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Social Media at Conferences

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  • Nov 8, 2022
  • #SocialMedia
Daily Nous / Justin Weinberg
@DailyNousEditor
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dailynous.com
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What are the norms for using social media to publicly discuss the conference sessions you’re attending? I don’t think the extreme free speech position of “tweet whatever you want, w... Show More

What are the norms for using social media to publicly discuss the conference sessions you’re attending? I don’t think the extreme free speech position of “tweet whatever you want, whenever you want” is the right one. Why not? Well, a conference may have policies regarding the sharing of conference content on social media that organizers have made explicit to prospective and actual conference attendees, and attendees should (barring highly unusual circumstances) abide by them. It doesn’t appear that many philosophy conferences have such policies, but it would probably be a good idea to have them (not just in their programs, but in their acceptance notifications), just as a way of communicating preferences and setting expectations. Even in the absence of conference policies, though, certain norms might be worth having in place in the profession regarding publicly posting about what a presenter says. This is because, generally, when one agrees to say something to a particular audience, they are not thereby agreeing to say that thing to the entire world. Also, “present as if the whole world might hear you” is not a desirable norm for most academic conferences, for various reasons (and this is true even if “the whole world might hear you” is a risk any presenter faces). At the same time, “what happens at the conference stays at the conference” is also not the right general norm. For one thing, a lot of social media commentary about conference sessions is of a sort that no one would seriously object to (e.g., “just heard so-and-so give a brilliant argument for such-and-such”). For another, sometimes social media commentary can be intellectually valuable through further discussion of ideas or by helping scholars with similar interests become aware of each other. And more broadly, that people want to talk about something counts in favor of them being able to talk about it, and one of the ways we talk is through social media. So what might be good norms to have? Here are some to get the discussion going, though it may be that different norms may be appropriate for different kinds of academic conferences: If a presenter asks that specific arguments or data not be shared publicly, that request should be..

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Tomas Bogardus @TomasBogardus · Nov 8, 2022
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I think this is worth a read, in the wake of the PPE controversy.
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