Social media offers academics a wonderful opportunity to get their message “out there”, to connect with, educate and inform a broad, new online audience. And universities encourage them to do so, to actively market and disseminate their research. Yet although this shouldn’t be a one-way process, the standard mantra for engaging online is: don’t read the comments. Based on his own experiences, and at a time when academics are not always held in the highest regard by the general public, Philip Moriarty has some cautionary advice for those eager to embark on their own online public engagement activities

Moriarty, Philip

LSE Research Online

5/2/2017Rules of engagement: seven lessons from communicatingabove and below the lineblogs.lse.ac.uk /impactofsocialsciences/2017/05/02/rules-of-engagement-seven-lessons-from-communicating-above-and-below-the-line/Social media offers academics a wonderful opportunity to get their message “out there”, to connect with,educate and inform a broad, new online audience. And universities encourage them to do so, toactively market and disseminate their research. Yet although this shouldn’t be a one-way process,the standard mantra for engaging online is: don’t read the comments. Based on his ownexperiences, and at a time when academics are not always held in the highest regard by thegeneral public, Philip Moriarty has some cautionary advice for those eager to embark on theirown online public engagement activities.For years I engaged, publicly and frequently. Blog posts were written, YouTube videos were made,comments were exchanged, ideas were “debated”. And arguments were had.I’m a publicly-funded academic. The way I saw it, I had an obligation to connect with those “out there”. For onething, they pay the bills. From a rather less venal perspective, however, debate and discussion are what universitiesshould be all about: the free exchange of ideas; the dissemination of knowledge; the development of critical thinkingskills. We should be willing to venture beyond the confines of our dreaming ivory spires and connect with non-academics both online and in rather more communal environments. We owe it to society. And it may even be funsometimes.Image credit: Alternative Facts by Richard Ricciardi. This work is licensed under a CC BY 2.0license.So I became the xkcd guy. I engaged online so much that my YouTube username appeared in a wordle (rememberthose?) of the very many thousands of comments that had been posted at the time under the videos for the SixtySymbols channel to which my colleagues and I contribute. I spent a great deal of time there clarifying what I had said1/6in one video or the, apologising for when I’d screwed up an explanation of the physics, or pointing out that, no, themomentum of the character in the video game Portal really isn’t conserved. (And, no, that’s not up for debate*.)I subsequently set up a personal channel and started to make videos for the Nottingham undergrads. I also madethose publicly available. I started to blog. And I started to tweet. I was regularly engaged, if not always engaging.Over the years, I estimate that I racked up more than half a million words of comments and responses. Half a millionwords. That’s five or six books’ worth. (And I should be clear here: I mean just comments and replies. Blog postsaren’t included in that total).And for what?Let’s be honest. Nothing. Or, at best, virtually nothing.Students, postdoctoral researchers, friends and colleagues repeatedly told me that I must be unhinged to engageonline as much as I did. For one thing, didn’t I know that YouTube comments sections just represented the collective,condensed, soul-crushing stupidity of humanity? Wasn’t I familiar with John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Theory? Didn’tI know just how toxic it could get?I’d instead point them to a rare productive exchange and say, “no, look, it works; don’t believe the hype (and thestereotypes)”. We have a powerful tool for outreach and public engagement here; we can get involved in genuinedebate with those outside academia. So I didn’t block, I didn’t moderate, I didn’t mute. I engaged. Publicly.But they were, of course, completely right. I was delusional. Vast swathes of social media are toxic, as manycompanies are belatedly realising. Yes, there are islands of intelligence, wit and constructive criticism out there butthat’s exactly what they are: islands in a sea of bile. New Statesman has pointed out the extent of the online toxicity.(Repeatedly). As have The Guardian (again, repeatedly), The Times, The Irish Times, Vice, and Time, among sovery many others. The bottom line is this: when the Daily Mail comments sections are more readable than theYouTube threads to which you’re contributing, it’s time to step back and reconsider your public engagement activity(and, more broadly, question just what the heck it is you’re doing with your life).Image credit: Up / Down [Exeter] by Sento. This work is licensed under a CC BY-SA 2.0license.2/6I therefore decided that, in true Buzzfeed style, I’d use this post to list (in no particular order) my seven rules ofengagement when it comes to the “online experience”. These are mostly an aide memoire for yours truly should Isomehow ever delude myself again into thinking that anything good can ever come of wading into a commentssection. But just in case there are those reading who may be considering starting up a YouTube channel orotherwise diving headlong into public engagement online, I hope that one or more of the following might be of someuse.7. “Skeptic” doesn’t mean what you think it means. There’s a large online clique that rather quaintly lays claim tobeing ever so more rational, sceptical, free-thinking and grounded in pure reason than the rest of us mere mortals. Ifyour social media activity involves discussion of social justice, feminism, minorities, gender, progressive politics(however that might be defined), or just about any aspect of social science, there is a finite probability that you’vealready tangled with, or will eventually end up tangling with, one or more of this crowd.This so-called “Skeptic” community collectively boasts well over a million subscribers/followers, the more committedof whom signal their allegiance to the cause – namely, the annihilation of that most vile of species, the social justicewarrior (SJW) – via clichéd avatars, pseudonyms, memes, and their tediously “edgy” vernacular. Arbitrary and angrycapitalisation; an apparently pathological inability to distinguish between “your” and “you’re”; a penchant for frogs andother cartoon animals; deep-seated obsessions with cuckoldry and karma; and a remarkable degree ofcredulousness are just some of the aspects of the in-group behaviour here.Do not make the mistake I made. Do not attempt to engage with this clique. That way madness lies.6. Follow the money. Anti-SJW punditry/activism is a big money spinner. A certain Hank Green pithily pointed thisout last year:Some of the leading figures in the SkepticsTM in-group have hundreds of thousands of subscribers or more and cantherefore make thousands of pounds per video (via Patreon income). Anti-feminism and, in particular, videostargeting the media critic Anita Sarkeesian have traditionally always been nice little earners. “Content” of that typehas steadily normalised and fostered a toxic online culture which has reached its nadir in the disturbing targeting ofteenage girls, who are driven off the internet following torrents of abuse. This Twitter thread highlights just howpopular (and, therefore, lucrative) that hate-fuelled “business model” can be.Something as innocuous as the trailer for the revamped Ghostbusters movie can be exploited to wind up an alreadyoverwrought audience and thus secure next month’s rent. (Even the appearance of female superheroes on tins ofpasta can be a tipping point for some of these hypersensitive souls, who signal their outrage via Twitter and othersocial media channels).Video-makers of this persuasion have a vested financial interest in stirring up and normalising as much in-group vs.out-group conflict as possible. It’s best to bear that in mind. By engaging you may well be contributing to the cost oftheir (or their parents’) new kitchen or basement refurbishment.And all the while Google turns a blind eye.5. They don’t need no education. We academics have got to come to terms with the troublesome issue that ourcomforting “education, education, education” mantra is hopelessly naïve when it comes to influencing opiniononline. Formal education and expertise are now regularly dismissed out of hand and confidence in universities issteadily falling. The general public has heard more than enough from experts, apparently. Academics who presentunpalatable material need to be named and shamed or, better, shut down for good.Evidence is dismissed if it fails to conform to a particular ideology. Alternatively, why bother with evidence ifsomething is just, well, obvious?  For example, the gender balance in physics is clearly due to fixed, innate,3/6immutable sexual dimorphism, right? Women and men are simply different; it’s clear as day. Sure, there’s not beenany type of study that normalises out, via appropriate controls, the societal and environmental contributions tolearning (and applying) physics, so as to confirm that the 80:20 M:F balance in physics has a genetic/biologicalcomponent. But even if they did normalise the data (somehow), those SJW feminazi “expert” scientists can’t betrusted in any case, can they? Women just aren’t cut out for science the way men are. It’s a fact.(You’ll excuse the sledgehammer sarcasm. Subtlety and nuance tend to be in fairly short supply online).Remember that we now live in a universe where the Mandela Effect and Pizzagate are taken seriously, where Flat-Earthers abound, and where the President of the United States has claimed that climate change is a Chineseconspiracy. And what’s worse, not only is education not enough to tackle this beyond-bonkers lunacy, it can backfire.4. Lowest common denominator “for the win”. YouTube, in particular, is no place for good-faith debate, whereopposing opinions might be considered carefully and their relative merits weighed up in a reasoned and reasonablemanner. Instead, clickbait titles scream REKT! PWNED! DESTROYED! BUSTED! It’s all about building thatsubscriber/follower base, after all, and ensuring that the clicks keep rolling in. This means that the in-group dynamicmust be fostered and encouraged, particularly if one’s income depends on it. As many tabloid newspaper editorsknow very well, playing to the gallery can pay dividends. On YouTube, the bar can be set very low indeed; audiencesof approaching a million can be depressingly built on the back of the most appalling content, lurid thumbnails and all.3. “Never wrestle with a pig…  you get dirty, and, besides, the pig likes it”. Some may recognise the (apparentlyapocryphal) George Bernard Shaw quote. Apocryphal or not, it remains especially good advice nearly 70 years afterShaw passed away (and is particularly apposite if our porcine foe is also profiting from the exchange).Misrepresentation, quote-mining, character assassination, threats, harassment, the appropriation of the Gish Gallop(from the creationist community, of all places), and a strong mob mentality are now the norm in some onlinecommunities, established via a combination of clickbait culture, a cult of “personality”, and the online disinhibitioneffect.2. They are anonymous. They are legion. On the subject of the online disinhibition effect, anonymity contributes toonline norms in both non-academic and academic settings. As I’ve stated elsewhere, removal of anonymity is clearlynot an option. But there is a major difference between using anonymity to protect one’s identity and exploitinganonymity to threaten and abuse others.What’s rather remarkable is that those who hide behind anonymity to threaten or fling out abuse are generallyamong the first to complain of “cowardice” when their target shuts down their comments section, and/or removestheir channel, because the threats/abuse become intolerable. (Indeed, as Sarkeesian has pointed out, they oftentreat this as a game). In other words, those hiding behind anonymity to abuse and threaten see fit to accuse ofcowardice those who have put their head above the parapet, shown their face, and openly stated their views. Thisrequires a rather flexible definition of the term “cowardice”.1. Everything in moderation. Two great posts, by Hank Green (yes, him again) and Chuck Wendig respectively,Stop Screaming In My Home and Don’t Read The Comments: Comment Sections Are Our Own Fault , brought hometo me just how much we have to reclaim comments sections. As I said above, my initial (rock-stupid) stance on thiswas that I thought it much better to expose the hate so I simply didn’t moderate or block anything (including,remarkably, libellous abuse and threats). But as Wendig puts it so very, very well:“Truth is, you can go to most comments sections and find enlightening, illuminating commentary. Youjust have to wade through a toxic slurry to get to it. That slurry represents the worst the Internet has tooffer, and there you are, crawling through it on your belly like someone trying to find his watch in agymnasium full of medical waste.4/6And it’s our own fault.It’s our own damn fault.We have failed to tend the field and now that shit’s all thick with weeds.We own this problem. Collectively.”Wendig also goes on to anticipate the response to the draconian, Orwellian, terrifying nightmare of a suggestion thatcomments sections be moderated:“And here you might say, ‘Buh-buh-wuh!’ And you’ll stammer out something about democracy andfreedom of speech and censorship. But I’d ask you shift your POV a little bit. Look at a commentssection like it’s the letter section of a newspaper… The letter section was not a free-for-all. They didnot print the rantings of every froth-mouthed cuckootrousers who wanted to air his conspiratorial,hate-fuelled grievances with the world. They moderated those letter sections.”Within the last few days, Ulrich Baer has made very similar arguments about freedom of speech in the pages andpixels of the New York Times: What ‘Snowflakes’ Get Right About Free Speech . (Hat-tip to Steve Shives forhighlighting the article in his usual informative and engaging style.)Those seven messages, as you may have noticed, are resolutely downbeat. (As Yeats put it, “ Being Irish, he had anabiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy”.) Does this mean that I amsuggesting we academics shouldn’t engage online? No, not at all. There are of course genuine and rewardinginstances of connection, discussion, and debate to be had. As one personal example, an undergraduate project hereat Nottingham (the results of which we’ll finally get round to submitting for publication this summer) had its origins ina crowd-sourcing Sixty Symbols video on correlations in drumming patterns and subsequent discussions in, whisperit, YouTube comments sections.Similarly, my colleagues and I have received many kind messages from Sixty Symbols (and Numberphile,Computerphile, Periodic Videos, Deep Sky Videos etc.) viewers across the world telling us that the videos have(re)kindled their love of physics and/or astronomy, mathematics, computing etc. (even, remarkably*, chemistry).Indeed, one of those correspondents is now in the second year of his PhD in the Nottingham Nanoscience Group.So it can work. Productive engagement online is possible. But be acutely aware of the many pitfalls and pratfalls thatcan befall you, not least those listed above. To engage as productively as possible, follow Wendig’s advice andregularly tend to those weeds.And don’t be surprised if many of those who publicly “critique” your efforts don’t even read past the title of yourpost/video/article before they vent their spleen. You’ll find that nothing is quite as irritating as those who want toengage without engaging.*Joke. One thing that often makes engaging online rather tiresome is the extreme literal-mindedness that is regularly encountered.Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Impact Blog, nor of the London Schoolof Economics. Please review our comments policy if you have any concerns on posting a comment below.5/6About the authorPhilip Moriarty is Professor of Physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham.His research interests span a number of topical themes in nanometre scale science with a particular current focus onsingle atom/molecule manipulation using scanning probes. He has a keen interest in public engagement via bothtraditional and ‘non-traditional’ media, and is a member of the Sixty Symbols team that last year was awarded theInstitute of Physics’ Kelvin Medal for “innovative and effective promotion of the public understanding of physics”. HisORCID profile (http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9926-9004) includes a full list of publications and grant awards.Copyright © The Author (or The Authors) - Unless otherwise stated, this work is licensed under a CreativeCommons Attribution Unported 3.0 License.6/6

Rules of engagement: seven lessons from communicating above and below the line

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