Social media has increasingly become a part of professional, educational and personal lives. Now it also plays a part in whether professors get promoted.

The American Sociological Association recently released a report which found that social media has become a prominent player when a professor is up for promotion.

Faculty members at colleges and universities on a tenure track are generally hired as assistant professors. After about six years they are evaluated for tenure and promotion to associate professor, said Laurel Smith-Doerr, a professor at the University of Massachusetts and contributing member for the study, which was conducted by a task force.

“This task force was engaged to think about what it means for assistant professors to be evaluated based on their participation in public engagement, especially on social media,” Smith-Doerr said.

Posts on blogs and Twitter and “open-source journals” are now being used to access academic information, joining the ranks of past juggernauts in that field, such as proprietary journals, the report found.

“In short, the demand for accessible scholarly information has grown tremendously with the advent of free digital platforms,” the assigned ASA task force team concluded in its paper.

The report mainly touches on four groups: the committees for promotion and tenure, to offers guidelines for their deliberations on candidates for promotion and tenure; candidates, to see how interactions through social media affect the decisions made; new social media gatekeepers, to start dialogue on how to be fair in what they choose using quality while not reinforcing existing inequalities; and sociology, to maintain transparency and accountability.

“One thing I think the report raises that is important to note is that we know that double standards exist in evaluation of women and minorities, so it is really important to consider how to ensure women and faculty of color are not being judged more harshly,” Smith-Doerr said. “And if evaluating social media is not clear … it might exacerbate the unconscious biases by gender and race … that we all have.”

Social media has the power to raise the visibility and relevance of academic studies, according to the study. However, the ASA warns of the cons of social media, including falling into inequality, overworking and the sacrifice of “quality” for popularity and clickbait.

Published on September 21, 2016 at 10:23 pm