Blogging, Tweeting, and Other Digital Activities | The History of Science Society

Vol. 41, No. 3, July 2012
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Blogging, Tweeting, and Other Digital Activities: A Beginner's Guide to the Internet for Early-career Scholars

by Melinda Baldwin (York University)

I feel the need to preface this piece with a disclaimer: I am by no means an expert on any of the things named in the title of this article. In fact, I would say that I have been rather slow to figure out how to use the Internet for scholarly networking and professional development. But as I've learned since finishing my PhD, it is becoming increasingly important place for early-career scholars to establish a presence on the web. If someone searches for your name on Google, will you and your work show up on the first page of results?

If colleagues look on Academia.edu or Twitter for people interested in your subject, will your name come up? Having a visible digital presence enables you to forge connections with other scholars in your field—which will not only enhance your intellectual life, but can also bring opportunities like contributing to an edited collection or participating on a conference panel.

So how does one go about establishing a scholarly presence on the Web? I am going to discuss four strategies for making yourself visible on the Internet.

1. A Personal Web Site

If you are going on the academic job market, you probably need a web page—having an electronic CV comes in very handy, and not just for Google search purposes. If you list your page's URL at the top of your physical CV, search committees can visit your web page to obtain a lot more information than you can usually include in an application. Potential colleagues can download your papers, read about your projects, look at sample syllabi or teaching material—in short, they can easily find things they may not ask for in the application but that are nevertheless useful to them.

Many people I know have purchased their own URLs and hosting services, but there are also more low-maintenance (i.e., free) ways to build a web page. First, check to see if you are entitled to space on your University's server. Some universities may have resources to help you create a web page; at others, you may need to learn some FTP (File Transfer Protocol) or HTML, which can be a bit of a hassle if you are not tech-savvy. Furthermore, when you finish a PhD or postdoc, your University page will usually disappear, so make sure to back up your files! However, academic URLs tend to do well in Google searches, so they may be worth the extra effort.

The blogging service Wordpress is also a handy way to create a basic personal web site. For a good example, see Joanna Radin's page at http://joannaradin.com/wordpress/. Radin, now an assistant professor at Yale, built her Wordpress site while a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. If you want your own URL (as Radin did), Wordpress will register it for you at a very reasonable $18 per year. The drawback is that Wordpress's free page designs are somewhat limiting; design-savvy academics will likely prefer the greater freedom that a University or self-hosted web site gives them.

2. Social Networking

Online social networks can be incredibly valuable places to connect with other scholars interested in your field. I currently maintain the John Tyndall Correspondence Project's Facebook Community page, where I post interesting excerpts from Tyndall's letters and updates on Project news. A Community page has worked quite well for the Tyndall Project; anyone with a Facebook account can "like" and follow us without sharing their personal information, and the page is easy to maintain and update.

That said, Facebook is not where I would suggest establishing a personal profile for academic networking purposes. Most users think of Facebook as a place to play Farmville, post baby pictures, and keep up with high school classmates, not as a place to find potential HSS panelists. In fact, many Facebook users will be reluctant to add their professional contacts as "Friends" because of the personal photos and information they have shared there.

A great professional alternative to a Facebook profile is an Academia.edu account. Academia.edu, as the name would suggest, is a social networking site aimed at academics. It allows users to "follow" the updates of their colleagues and post their papers and CVs for other users to download. Academia.edu pages are highly ranked in Google searches, which makes them a good substitute for a personal webpage if you really aren't interested in creating a website.

Finally, more and more academics are signing up for Twitter accounts. Twitter is notable for its ability to let its users engage in quick exchanges, "re-tweet" an important or interesting post, and quickly find others interested in similar subjects by searching hashtags (terms with the # symbol in front of them). Another side benefit: Twitter accounts do well in Google searches.

Urban historian Katrina Gulliver (@katrinagulliver and www.katrinagulliver.com), a longtime Twitter user who coined the handy hashtag #twitterstorians and won the History News Network's award for the best Twitter feed, recently wrote a piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education on Twitter use for scholars. Gulliver's piece can be read on the web at http://chronicle.com/article/10-Commandments-of-Twitter-for/131813/. I highly recommend it to those who are new to Twitter—or those (like me) who are still figuring out how to use it.

3. Blogging

A number of my colleagues have begun blogging about their academic work to entertaining and insightful effect. Just to name a few examples in the history of science, Alex Wellerstein at the Center for the History of Physics maintains a terrific blog called Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog (http://nuclearsecrecy.com/blog/). American Science (http://americanscience.blogspot.com/) is a team blog which began as an outgrowth of the History of Science Society's Forum for the History of Science in America. There are currently six bloggers who write a combination of conference recaps, discussions of interesting recent news, and more theoretical pieces on topics like the relationship between the history of capitalism and the history of science. Will Thomas at Imperial College London maintains a blog called Ether Wave Propaganda (http://etherwave.wordpress.com/), which specializes in historiographical issues in the history of science.

Since I don't blog myself, I asked people who do about what their blogging has done for them as scholars. A few common themes emerged. First, a blog enables its writers to build and maintain connections with other scholars. Joanna Radin, who blogs for American Science and also maintains a Tumblr about her work called Curating Cold (http://curatingcold.tumblr.com/), wrote that a blog can create "a channel for keeping up with colleagues in between the big annual meetings. It's a way to maintain conversations or start new ones." Thomas from Ether Wave Propaganda echoed that sentiment; a blog, he said, can "keep you in contact with far-flung scholars working on your topic." Second, blogging can provide a space to explore theoretical issues or potential new projects, often in conversation the blog's readers. Thomas from Ether Wave Propaganda wrote that his blog "has allowed me to figure out what precisely what sorts of projects and writing I want to undertake." Similarly, Henry Cowles, a Princeton graduate student who blogs for American Science, said that blogging has "helped me formulate how I want to position myself as a member of the field and as an author vis-a-vis my actors." Third, many bloggers enjoy the chance to exercise a slightly different set of writing skills. Wellerstein said that the "need to produce short, readable bits of content on a regular basis really does change how I think and write about my subject, and I think there's been a real benefit to my more academic work." Finally, several people mentioned that the feedback they get from blogging has been helpful. Dan Bouk, an assistant professor at Colgate University and another American Science blogger, wrote that unlike academic articles or books, which can spend months and years reaching print, "Blog posts often get nearly immediate responses online."

4. Other Digital Projects

Blogging isn't the only way to go if you're interested in making your scholarship accessible to new audiences on the Web. Those who are interested in a non-text-based project might consider a podcast. Gulliver has started a "Cities in History" podcast, which she describes as "an exercise in expressing some of the themes of my work for a general audience." Gulliver scripts out her podcasts in advance, drawing on relevant sources from her research. The podcast (available for download on iTunes) has led to an invitation to contribute to an edited volume.

Another internet-based project that I think is performing a terrific service to scholars is the Dissertation Reviews (http://dissertationreviews.org/) website. It's a growing project that publishes friendly reviews of young scholars' dissertations; the site added science studies to its coverage last year. Reading Dissertation Reviews, or writing reviews for them, is a great way to learn about what's happening in science studies and to make contact with people who work in areas similar to yours. (In the interest of transparency, I should mention that my dissertation was reviewed on this site and that I have written a review for them as well.)

More ambitious technophiles may find inspiration in another Wellerstein project, Nukemap (http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/), a nuclear effects calculator which shows users the blast radius that would accompany dropping a nuclear bomb on any target on Google Maps. The site went viral and news outlets including ABC News, NPR, the Toronto Sun, and USA Today wrote about Wellerstein's project.

Concluding Thoughts

A strong Internet presence can be a major asset for early-career scholars; at the very least, it is important that your academic profile be visible on the first page of Google results when someone searches for your name. But there are potential pitfalls to watch out for. Assume that anything you post could be visible to anyone regardless of your privacy settings, and that it will be available on the web even if you delete it. (Google "Dartmouth professor Facebook" if you doubt this. Forget diamonds—the Internet is forever.) Users of social networks should avoid getting into arguments with other users (no one wins those arguments) or complaining about colleagues, advisors, and especially students. Early-career scholars should also be cautious about the amount of time spent blogging or networking—that time can easily come at the expense of a dissertation or book. Wellerstein warned that blogging "takes just enough work, and gives just enough immediate reward," to potentially become "a major distraction." But, he added, his own blogging "has more than paid off professionally and personally" during his postdoctoral career. If done thoughtfully, blogging, tweeting, and other digital activities have tremendous potential to enhance our scholarly lives.

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Melinda Baldwin is a postdoctoral fellow at York University and will be a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in the 2012–2013 academic year. You can follow her on Twitter at @Melinda_Baldwin or visit her on the web at http://melinda-baldwin.com.

History of Science Society

Blogging, Tweeting, and Other Digital Activities: A Beginner's Guide to the Internet for Early-career Scholars

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1. A Personal Web Site

2. Social Networking

3. Blogging

4. Other Digital Projects

Concluding Thoughts

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