This is your reminder, for academic social media quality is better than quantity

The break up of academic Twitter has made it more difficult for academics to amass large social media audiences. However, as Andy Tattersall argues, the size of your follower count was never as important as the quality of the network you were joining and developing around your work.

Metrics play an outsized role in academia. Publication counts, citations, volumes of research funding captured, all shape academic life, especially when linked to career progression. As with any measure the bigger the number the better, the bigger the grant, the bigger the news story, the higher the ranking, the greater the prestige. Another metric academics have long fetishised is that of people in your network, for instance in the classic form of the Erdős number , or more recently in the number of followers you had on Twitter/X. But, does the size of your follower count still matter?^[1]

The rise of the academic micro celebrity

The writer and presenter Charlie Brooker once quipped that Twitter was a massive online multiplayer game and the object of it was to increase your score through the process of gaining followers. This gamification would lead to increasingly exaggerated behaviours in the search for recognition, be this hurling a chair onto a busy freeway , or for academics promoting behaviours that run counter to accepted norms .^[2][3][4]

It is easy to dismiss academic social media, but it launched careers, creating a certain kind of academic micro celebrity. The more followers you had, arguably came with greater influence and reach and success depended on many variables including esteem, subject matter and quality of communication. And, there is a growing body of evidence that it was an effective way of reaching people and creating attention. For institutions social media has become a trusted tool with regards to student recruitment. So much so that significant sums of money are invested in promoting and increasing their visibility in a very crowded and noisy online international market.^[5]

However, if Twitter/X was ever a massive multiplayer game, navigating the levels of social media following Musk’s take over has become significantly more challenging.

The end of an era

According to Altmetric.com , X’s golden age for sharing published research was between the start of 2020 going into mid 2024 before activity tailed off. The scale and network effects of academic Twitter in its prime also incidentally made it a good place to simply be to stay up to date or “ lurk ”. Bluesky has picked up much of that bandwidth, but is unlikely to achieve that level of engagement based on its current user base of 47 million and a lack of financial muscle. Bluesky’s academic uptake is disappointing, but reflects how important timing is. The site limited access around the time many accounts were leaving X, leaving the door open for LinkedIn to gather more new accounts. Whilst it is currently impossible for Altmetric to track research attention on LinkedIn, it feels like academic activity has ramped up somewhat in recent years and has even resulted in articles claiming the site has begun its own journey towards enshittification .^[6][7][8]

This exodus and dispersion presented academics with a choice: hold on and retain the fragile academic and social capital they had built up on Twitter/X , or jump platforms and start rebuilding audiences on smaller platforms. Increasingly, major institutions and notable academics and whole academic communities have taken the decision to leave and start again.^[9][10][11]

If, like most of us, you are not a high profile academic steeped in prestige, building big audiences has always been problematic. The break up of academic Twitter presents a range of new potential social media algorithms to navigate, Instagram and TikTok most notably. Similarly, the dynamics of platforms like Linkedin and Facebook and the need to “live ones your best life” can present users with a timeline of posts that celebrate success and a seemingly perfect professional career. Throw in a rising tide of AI slop posts and anxiety is cranked up further. This feeds imposter syndrome and makes it easy to forget that between these wins are the dull admin, heavy workloads, uncertainty and failures.

Beginning again

Sharing ideas and knowledge with a small curated network of peers has always been somewhat easier than building a large public audience. I have taught a lot of students and academics on how to use social media to communicate their work and a common concern is how do you reach lots of people? Unless you are actively trying to engage with the public or via the media, it has never been about the size of your network, but who you are connected to and their own network. That might mean taking time to cull connections that are either inactive or simply not interested in what you are doing and visa versa.

Rebuilding your network is one thing but a reset is also an opportunity to consider your wider social media communication strategy. This change in the social media landscape has meant a more cloistered approach to academic communications, but it is an opportunity for academics and professionals to be bolder and more personable. I would suggest the three pointers for those looking to engage.

• Start small, find the platform that links you to your research partners and from there to wider research communities and users.

• Quality of communication is better than volume, find formats that allow you to communicate in tailored ways, for example carousels, videos, audio.

• Don’t be generic, low effort and low quality content is increasingly a hallmark of AI slop. Be yourself, find your voice and try to convey what it is that is driving you to do research in the first place.

The last fifteen years have broadened academia’s reach and allowed many to find their own public voice. Academic social media’s dominance may have waned since X’s decline, but there are still avenues where academics can reach new audiences through such as Reddit , Wikipedia , blogs, podcasts and the evergreen news media and newsletter formats.^[12][13][14]

The pyramid like structure of social media always meant that building a large audience would be the preserve of a privileged few. That does not mean it cannot work for the remainder of the community, especially at a time when voices of evidence and reason are being suppressed. It might be time to take stock of your networks, think about what you want to say and share and who really needs to hear it.

This article gives the views of the author, not the position of LSE Impact or the London School of Economics. You are agreeing with our comment policy when you leave a comment.^[15]