Welcome to Challenge 4 of WSU’s Research Impact Challenge!
In previous challenges, you registered your ORCiD, claimed your Google Scholar Profile, and learned about WSU’s digital repository, Research Exchange. You’ve probably noticed how scholarly identities proliferate across many websites, applications, and profiles, which can easily become overwhelming!
Today’s challenge asks you to reflect on your use of social media, to consider how these tools pertain (or don’t!) to your professional/scholarly identity, and to make some thoughtful decisions about where to focus your time and effort in the coming year.
Let’s get started!
Inventory your social media platforms
- Use the Social Media Inventory Worksheet to inventory the social media platforms you use. If you have a profile/account associated with a particular platform make note of your username, whether your profile/account is associated with your WSU email address, whether your scholarly identity is connected to the platform, networking, etc., whether or not you have reviewed your privacy settings recently and, finally, reflect on whether or not you like the platform.
- When you have completed the table, take some time to reflect on the questions at the bottom of the audit, and sketch out your priorities for this year.
Remember!
- There are no right or wrong answers in this exercise! The audit is not a to-do list, and the goal of this activity is not to encourage you to create a presence on all of these sites. Rather, today’s goal is to take stock of where you already are, and to spend some time thinking carefully about where you want to focus your attention and efforts going forward.
- Social media use may be more practical and useful in some disciplines than others. It can enable powerful connections with new colleagues and provide a platform to communicate about your work to the world. At the same time, there are risks, including harassment, abuse, even job security. People of color, women, members of the LGBTQ community, contingent faculty, people working on controversial scholarship, and other vulnerable groups are disproportionately likely to be exposed to these.
- The decision to engage on social media is always a personal as well as a professional one, and the stakes are not the same for everyone. Only you can decide the most meaningful and productive ways to engage with these tools for yourself. Be sure to keep self-care—and care for your colleagues—in mind as you decide where to put your time and energy and how to share your work with the world.
What next?
- Make some decisions for yourself about where you want to invest time and energy in your scholarly identity on social media this year.
- Some advice from others who have been there:
- Froelich, Heather, “How I use Twitter as an Academic,” 2017.
- Ready to talk about your scholarship online? Take a look at these Tips and Tricks from Altmetric (also a sneak preview at alternative metrics, which we’ll dig into in the second half of challenges).
- Are you experiencing harassment or abuse on social media? Check out the Crash Override Network for resources and support.
- How well do you understand the rights that you’ve granted to the sites, platforms, and apps that you use? Check out Terms of Service; Didn’t Read, a tool created by a “user rights initiative” that evaluates Terms of Services and assigns them grades based on how organizations describe their use of data, privacy policy, and tracking.
Learn more
- Make sure you understand WSU’s social media policy, which governs employees’ use of social media on the job.
- Check out Social Media at WSU for information about best practices when using and interacting with social media platforms.
- See also:
- Social Media – CAHNRS
- Social Media – WSU Spokane
- Social Media General Guidelines – College of Nursing: geared to students but appropriate for all who engage with social media.
- See also:
Preparing for the next challenge
Congratulations! You’ve completed Challenge 4 by taking an inventory of your current social media engagement and reflecting on how, going forward, you plan to use these tools to your best advantage.
The next activity, Challenge 5, will address how to organize on your personal web page everything you’ve completed so far.