1. PhD researchers using social media:
Trajectories of academic identities
Dr. Antonella Esposito
London, 25th September 2015
2. Is there life (as a researcher) after the PhD?
Starting conversations
Providing help and collaboration
Posting papers
Organizing publications
3. Who’s afraid of the PhD candidates?
Engaged in “creative mixes
of education, training,
research, work and career
development” (Cumming,
2010, p. 26).
Asked “to define their
own destinations”
(Cornelissen et al., 2007, p.
132).
Required to rely on “self-
dependence and
entrepreneurial thinking”
(Selwyn, 2011, p.13).
4. The PhD students: more choices, more challenges
Facing unprecedented
opportunities of building on
‘personal ecologies’ of
people and resources
(Andrews &
Haythornthwaithe, 2011),
across social media.
Challenged to combine
“participation in
technologically mediated
informal learning activities
and more formal educational
environments” (Barron,
2006).
PhD
student
5. Today Questions
1. What are the actual social media practices of the
PhD researchers?
2. How can PhD researchers’ digital engagement be
Conceptualized and how is digital identity related?
3. Which forms of resilience can be drawn from the PhD
researchers’ narratives of social media practices?
6. An exploratory study on PhD researchers
Focus of the research is on the self-organized activities
undertaken across Web 2.0 and social media environments
by PhD researchers.
The unit of analysis relates to individual PhD researchers. The
aims do not include any comparison among university contexts
or national settings.
The endorsed perspective is on the socio-cultural
entanglements of the PhD researchers using the digital
tools in situated contexts, rather than on the socio-technical
relationships between individuals and social media.
7. Empirical settings: a convenience sampling
Università degli Studi di Milano: about 1.400
PhD students (multidisciplinary fields).
Università degli Studi Milano-Bicocca:
about 600 PhD students (multidisciplinary
fields).
Politecnico di Milano: about 900 PhD
students (Engineering, Architecture,
Design).
Institute of Education (now merged with the
UCL): about 900 PhD students (Educational
and Social Research).
8. Methods and type of data
Methods Type of data Validity
Questionnaire
(624 IT and 44
UK respondents)
Quantitative data: Web 2.0
tools adopted; research
training and support received.
Qualitative data: actual digital
practices and expectations.
Maximizing
variation (Larsson,
2009).
Individual
interviews (Total
= 26; 18 Italian, 8
UK-based
interviewees)
Individual accounts of the
self-organized digitally-
mediated activities.
Reflexivity among
quality criteria,
along with member
checking
(Charmaz, 2006).
Focus groups
(4, one per each
university)
Collective narratives
expanding and cross-checking
previous findings.
Checking
‘theoretical
saturation’
(Morse, 2007).
9. Question 1
What are the actual social media practices of the PhD
researchers?
10. Types of digitally-mediated activities
PhD activities Tools/Venues Focus
Updating GScholar, Twitter,
discipline-specific
db, Facebook
Searching for relevant
materials
Networking Email, Facebook,
research-focused
SNs
Seeking research bonds
for future collaboration
Disseminating Academia.edu,
Linkedin, Twitter,
blogs
Building reputation
Discussing research
issues
ResearchGate,
Linkedin groups,
Skype
Increasing self-
confidence
Pursuing personal
development
MOOCs, YouTube Expanding knowledge
and first hand
experiences
11. Social media uses: expected and unexpected
Supporting practices Expanding practices
“I set up some keywords in
Twitter and check them daily
for relevant content, but just
ten minutes a day”.
“I’ve just presented a paper
at a seminar just because I
replied to a post in Twitter
and a short chat started with a
researcher”.
“You can receive
notifications in real time if
the researchers you follow
have just published something
there”.
“When reading some stuff, I
am used to search for any
related lectures on
YouTube. It’s like getting to
know the author”.
“I posted a question closely
related to my research and
just this sparked a heated
discussion thread”.
“I realized on my own a
series of video-lectures. I
received some comments and
discussed with the viewers for
a while”.
12. Social media uses: expected and unexpected
Supporting practices Expanding practices
“In my research field
Academia.edu is
acknowledged as a reliable
venue for disseminating
published research”.
“It comes up that someone
reads my papers there,
contacts me and a
collaboration may start”.
“Everyone is on Linkedin, no
interaction, just business
cards, this is its value”.
“It’s like an augmented
email. Just focus on the
topic when skyping with my
supervisor. I can show my
data and share documents”.
“I often consult or post on
LinkedIn groups where my
colleagues are used to hang
out”.
“I was able to manage a
whole research project with
an overseas researcher, just
using Skype and email”.
13. Question 2
How can PhD researchers’ digital engagement be
conceptualized and how this relates to digital identity?
14. Digital engagement: Typologies vs Orientations
Identifying a set of typologies of
digital learners/users is seen as
reductive compared to the
complexity of digital engagement
(e.g. Gourlay & Oliver, 2013).
Thinking of digital engagement as
variation patterns shaped by
historically and socially situated
orientations (interplay of individual
agency and contextual elements).
15. Visitor & Resident approach for mapping online
engagement
White & Le Cornu, 2011: space metaphor, orientations rather
than typologies of fixed behaviours, no dichotomy btw V&R but fluid
multiple orientations, useful to map individual behaviours in context.
BUT
Is the only space metaphor sufficient to map out
digital engagement?
Is the Resident approach implicitly assessed as
the “appropriate” approach toward social media?
17. Digital identity: Disclosing or not disclosing
Disclosing Not disclosing
“I strive to do this, to have one clear,
not misleading academic identity
online, but you know, at end of the
day you have multiple online
identities scattered across social
networks and not aligned…this
might be dangerous and indeed
makes me anxious”.
“I think all this discourse of active
and passive digital behaviours…I
don’t agree at all…searching
resources is a form of active digital
behaviour that relates to the
knowledge you embed in your
research…and it’s an affordable
form of digital identity…it’s so odd in
a PhD, you’re never sure if you are
allowed to disseminate something in
a blog or such”.
18. Digital identity: Weaving or splitting
Weaving Splitting
“I find it obvious to have no
separation between my use of
social media in everyday life, and
professional and academic use. It’s
all encompassing, the issue is to be
able to switch off, to draw your
attention to the printed books in the
library”.
“As a teacher I’m really concerned
of my digital identity and I’m very
careful of splitting private and
professional accounts”.
“I’m researching teenagers’ digital
behaviours…I feel a strong
responsibility. I’m terrified by the
chance they may discover my
private social media accounts.
Splitting your online identity is tyring
indeed. For now my identity as a
digital researcher is the only really
active”.
19. Digital identity: the role of the successful examples
Emulating Keeping distance
“I think there is a stage in-between,
when you see people
blogging with other people
incredibly well…researchers
blogging with research assistants
and research teams and
eventually they take over…there’s
quite a nice way to step in”.
“My supervisor is an authority in her
field, but she also has 2.000 Twitter
followers…I’d love to do the same
on Twitter”.
“I know people who tweet a lot and
people who post on
Facebook a lot…I’m not sure that all
package worth (…). I think it’s really
overwhelming…if I had time to
spend I would spend it for an article,
to have a conversation with
someone, I guess”.
“I really admire a couple of young
researchers who publish a lot,
formally and informally across social
networks…but it’s not for me…I
mean, you have to find your own
way to be there, to raise your
voice”.
20. Space: searching for a place in the digital engagement
Converging Choosing a drop-in approach
“I think it’s a key issue to let all
your posts and lit searches
converge to one venue, one
domain where your identity as a
researcher becomes more
visible. It’s not easy at the start
of the PhD, but it’s better that
scattering your posts across lots
of social media”.
“I have my account on
Academia.edu, ResearchGate,
Linkedin, Twitter…on a bunch of
social networks, just for exploring
them and, yes, also for a sort of
‘bulimia’”.
“I’ve learnt to follow the experts/peers
I’d like to contact across the SNs they
prefer. So, I often have a nomadic
approach, shifting from one tool to
another, if needed”.
21. Time: choosing own pace in the digital engagement
Tinkering with a strategy Fragmenting engagement
“I am designing a research blog
and piloting a series of posts,
asking the researchers in my
group for feedback. If I make it,
this blog will reveal my identity
as a social researcher”.
“I would like to have a strategy in
these things, to have a plan but, I’m
afraid that my approach is mainly
reactive rather than proactive”.
“I think that you should preserve your
freedom of using or not using these
tools, using them when you have
time, also to play with them, without
any goals or defined type of
engagement.
22. Socialization: drawing individual or collective benefits
Individual benefits Collective benefits
“I started this blog because I had
to re-qualify myself as an
apprentice researchers against
my professional background as a
librarian…toward a tentative
academic identity”.
“We started a collective page in FB
because in our institutional website
we didn’t exist anywhere as
doctoral researchers. We managed
to start having identity as group of
young researchers in cultural
studies”.
“I think that blogging makes sense
if you take part in a collective blog
and contribute to develop
discussions, to let ideas spread out,
as a research group”
23. Stance: identifying a prevailing approach
Embedding Diverging
“I often use social media or other
tools in the open Web to solve
practical problems as they come
up in the PhD”.
“I definitely think you should
been doing this, it’s integral part
of your academic identity…as
you advance in the PhD”.
“We should free ourselves from the
utilitarian logic…NOT ‘I run a
research blog to get this’, BUT ”I’m
posting in a blog and observing
what happens’. Only after that I’m
be able to understand if my blog
has met my initial objectives or has
enabled me to find new goals I
haven’t thought of at the very
beginning”.
24. Tensions: relationship with contextual pressures
Combining Competing
“There is a lot of pressure on
that…They tell you if you don’t
do it you will not get any
academic job. This was not clear
in the PhD agreement, at the
beginning”.
“If you try to stand out posting a lot
on social media…this is not
appreciated. They let you
understand that it is worthwhile
keeping a low profile”.
25. Question 3
Which forms of resilience can be drawn from the PhD
researchers’ narratives of social media practices?
26. The forms of resilience
Forms of
resilience
Description Mode
Staying afloat Surfing across tools without any
planned directions, embedding digital
flexibility but waiting for the
mainstream.
Dialogical
Pursuing
convenience
Coping with the digital day-by-day,
aiming at solving occasional, practical
needs.
Goal-oriented
Embedding the
digital
Outlining a strategy for an online
presence as a researcher.
Goal-oriented
Researcher as a
bricoleur
Deliberately hanging out and lagging
behind, leaving all the possibilities
open.
Dialogical
