Volume Two - Academic Conferences

Andy Coverdale
Whilst new initiatives in her doctoral training present a new vision of doctoral education, they do not
necessarily support the academic infrastructure appropriate for effective dissemination and
networking that traditional disciplines have had years to evolve. Taking a more optimistic view,
Rebecca values the shared attitudes of an emerging culture of interdisciplinarity, and how they have
initiated new ways of working and communicating, recognising the potential contribution of social
media. Chris believes the fluid, multicontextual nature of social media is ideally suited to the
challenges of his interdisciplinary practice, enabling individual practitioners like him to both coalesce
around and transcend shifting communities of practice and social aggregates.
In contextualising the research scope within the trajectory of the doctoral programme, the inclination
to continue exploring the research field is countered by the necessity to ‘focus in,’ as research
questions and methodologies become formalised. Participants consistently expressed concerns about
sharing work directly linked to thesis development online, for fear of disclosure or revealing academic
naivety. Consequently, Hannah has been more inclined to blog about peripheral topics in her
research field, or examine wider socio-cultural and political issues that underpin her core topic.
Relating wider or peripheral contexts with thesis-focussed work has not only enable her to engage a
wider academic audience, but has also contributed to the later stages of her PhD, as it has become
necessary to evaluate research findings, and formalise discussions and conclusions.
Identity Management and Boundary Negotiation
The data indicate commonalities in the memberships of academic networks across different social
media. Some participants have attempted to make clear distinctions between online spaces for
recreational and social networking and those for their studies, and most have developed a
‘centralised’ site (usually a blog) with which to link distributed media. Hannah specifically set up her
PhD blog at the start of her third year to develop a more coherent and ‘professional’ online research
persona.
With multiple blogs, Chris saw his Twitter account as the ‘heartbeat’ of his social media practice: ‘the
place where most of my online activities collide.’ For several of the participants, this aspect of Twitter
networks has been a particular concern, as followers and followees represent potentially conflicting
and problematic social aggregates, and content related and conversational factors – such as
swearing, use of slang and academic lingo, radical views, and trivialised content – are seen as having
the potential to ‘interfere’ or conflict with the sensibilities of overlapping audiences. Paula has been
careful not to be ‘over-opinionated’ in her tweets, generally adopting a neutral persona, whilst Chris
has to modify some of the more outspoken nature of his tweeting when colleagues from his doctoral
training centre began following him.
Despite the rhetoric around the ‘participatory’ web, the generally low levels of interaction in this study
have indicated that non-interactive aspects of social media play a crucial role. Social media, and how
they are appropriated, have provided wide-ranging levels and orientations of interaction, discussion
and feedback. Participants’ audience perceptions have been integral to these activities, and have
been based as much on an imagined social context as on an informed or experiential understanding.
Participants tend to transfer (often perceived) audiences from one social media to another. Most for
example, assumed that people from their identifiable networks such as Twitter make up most of their
blogging audience. Similar assumptions also relied on corresponding relations in the physical world.
The participants expressed real concerns over the ambiguity of social media audiences, particularly
around blogging. By choosing to use social media, they have demonstrated a commitment to engage
in communication and dissemination processes that are more public, distributed, and potentially
uncontrollable. Their needs to identify and engage with real or imagined audiences is seen as
instrumental in the decisions they made about the content, style and tone of their social media
activities and output. When they blog, tweet and create other digital artefacts across interrelated
platforms and audiences, practice and identity agendas are further compromised whenever those
audiences are unknown or ambiguous.
Mapping the Research Field
As discussed previously, the act of mapping the research field, and ‘locating’ or ‘positioning’ oneself
within the research field is implicit in doctoral practice, particularly in the processes of reviewing
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