Steven Verjans. Social media and academia « Our Clouded Hills. Social media applications – like blogs, twitter, wikis and other “web 2.0″ applications – are becoming very popular.
But what sort of impact have they had in the academic context? My university is keen to get postdocs using these tools to improve collaboration and their skills base. Re-creating Organizational Reputation Using Social Media: Not quite outdated ideas. As much as I love academic writing, conducting studies and developing theories, all of this work shares one acute problem – it takes forever to get from first draft to print.
My just-published journal article with Adelaide King took about 8 years from idea to print, while the germinal paper on Organizational Identity & Identification with Jane Dutton and Janet Dukerich took a bit longer than 5 years. When you’re working on ideas to contribute to ‘the literature’, that cycle time of 3, 4, or 8 years is awful, but still somehow bearable. In part, it’s bearable because in the interim you are sharing working paper versions with colleagues, influencing their thinking and developing your own.