In this week’s blog, resident blogger Beth Price considers the pros and cons of sharing your research on social media and shares her advice for anyone considering trying to go viral.

Apparently, we spend more than 44% of our waking hours looking at screens, with the average person staring at their phone screen for nearly four hours every day. A slightly bleak statistic to open with, perhaps, but one worth bearing in mind. For the last few years, it has become more and more common for researchers to turn to social media to get the word out about their work.

As PhD students and early career researchers we know that the world of academic outreach is nothing if not competitive and it is a vital part of funding applications. The 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF) – the outcomes of which are used to allocate around £2 billion per year of public funding – introduced “impact” as an assessment criteria. Many universities require researchers at every level to produce impact statements, explaining how their research will impact and change society, culture, and communities. 

In other words, we have to prove how our research will change the world around us. It is no surprise that a lot of us turn to social media. 

Pros

1. Reach An International Audience And Build Connections

For niche research in the arts and humanities, it can feel like no one outside your faculty really cares about your research. While there are some great events for SciComm (science communication) which provide a platform for researchers to share their work to new audiences, like the national festival Pint of Science or Edinburgh’s Science Festival, there aren’t really any Arts & Humanities Communication events you can easily join. 

Social media, on the other hand, transcends borders and lets you reach people around the world who share your niche interest. You don’t have to worry about costs for things like travel or venue hire when you are only a scroll away. 

2. Social Media Academia Can Actually Be Fun…

…if you like that sort of thing. Personally, I enjoy (very basic) graphic design and video editing. I like the challenge of distilling my research into an accessible and engaging form, it helps me clarify my arguments. I love having a platform, small as it may be, to respond to things going on in the real world and to demonstrate why I am so enthusiastic about my research. 

More cynically, experience in any kind of content marketing and learning how to make engaging content for social media audiences is a useful skill. Like it or not, we live in a world driven by #content, and whether we stay in academia or not, knowing how to use it to our advantage is only a good thing.

3. Data, Data, Data

When it comes to proving that your research has had a tangible impact, social media is chock full of data to help. As well as likes, you can see how many people have viewed your latest post, whether they clicked, and how you appeared in their feed to name just a few data points. You can see spikes in engagement if you try something new, track changes over time, and get a sense of the demographic who likes your work. 

It is much easier to demonstrate how relevant and impactful your work can be when you literally have the data to point to. Rather than guessing at the number of people who turned up to a pub talk, with social media you can calculate every single view of your, undoubtedly excellent, work.

4. Bonus: You Can Make Money (sometimes)

According to some sources, influencers with at least 1,000 subscribers can make anywhere between $195 and $1,000 per post. Of course this depends very much on the content you’re posting and, alas, academic content is less likely to win you sponsorships than clothing hauls. But if you enjoy the work behind building an online audience and have a bit of luck to boot, you can quite feasibly make money from your screen time.

Cons

1. Beholden to the Algorithm

Never more easily demonstrated than with things like Meta’s new default limiting of “political content”, sharing your content on social media platforms means playing to their rules. Education isn’t enough of a justification to avoid censorship, having posts removed, and even losing access to your account, as sex education groups often find. If your research is considered “political” or inflammatory in any way, you might well find yourself losing followers rapidly. 

On a less serious level, getting your posts noticed, even by your followers, means playing the algorithmic game. Virality is fleeting, and you will have to keep switching up your output to stay relevant as the algorithm moves onto the Next Big Thing. 

2. Time Consuming 

Even if you enjoy the process of creating content, it is hard to argue that it’s a quick job to do. Content planning and research takes time. Filming or designing and editing your posts can be incredibly finicky, especially if you’re learning a new skill or trying to post the same video on TikTok and Instagram. Literally just being active enough on social media to keep your engagement up can take hours every day. There’s a reason that successful influencers do the job full time and hire editors, and trying to do it on top of a full-time PhD might prove impossible.

3. Oversaturation

I’m not going to touch the moral and philosophical debate on what it means for humanity and culture when everything is #content, that would be a thesis in itself. The reality of the social media landscape is that everyone who has something to say has access to a platform to say it, and it is very difficult to get noticed amongst the noise. Genuinely good content gets buried under endless bots and AI, and it can be demoralising to see something you have put hours into get ignored. Even established social media figures can see their followers decline and their reach drop for no reason other than they are not the newest creator on the scene. As a wise woman once said, one viral tweet does not a career make. 

4. Bonus: You Could Be Cancelled

As another wise person said, nothing is ever deleted from the internet. Accounts can be deleted and posts can be removed, but digital archives, screenshots, downloads and reposts cannot. You might be sharing great work now, but your profile can be linked back to you and to everything else you have ever posted online, including that one unforgivably weird fanfiction account. 

“Cancelling” is one outcome if the online mob turns on you, but doxxing and death threats are, depressingly, more likely. 20% of female journalists have suffered real-world assault following online threats and 70% of influencers have experienced some form of harassment or violence because of their work. 

So, there you have it. It is easy to start being an academic on Twitter (or Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube), but hard to do it well. Fortunately, giving it a go is free and requires nothing more than enthusiasm and a bit of research. Now you’ve read my words of wisdom, why not click that “add new account” button? 

We are always looking for contributors to the SGSAH blog! If you are a PhD student or ECR at a SGSAH member HEI and you have an idea for a blog piece, email beth.price@ed.ac.uk to get started.

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