Scholars now completing PhD’s have likely never known a world without the
Internet and social media.
Ultimately, this technological transformation is going to have major
implications on expert knowledge. The Internet increases voices and knowledge
available to all. Elitism in the expert knowledge world is declining; the
Internet democratizes knowledge building and use. Much more knowledge has become
available, and the distinction between experts and ordinary folks, what Gramsci
might have called “organic intellectuals,” is declining.
Academic bloggers frequently use blogs to keep up with the relevant literature
in their field, thereby providing a kind of public note-taking and
research-sharing exercise. Academic bloggers also use blogging as a rough draft
for ideas they later develop fully for peer-reviewed papers or books.
bloggers have embraced Internet technologies in ways that broaden the scope of
their research work beyond college walls and in ways reaching beyond old
disciplinary silos. This is partly about reaching audiences in disparate
geographic locations
Academics, like others who use Twitter, have found short updates a useful way to
find and maintain connections to others who share their research and other
interests
For academics that may toil in relative isolation from others who share their
immediate interests, the social connection of blogging and microblogging can
also provide an opportunity to curate the ideal academic department. While
in another era, scholars may have identified strongly with their PhD-granting
university, the college or university, or the academic department in which they
are currently employed, the rise of social media allows for a new arrangement of
colleagues.
Our colleagues in the humanities have embraced digital technologies much more
readily than those of us in sociology or the social sciences more generally.
A casual survey of the blogosphere reveals that those in the humanities
(and law schools) are much more likely to maintain academic blogs than social
scientists. In terms of scholarship, humanities scholars have been, for
more than ten years, innovating ways to combine traditional scholarship with
digital technologies.
scholars in English have established a searchable online database of the papers
of Emily Dickinson and historians have developed a site that offers a 3D digital
model showing the urban development of ancient Rome in A.D. 320.
academia is just scratching the surface about the implications of social networking and what exactly it is, what it means, and how it happens
scholarly speculation
"Has social networking technology (blog-friendly phones, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) made us better or worse off as a society, either from an economic, psychological, or sociological perspective?"
"students were using Facebook to increase the size of their social network, and therefore their access to more information and diverse perspectives. "
"Powerful new technologies provide great benefits, but they also change the way we live, and not always in ways that everyone likes. An example is the spread of air conditioning, which makes us more comfortable, but those who grew up before its invention speak fondly of a time when everyone sat on the front porch and talked to their neighbors rather than going indoors to stay cool and watch TV. The declining cost of information processing and communication represents a powerful new technology, with social networking as the most recent service to be provided at modest cost. It can be expected to bring pluses and minuses."
social networking technologies support and enable a new model of social life, in which people’s social circles will consist of many more, but weaker, ties
Social networking technologies provide people with a low cost (in terms of time and effort) way of making and keeping social connections, enabling a social scenario in which people have huge numbers of diverse, but not very close, acquaintances.
A brief look at social networking theory with interesting views of SNs and where academia are "at" with regards to the emerging field. The post is a little old (Aug 2010) but much is still relevant and the link through to the Freakonomics blog is worthwhile following.