The Public Intellectual

Online Scholarship in the Humanities

Kris Shaffer, Ph.D.CU–Boulder

kris.shaffermusic.com / @krisshafferview presentation at kris.shaffermusic.com/PublicScholarfork presentation at github.com/kshaffer/PublicScholar

hashtag:#PublicScholar

How many people read the average academic article?

3

Lokman I Meho, Physics World, 2007

On public scholarship: it's about finding the right audience, not the right size of audience.

When people Google your name or your research area, what do they find?

Research Wahlberg (@ResearchMark)

"It is going to happen. Maybe not today or this week, but eventually, you will be Googled. . . . When it happens, you will want content you created to appear early and often in the search results." "The Googled Graduate Student," Christopher P. Long

"[I]n building a community of readers, commenters and friends or followers, you are, in fact, cultivating a network of relationships that can enrich your scholarship." "The Googled Graduate Student," Christopher P. Long

Examples

Public scholarship in practice

Digital curiosities

376 downloads in 2011 from Literary and Linguistic Computing (most downloaded in LLC that year).Over 1000 downloads from open-access repository.140 downloads the day of the first tweet.Over 500 downloads in the first week post-tweet. "The Impact of Social Media on the Dissemination of Research: Results of an Experiment," Melissa Terras (JDH 2012)

Digital curiosities

"The papers that were tweeted and blogged had at least more than 11 times the number of downloads than their sibling paper which was left to its own devices in the institutional repository. Q.E.D., my friends. Q.E.D.""The Impact of Social Media on the Dissemination of Research: Results of an Experiment," Melissa Terras (JDH 2012)

Digital curiosities

"[I]f you want people to read your papers, make them open access, and let the community know (via blogs, twitter, etc.) where to get them.""The Impact of Social Media on the Dissemination of Research: Results of an Experiment," Melissa Terras (JDH 2012)

Digital curiosities

"[P]eople don’t just follow me or read my blog to download my research papers. This has only been part of what I do online — I have more than 2,000 followers on twitter now and it has taken me over three years of regular engagement . . . to build up an 'audience' (I’d actually call a lot of you friends!). If all I was doing was pumping out links to my published stuff, would you still be reading this [blog post]?""The Impact of Social Media on the Dissemination of Research: Results of an Experiment," Melissa Terras (JDH 2012)

Digital curiosities

"If you want people to find and read your research, build up a digital presence in your discipline, and use it to promote your work when you have something interesting to share. It’s pretty darn obvious, really:

If (social media interaction is often) then (open access + social media = increased downloads).""The Impact of Social Media on the Dissemination of Research: Results of an Experiment," Melissa Terras (JDH 2012)

Shaffermusic.com

From April 2013 to September 2015:54k page views34k unique sessions26k unique visitors3 posts with over 3000 views

Shaffermusic.com

"If (social media interaction is often) then (open access + social media = increased downloads).""The Impact of Social Media on the Dissemination of Research: Results of an Experiment," Melissa Terras (JDH 2012)

Engaging Students: Essays in Music Pedagogy

Active community of authors/editors on social mediaOpen-access"Blessay" format (Dan Cohen) Engaging Students: Volume 1 (2013) | Volume 2 (2014)

Engaging Students: Essays in Music Pedagogy

48k page views12k unique visitors3 articles over 1000 viewsMost pedagogy papers at SMT 2013 cited at least one article

The blog of a scholar active on social media can easily outperform a good open-access journal in readership.

Hybrid Pedagogy

Even more active community of authors/editors on social mediaOpen-access"Blessay" format Hybrid Pedagogy: journal | long-form publishing

Even more active?

Hybrid Pedagogy

Open-access journalRolling submissions & publicationMonthly Twitter chats (#digped)Quarterly MOOCMOOC (a meta-MOOC about MOOCs)Digital Pedagogy LabEditors tweet like crazy

Hybrid Pedagogy (2012–2014)

605k page views229k unique visitors10 articles with over 5000 views1 article with over 11k viewsI have six articles/essays with over 1000 views,and one over 8000 (>10k now)

Open-access publicationShort, accessible writingsRegular social media interactionActive networked community

"[P]eople don’t just follow me or read my blog to download my research papers. This has only been part of what I do online — I have more than 2,000 followers on twitter now and it has taken me over three years of regular engagement . . . to build up an 'audience' (I’d actually call a lot of you friends!). If all I was doing was pumping out links to my published stuff, would you still be reading this [blog post]?""The Impact of Social Media on the Dissemination of Research: Results of an Experiment," Melissa Terras (JDH 2012)

Other motivations for public scholarship

Correct mainstream media

"Social media is a fine venue for correcting misinformation in the media. In many cases, mistakes are not intentional - and reporters/bloggers may even thank you for your help. Social media also serves as a town square to discuss published research that seems too good to be true." "Science and Social Media," Kurt Englehardt

Find collaborators

Build interdisciplinary connections

The world as our classroom

Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson "call themselves science communicators. . . . We need similar projects. We need humanities communicators." "The World as Classroom: Calling All Scholars," David Kulma

Public scholarship and pedagogical work demand we stay rigorously nimble, willing to learn, and also to teach, at a moment's notice.

Public scholarship:

warnings

"For all of its benefits, Twitter still has a signal-to-noise ratio problem. And a harassment problem. It facilitates the antisocial and the parasocial alongside the social." My new social media POSSE, Kris Shaffer

"The more dangerous social-web-fueled gamification of trolling is the unofficial troll/hate leader-board. The attacks on you are often less about scoring points against you than that they’re trying to out-do one another. They’re trying to out-troll, out-hate, out-awful the other trolls. That’s their ultimate goal. He who does the worst wins." Trouble at the Koolaid Point, Kathy Sienna

"And what’s left when you’ve done as much digital damage as you can?Real-life damage. Doxxing ... Swatting ... Physical Assault." Trouble at the Koolaid Point, Kathy Sienna

"There IS no 'the authorities' that will help us.We are on our own.And if we don’t take care of one another, nobody else will.We are all we’ve got." Trouble at the Koolaid Point, Kathy Sienna

"What next?No idea. But I do think we need more options for online spaces, and I hope one of those spaces allows the kind of public conversations and learning we had on Twitter but where women — or anyone — does not feel an undercurrent of fear watching her follower count increase. Where there’s no such thing as The Koolaid Point." Trouble at the Koolaid Point, Kathy Sienna

"I don’t have to listen. I don't have to read every comments that's sent my way. I don’t have to respond. Not to everything. Not to everyone. I don’t have to put up with misogyny, homophobia, racism, jingoism in my Twitter feed. Twitter is designed so that if you @-mention me, I see it. I’m supposed to see it – and that’s the part of the point of online harassment: I have to see it. I block so that I don’t have to. Racist sexist trolls don’t get to make demands on me, on my time, on my energy." The Beauty of the Block, Audrey Watters

"My blocking trolls doesn’t damage civic discourse; indeed, it helps me be able to be a part of it. ... My blocking trolls doesn’t silence anybody. But it does help me have the stamina to maintain my voice." The Beauty of the Block, Audrey Watters

What to Expect When You're Expecting (the internet to ruin your life), Zoe Quinn

Public scholarship:

simple starts

Share your work on Facebook

Be known as a curator

Write "blessays" for public outlets

Join twitter

Start a blog(and share those links)

Resources & Platforms

Questions and demos

The Public Intellectual

Online Scholarship in the Humanities

Kris Shaffer, Ph.D.CU–Boulder

kris.shaffermusic.com / @krisshafferview presentation at kris.shaffermusic.com/PublicScholarfork presentation at github.com/kshaffer/PublicScholar