ANZCA 2019

Australian Academics’ Public Communication on ‘Amplifier’ Platforms

Kim Osman, Axel Bruns, Jean Burgess, and Stuart Cunningham

• 5 July 2019 – Australia New Zealand Communication Association conference, Canberra

Abstract

Scholars are increasingly encouraged to inform mainstream debates and public opinion and exercises such as the Engagement and Impact assessment in 2018 have formalised such encouragement. Platforms like Twitter and The Conversation, a key amplifier platform for scholarly voices, enable experts to contribute to discussions on contested topics. However, how scholars use such platforms varies greatly. This paper will report on findings from two studies that form part of a multi-stage ARC Linkage-funded research project that examines the dynamics of scholarly contributions to public debate.

The first part of the presentation examines how scholars themselves frame their own use of amplifier platforms. We analyse how scholars negotiate creating a “public persona” (Marshall, Barbour & Moore 2018) in light of institutional requirements for engagement and impact, bibliometrics and the rise of alternative metrics from social media and digital media platforms like The Conversation. Our research highlights scholars’ own perceptions of their engagement in specific topical debates and controversies, the challenges and tensions they face in doing so, and the impact that such engagement has had on their institutional and public profile. The findings also exposit how scholars frame engagement as an ethical imperative and how they place emphasis on conveying evidence-based messages to issue publics.

The paper then moves from qualitative to digital methods, presenting findings from a multiplatform issue mapping approach (Marres & Moats, 2015) to investigating how scholars contributed to public debates about Australia Day 2018, the timing of which has become increasingly contested. Drawing on data from Twitter and The Conversation we analysed public communication patterns for the period from 9 to 31 January 2018. We developed an interaction network and identified the major media items that were circulating in relation to the debate and what, if any, scholarly contributions these contained. We then examined how clusters in the network engaged with these items. Our results reveal a divergent approach to the Australia Day issue due to varied ideological perspectives predominant in different interaction clusters.

Finally, we consider the kinds of scholarly contributions that meaningfully interact with these intersecting issue publics, or play a role in ‘hybrid forums’ (Callon, Lascoumes & Barthe, 2009) of diverse stakeholders and viewpoints. We consider how scholars themselves can work to promote the role of the expert in public discourse in light of engagement and impact, “which, in times of growing doubt about academic authority, is incredibly important” (Fecher 2017).

References

Callon, M., Lascoumes, P. & Barthe, Y. (2009). Acting in an uncertain world. Cambridge: Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Fecher, Benedikt. (2017). Academic impact outside of academia. Retrieved from https://www.hiig.de/en/impact-school-2017-academic-impact/, 28 Dec. 2017.

Marres, N., & Moats, D. (2015). Mapping controversies with social media: The case for symmetry. Social Media + Society, 1(2).

Marshall, P.D., Barbour, K., & Moore, C. (2018). Academic persona: The construction of online reputation in the modern academy. In Lupton, D., Mewburn, I., Thomson, P. (Eds.). (2018). The Digital Academic. London: Routledge.