422 for a 20% discount, valid until December 31, 2022.

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Twitter Dilemmas!

This Academic Writing Month we have a new challenge. Many of us have found #AcWriMo on Twitter to be a place where we enjoyed support, encouragement, and a friendly way to commiserate with others about the joys and frustrations of doing academic research and writing about it. Twitter has been a place where we’ve shared links to new publications, and learned about each other’s work (and life) events.

Some of us have used Twitter as a research site, observing interactions, collecting data directly, or analyzing the Big Data flow from Twitter API.

All of these activities have been called into question with the recent purchase by Elon Musk and immediate dismissal of management and employees. Of great concern is the lax attitude towards content moderation for hate speech and extremist views. We don’t know yet how it will change, but it is clear that Twitter is changing. Some of us are exiting (I’ve closed my @einterview account) and others are staying and trying to carry on as usual. A number of academics are migrating to Mastodon, or are shifting more of their social media activity to other platforms.

While mulling these changes and potential implications, a post from Dr. Stu Shulman to the Association of Internet Researchers’ email list caught my attention. Stu, an experienced Twitter researcher, raised important questions and brought up troubling trends at play before the Musk transition:

“It’s the voluminous amounts of hate I see in my own research. Also the systemic weaponization of Twitter against democratic systems of
government globally.....

Evolving tactics use Twitter trains (tagging 30 like-minded users), notification-rich replies, the ReTweet functionality, gamification, domestic and foreign meme warfare, the idolatry of influence via misinformation, bots and trolls, as well as paid amplifiers of all manner and variety.

I briefed the US/UK Intelligence Community (staff from the Joint Chiefs, JSOC, etc.) February 12, 2020 via the Strategic Multilayer Assessment using open source information from Twitter. Things have since gotten much worse, not better, since that briefing. ”

— Stu Shulman

I was unfamiliar with some of these tactics and wanted to learn more. I also wanted to share his perspectives with Methodspace readers. Stu was willing to meet, and you can listen to our conversation below. Given that it is difficult to discuss these issues without mentioning the political context for Twitter, keep in mind that the views expressed are our own.

For some background, Stu Shulman is a trail-blazing social media researcher, and the founder and CEO of Textifter, LLC. Dr. Shulman has been the Principal Investigator and Project Director on 10 National Science Foundation-funded research projects focusing on electronic rulemaking, human language technologies, manual annotation, digital citizenship, and service-learning efforts in the United States.

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