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The reward and risk of social media for academics

Nature Reviews Chemistry volume 3, pages 459–461 (2019)Cite this article

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We are three academics who are active on social media. We explore the motivations for and benefits of engaging with social media, as well as its costs and risks. Overall, we believe this engagement to be a net benefit for us, our employers and for wider society.

For better or for worse, society has been transformed by social media. However, academics who engage in this way must face some obvious dilemmas. How much time should be spent on social media? Does a social media presence erode academic authority? Is it possible to evaluate the impact of our online activities?

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Acknowledgements

B.B. acknowledges funding of his research fellowship from the Royal Academy of Engineering. The authors thank Emma Chapman for insightful discussions, and remind everyone that tweets often contain typographical errors associated with autocorrect. The authors also thank the 40 or so Twitter users who provided reviewer comments, via google docs, prior to publication of this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials, Imperial College London, London, UK

    Ben Britton

  2. Department of Earth Sciences & Engineering, Imperial College London, London, UK

    Chris Jackson

  3. Department of Physics, Imperial College London, London, UK

    Jessica Wade

Authors
  1. Ben Britton
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  2. Chris Jackson
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  3. Jessica Wade
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Ben Britton, Chris Jackson or Jessica Wade.

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Competing interests

B.B., C.J. and J.W. are members of TIGERinSTEMM.

Additional information

Related links

Imperial College London Social Media Guidelines: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/staff/tools-and-reference/web-guide/tools/social-media/

The authors of this article can be found on Twitter: @bmatb, @seis_matters, @jesswade

The Inclusion Group for Equity in Research in STEMM: https://www.tigerinstemm.org/

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Britton, B., Jackson, C. & Wade, J. The reward and risk of social media for academics. Nat Rev Chem 3, 459–461 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-019-0121-3

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