Networked Scholars &…Authentic Influence?

Bonnie Stewart @bonstewart

University of Prince Edward Island Edinburgh 2014

networked scholarship

h"ps://www.flickr.com/photos/gforsythe/8717211019/  

influence = a complex equation

h"ps://www.flickr.com/photos/28517410@N02/5422484194/  

networks & institutionsare both reputational economies

Those within the academy become very skilled at judging the stuff of

reputations. Where has the person’s work been published, what claims of

priority in discovery have they established, how often have they been

cited, how and where reviewed, what prizes won, what institutional ties earned,

what organizations led?

(Willinsky, 2010)

what does this mean?

NETWORKED SCHOLARSHIP •  Introduction •  Context: Information Abundance •  Content: Influence & Networks •  Conversation: Authenticity?

dissemination of knowledge

what people had for lunch

CHANGE IN

HIGHER ED

Premise:

Online networks enable different forms of identity, legitimacy, and belonging

than institutions do

information abundance

h"p://www.flickr.com/photos/silaBx/9886617776/sizes/c  

backdrop: changing educational culture

knowledge scarcity

knowledge abundance

open systems

public, institutional values

market values

closed systems

increasing pressure to go online

channels of abundance = networks

h"ps://plus.google.com/+DaveGray/posts/CQRVeKEsUvF  

not about online/offline binaries

h"p://www.flickr.com/photos/zigazou76/5824384001/sizes/z/  

networks require literacies + ACADEMICS

networks require time

so.what counts as influence in scholarly

networks?

public identity = price of admission

not about tech

networked identities = multiple & participatory

my research

•  ethnography •  14 (13) participants, 8 exemplars

•  3 months of participant observation on Twitter & blogs •  10 interviews

dissemination advantage

but there’s more

community

connection

h"ps://www.flickr.com/photos/94342662@N00/3869483214/  

access to the conversation

speaking from the margins

speaking back to academia

speaking back to media/culture

participating from afar

but.

liability & constraint

signal/noise filters

h"p://www.flickr.com/photos/promediagroup/5726389205  

positioning fatigue

immersion required

not fully immersed yet?

h"ps://www.flickr.com/photos/zeon7/3204734196/  

literacies for understanding academic networked publics

Institutions Networks product-focused process-focused mastery participation bounded by time/space always accessible hierarchical ties peer-to-peer ties plagiarism crowdsourcing authority in role authority in reputation audience = institutional audience = world                      

authenticity?

h"ps://www.flickr.com/photos/esellers/8090580072/  

the word ‘authentic’ can be dangerous in

digital contexts

authenticity online?show your work

h"ps://www.flickr.com/photos/pooniesphotos/4452667112/  

is it just a numbers game?

h"p://manipulaBon.no-­‐art.info/overview.html  

profiles = identity work  

profiles = information

profiles = institutional ++

fluencies that matter

there are real, complex global conversations happening

keep learning to read them

h"ps://www.flickr.com/photos/koonisutra/7001349018/  

“who dares to teach must never cease

to learn.”

- John Cotton Dana, 1912

 

thank you.

@bonstewartbstewart@upei.ca