scholars in the open: networked identities vs. institutional identities

Networked identities vs.

institutional identities

@bonstewart University of Prince Edward Island

Social Media & Society 2013

Scholars in the Open:

Higher education: multiple axes of change

knowledge scarcity

knowledge abundance

open practices

public funding

marketization

closed practices

False binary – both are reputational economies

Networked scholarly practices

institutional scholarly practices

Academic Reputation

Those who work within the academy become very skilled at judging the stuff of reputations. Where has the person’s work been published, what claims of priority in discovery have they established, how often have they been cited, how and where reviewed, what prizes won,

what institutional ties earned, what organizations led?

(Willinsky, 2010, p. 297).

What counts?

Not just new tools, but new literacies

h"p://www.flickr.com/photos/rofi/2647699204/    

Participatory culture = new ethos

“Paradigm cases of new literacies have both new “technical stuff” (digitality) and new “ethos stuff”…what is central to new literacies is not the fact that we can now

“look up information online” or write essays using a word processor rather than a pen…but rather, that they mobilize very different

kinds of values and priorities and sensibilities.”

- Knobel & Lankshear (2007)

Identities for a new ethos: open, public learner/educators

Differing sensibilities & legitimacy practices

Institutions Networks product-focused process-focused mastery participation bounded by time/space always accessible hierarchical ties peer-to-peer ties plagiarism crowdsourcing authority in role authority in reputation audience = scholars audience = world                      

Differing/conflicting credibility strategies

“Me, Inc.”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/4880623547

Networked Publics •  Multiple, overlapping, global networks •  Always public, always accessible •  Different audiences all in plain sight •  Identities are persistent, replicable, scalable &

searchable

…that awkward moment when you realize that your students – or your VP, or the person whose article you just trashed – follow you on

Twitter.

Context Collapse

•  How are status and reputations developed, circulated, and understood among participants in scholarly networked publics?

•  What practices and cues do networked scholars utilize to build and ‘read’ reputations for open, public scholarly work?

Research Focus

Thank you.

@bonstewart