10/31 Response
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 2 After reading both articles by the anonymous writer and by Kevin Gannon, I feel it’s really difficult to take a side or to disagree with both opinions because I think both authors have a point here. The digital world was invented for us (humans) to use it and to benefit from it, and I don’t think that the engineers who invented it made it exclusively available for those involved with engineering. Speaking specifically about social media, I think anyone involved in any academic field needs to use social media, just because it’s something immersed in our every day life, and it’s almost used everywhere around us, so it’s really hard to avoid it and push ourselves away from it. However, at the same time, I don’t believe that we should let it take over the traditional activities that we are accustomed to doing since we became involved in academia. Activities like, conducting research in a particular subject, responding to a presentation given by a speaker at a conference, getting a paper reviewed by accredited reviewers, etc. Therefore, the wy to go is to ballance between the two sides of the spectrum.
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 1 One of the points that Gannon mentions in his essay is that “social media has created opportunities for public engagement by scholars who don’t fit the stereotype our Guardian essayist privileges … me and others like me have found social media to be a democratizing and invigorating scholarly space.” (5). Now this point, is unfortunately a fact, and we can see that almost everyday online; however, I think that even if the opportunity is given to these scholars, it doesn’t mean that what they’re saying online is always worthy of attention and consideration, it could be just nonsense. And from what Gannon is writing here, I get the sense that because the “opportunities” are offered online (in the virtual world) for these unconventional scholars, they stopped looking for them in the real world. So they settled for the online democratic “scholarly space” in exchange of fighting for places in the less democratic “scholarly space” in the real world. Although Gannon has readers reading his published articles in academic journals, he seems to be very proud of the number of readers for his blog posts. Which could be a bit unfair comparison since there is a specific audience reading the academic journal, which typically are scholars interested in the field of the journal, versus an unspecified audience for the blog posts. Overall, I guess if Gannon had a solid proof to support his argument, like a survey or research findings, instead of expressing opinions and explaining personal experiences, his essay would have received more supportive comments from scholars who read it.
I must say, Rana, I’m refreshed by your balanced perspective here. I don’t know if its the strong positions we’ve seen from the authors we’re reading, or my own habit of taking strong stances, but the argumentative tension has been a little intense lately, and your recognition of value in both sides of the argument and call for a middle-road is downright refreshing.
I suppose the direction we’d go from here, if we can agree that some kind of middle road is best, is toward a more detailed understanding of how to balance “traditional activities” and using digital tools and social media for scholarly work. We should probably outline or at least move toward some idea of what kind of work is suited for platforms like Twitter or Facebook, and what is best left to long-form, peer-reviewed, more traditional platforms. That, I think, is the most productive place where Ganon’s argument might take us.
Cody is right, and you do offer a very refreshing, honest, and “balanced” perspective in this first paragraph. I don’t totally understand your point about how “anyone involved in any academic fields needs to use social media” simply because” its something immersed in our every day life.” There are lot of tools, ideas, techniques, concepts, etc. that factor into our everyday lives that may or may not factor into academic practice. So why ought social media platforms, in particular, be used to transcend boundaries between private and professional behavior?