Reflecting on the role of twitter in my professional life

I have a few thoughts regarding what it means to be a sociology professor in 2017 – many of them involve public life and some of them involve Twitter.

• If we believe, as we teach and as our research demands, that the social matters, then it follows that issues of injustice and oppression can be corrected if we can make the social context a just one.
• If we as sociologists know that, then we have a responsibility to make our scholarship known in the public sphere, where it can effect the social context. We can do this both in the classroom and through engagement with public scholarship, including blogs, facebook, opinion pieces, and twitter.
• But while we have this responsibility to engage, we do not have systematic backing from our institutions (which want us to be known, but only in a positive light) and so our we are not just talking about online danger – but danger to our livelihoods should the public engagement go awry.

So I am a participant in the twitterverse, but in a way that feels really ginger.

• I definitely maintain ties to a broad network of colleagues, activists, and former and current students online. I don’t think that I would be able to keep up with all the veteran students if it weren’t for twitter, and I would really miss that. I would also miss opportunities to be known in my field were it not for that identity.
• But I also feel like I tweet and re-tweet while looking over my shoulder – which I don’t appreciate.
• I try to use my twitter personality to bridge the personal-political divide. I am not a cog in the corporate higher ed machine, and I feel my timeline reflects that, but I’m still not 100% certain that its worth the anxiety.