What role does social media play in our careers as academics who are, to paraphrase psychologist Sherry Turkle, increasingly "alone together?" Social media is playing a crucial role in weaving together networks of academics across the boundaries of region, institutional status and field. Online conversations create a comfort zone that facilitates the sharing of gossip, humor, and political views that merge with our scholarly interests. But, what are the rules? If one’s house is no longer easily ... view more »
What role does social media play in our careers as academics who are, to paraphrase psychologist Sherry Turkle, increasingly "alone together?" Social media is playing a crucial role in weaving together networks of academics across the boundaries of region, institutional status and field. Online conversations create a comfort zone that facilitates the sharing of gossip, humor, and political views that merge with our scholarly interests. But, what are the rules? If one’s house is no longer easily separated from one’s work space, under what conditions do we need to imagine our utterances on social media as occurring in the workplace too?
Dr. Claire Potter is a Professor of History at The New School for Public Engagement. She is the co-editor of Doing Recent History: On Privacy, Copyright, Video Games, Institutional Review Boards, Activist Scholarship, and History That Talks Back, published by University of Georgia Press in 2012, and the author of War on Crime: Bandits, G-Men and the Politics of Mass Culture, published by Rutgers University Press in 1998. Currently, she is writing a political history of anti-pornography campaigns, Beyond Pornography: Feminism, the Reagan Revolution and the Politics of Gender Violence. Dr. Potter is well known for her blog, Tenured Radical, which appears regularly in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
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