This year, FIRE launched the Free Speech Dispatch, a regular series covering new and continuing censorship trends and challenges around the world. Our goal is to help readers better understand the global context of free expression. The previousentries covered policing of online speech, assassination attempts on U.S. soil, and more. Want to make sure you don’t miss an update? Sign up for our newsletter.
One step forward, two steps back for Australia
(Mojahid Mottakin / Shutterstock.com)
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland confirmed there was “no pathway to legislate” the government’s controversial plans to require platforms to moderate “misinformation.” In other words, the legislation is effectively dead. The bill, which I covered in a previous Dispatch, defined misinformation as “reasonably verifiable as false, misleading, or deceptive” and “likely to cause or contribute to serious harm.” There are many free speech concerns that arise when the government grants itself the power to require moderation of speech it deems untrue.
But while Australia’s troubling misinformation legislation failed, another worrying bill sailed forward. Late last month, Australia passed the Social Media Minimum Age bill, legislation banning social media for children under the age of 16 that does not even allow for parent permission, despite the myriad threats it poses to free speech and privacy.
Australia isn’t the only country considering measures limiting youth access to social media. Here in the United States, the Kids Online Safety Act — which suffers from numerous First Amendment pitfalls — risks passage in Congress. Advocates and legislators have even pushed for bills similar to Australia’s that would wholesale stop American teens from accessing social media sites.
UK adds blasphemy to its mounting free speech woes
WATCH VIDEO: Free nations don’t have blasphemy laws. The UK needs to tread carefully.
Once again, the UK is making headlines — the bad kind. The reason this time? Late last month, Member of Parliament Tahir Ali called on UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer to lead “measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions.”
There’s a term for that: a blasphemy law.
The UK’s relationship with free expression is currently in a free fall and the last thing it needs right now is more forms of expression to police. Blasphemy laws are often packaged and promoted in language about protecting the powerless but, as countlessrecentarrestsandprosecutionsmakeclear, are regularly wielded as a tool to preserve power, whether religious, political, or somewhere in between.
Ali’s advocacy of a blasphemy law is deeply wrong-headed, but he is far from the only one to think it might be a worthy venture. Last year, in response to a spate of Quran burning incidents, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution encouraging more countries to “address, prevent and prosecute acts and advocacy of religious hatred” — a nebulous concept prone to abuse — and months later, Denmark enacted such a law.
That wasn’t even the only blasphemy-related story to emerge this month out of the UK. In November, the Advertising Standards Authority banned comedian Fern Brady from using an advertisement for her stand-up tour that comically depicted Brady in place of the Virgin Mary in a riff on Alonso Cano’s 17th century painting, “St. Bernard and the Virgin.” In its decision, the ASA alleged that the image could cause “serious offence” to Christians, and directed her to avoid causing insult “on the grounds of religions” again.
An investigation from Legal Initiatives for Vietnam discovered a shockingly high 90% compliance rate from companies including Meta, Google, and TikTok in response to government requests for content moderation, often of material critical of the government. Meta even utilizes a secret list of Vietnamese officials its users aren’t allowed to criticize.
Pakistan appears to be the first country to block the relatively new social media platform Bluesky, but that’s no great surprise given Pakistan’s frequent internet censorship efforts.
A Citizen Lab report found that books “largely related to LGBTIQ, the occult, erotica, Christianity, and health and wellness” were the top items Amazon restricts shipments of to certain countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Troublingly, Amazon “uses varying error messages such as by conveying that an item is temporarily out of stock” rather than stating upfront that the books are not available due to local censorship rules.
If you’re in Kyrgyzstan, watch what you say on the internet. In late November, the country’s parliament approved a bill that will issue fines for online “insult and libel.”
Russian communications authority Roskomnadzor is reportedly beefing up its efforts to cut off foreign internet access — including VPNs — in regions including Chechnya as it’s “testing its own sovereign internet it can fully control.”
The Parliament of Malaysia passed a worrying Online Safety Bill handing over to authorities broad new power to combat “harmful” content on the internet, including the ability to search and seize material from service providers without a warrant. “Freedom of speech does exist,” Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil said, “but we are also given power through Parliament to impose any necessary restrictions for the safety of the public.”
South Korea’s fleeting martial law decree threatened a free speech disaster
South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol in 2023 (Gints Ivuskans / Shutterstock.com)
On Dec. 3, President Yoon Suk Yeol shocked the world by declaring martial law in South Korea under the guise of protecting “liberal democracy from the threat of overthrowing the regime . . . by anti-state forces active within the Republic of Korea.”
The decree banned, among other things, “fake news, public opinion manipulation, and false propaganda” as well as rallies and “all political activities.” All media would also be “subject to the control of the Martial Law Command.” Alleged violators of these and other provisions risked being “arrested, detained, and searched without a warrant.”
Hours later, Yoon reversed course in response to massive protests and a parliamentary veto.
Speech-related arrests and sentencing from Hong Kong to Brazil
“Righteous people live, villains must die.” Elsa Wu, the mother of a Hong Kong activist recently sentenced to four years in prison, was arrested “on suspicion of disorderly conduct” for holding a banner with this message outside of a courthouse in November.
Indian journalist Mohammed Zubair has been charged with “endangering sovereignty, unity and integrity of India” for criticizing, and posting video of, comments a well-known Hindu priest made about the Prophet Muhammad. “It’s a classic case of shooting the messenger,” one of Zubair’s colleagues said. “It’s a witch hunt.”
Shortly after Zubair’s arrest, and on a similar basis, Indian police raided the offices of the Association for Protection of Civil Rights on charges including “promoting enmity.” The raid was reportedly based on the group’s social media posts highlighting abuses against Muslims in India.
Thai human rights lawyer Arnon Nampa, already imprisoned on similar charges, was sentenced this month to another two years in prison “over a 2020 social media post in which he allegedly criticised the king’s authority.” In total, he will serve over 16 years in prison and is one of many Thai activists punished for insulting or criticizing the country’s monarchy. Additionally, three Thai activists were charged with “contempt of court” for protesting a 2022 ruling from the Constitutional Court about the prime minister’s term limit.
Dozens of protesters have been arrested after demonstrating against Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze’s announcement that Georgia will postpone its efforts to join the European Union until 2028.
A Brazilian court has issued its longest-ever sentence for racism — nearly nine years in prison — over a woman’s 2017 social media video about a Malawian child adopted by two white Brazilian celebrities. The woman, Day McCarthy, called the child a “monkey” in a video and complained that “fake people and suck-ups” criticize McCarthy, “who identifies as half Black,” for not having “blue eyes and straight hair and a beautiful nose” but compliment the child’s appearance. McCarthy now lives in France and it’s unclear if she will serve the sentence.
Iran releases two dissidents but expands cruel crackdown on forced veiling critics
Last week, a wide-ranging new law went into effect that will further punish women who transgress Iran’s deeply oppressive mandatory hijab laws. Punishments range from flogging to long prison terms to travel bans and even death for “nudity, indecency, unveiling and bad dressing” and related crimes.
But amidst this awful development, there were some bright spots. Iranian cartoonist Atena Farghadani was released after serving eight months in prison on charges of “propaganda against the state” and dissident rapper Toomaj Salehi was also released after being held for 753 days over his support of women’s rights protests in the country. At one point, Salehi had been sentenced to death before the ruling was overturned by Iran’s Supreme Court.
Tiananmen joke grounds ‘Family Guy’ episode from in-flight entertainment
WATCH VIDEO: In the first episode of the TV sitcom “Family Guy,” Peter Griffin briefly stands in front of the tanks at Tiananmen Square. (YouTube.com)
Hong Kong airline Cathay Pacific is the latest example of a corporation eager to comply with the Chinese government’s political sensibilities after a passenger complained about an in-flight Family Guy episode that jokingly referenced Tank Man and the Tiananmen Square.
“We emphasise that the content of the programme does not represent Cathay Pacific’s standpoint, and have immediately arranged to have the programme removed as soon as possible,” the airline wrote in a statement earlier this month. It remains unclear what, exactly, is the company’s “standpoint” on the Tiananmen Square killings.
Mostly, but not all, bad news in arts and media:
Bangladesh’s Press Information Department recalled the accreditation of 167 journalists in the country, a “broad and sweeping cancellation” that has “left the journalist community alarmed.”
Haiti’s telecommunications authority CONATEL suspended evening show Radio Mega after a wanted gang leader called into the show “claiming that he was offered a large bribe by a member of the ruling Presidential Transition Council to negotiate peace with the gangs.”
After a lengthy 14 years, broadcaster Luisito “Chito” Berjit Jr. was finally acquitted after a Filipino court found there was insufficient evidence to find him guilty of libel over his reporting about alleged government corruption.
A report this month from the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute found that about two-thirds of respondents “perceived news outlets to have practiced self-censorship,” a record high result since the polling began in 1997.
French media regulatory authority Arcom reportedly fined a conservative TV station €100,000 for failure to uphold its “obligation of honesty and rigour in the presentation and processing of information” after it showed an image calling abortion the world’s leading cause of death during a Catholic program.
Kuwait has reportedly banned the release of “Wicked” within the country “amid reports that the film includes a gay character, which led to its prohibition.” The musical joins a long list of films, including “Barbie” and “Thor: Love and Thunder,” to face local bans over inclusions of LGBT themes or characters.
Belarusian authorities arrested seven reporters from an online independent news outlet for “supporting extremist activities.” The president of the Belarusian Association of Journalists said it “looks like the authorities have decided to arrest all journalists they suspect of being disloyal ahead of January’s presidential vote.”
If you expected to make it through this year without a censorship controversy from the divisive Australian Olympian break-dancer Raygun, think again. Her lawyers reportedly threatened legal action against the event space hosting comedian Steph Broadbridge’s show “Raygun: The Musical.” Broadbridge says Raygun’s lawyers “trademarked the poster used to advertise the musical” and “banned her from replicating the iconic kangaroo hop.”
Ideas for Your Online Presence Before, During, and After Your Talk or Presentation
The best time to share about your upcoming talk or presentation is before it happens. Some people find that their most engaged post on social media is announcing that you’ve submitted your abstract to speak (or your publication). People are excited by the possibility and what you care about. Telling your story of your upcoming speaking engagement is a great way to do that.
Sharing on social media can start early, but I don’t want you to think it’s the only way to help your online presence and the people coming to your talk. You’re going to explore many ideas today, but you don’t have to try all of them. I hope that there’s at least one idea that resonates with you and you’d feel comfortable trying it yourself.
When you submit an abstract for or are invited to speak
Add your website URL and social media handle to your bio. This will help people find you before, during, and after your presentation.
I’ve just submitted an abstract to speak at…
Announce that you’ve submitted – If you’ve been invited to speak, a good time to share on social media is when you’ve agreed or committed to that engagement. It’s great to add your social media handle and a link to your personal academic website if you have one, along with your bio. You might add that information to your CV.
Connect with people before you go
Once your talk is confirmed, you can add it to your website and you might take time to connect with your fellow panelists or event organizers before the event.
Conference Hashtag
If there is one, you can check out the conference hashtag and make plans with people who will also be at the event that you want to see, especially if you live in different cities or countries.
Business cards
If you have a business card, add your social media handle and website there is a good idea.
Share your talk on social media
When you’re sharing your talk on social media, people need more information than you expect. They need to know what your talk is about, when your talk is to know if they can attend, what the event is, and any link where they can learn more information. This is something you can share on any social media platform or across all your platforms.
Some professors hesitate to share their upcoming talk on Facebook where they may have a more personal audience, but these people are excited by what you care about when it comes to your research and how you choose to spend your energy. You might include , on all social media posts, any definition or story that helps people better understand why this talk or research matters to you.
Tag people or organizations that are related to your talk or event.
The conference hashtag can be added to your post about your talk but you can also add a hashtag that relates to the topic of what you are presenting on.
You can share the post about your talk before, during or after the event.
Create a graphic or infographic
If you create a graphic or share an image to go with your talk, a great resource is Writing image Descriptions on Accessible Social – which helps you create social media posts accessible for people with disabilities.
The next ideas are for things you can do while the event is happening.
Check out the conference hashtag, again
If you checked out the event hashtag, you might find that people weren’t using it. Once the event starts, you can start using the conference hashtag and check it out! See if there is a conversation you want to be part of, or an event you want to check out.
Be open about your online presence
The best thing you can do for your online presence while at an in person event, is to be open that you have a website or that you’re on social media.
Help people find and connect with you
You can make this easier for people by making a QR code that helps people go to your website, have this info on a business card, create a hand out with information or resource about your talk (that includes people need to your online presence) , or use an end slide in your presentation to help people connect with you after the event is over.
Resources to take home and share
When you create a resource like a handout or links /slides to share, that can go on your personal academic website. They can also be shared on social media using that conference hashtag to help people find this resource that you’ve already taken the time to gather.
Will this be recorded?
Ask if there is going to be a recording. Sometimes, there isn’t an official recording but you can ask if you can record yourself.
Stay connected once you’re gone
Connect with people you meet or you like and admire on social media, while at the conference. Helps others be more likely to learn about you.
It’s okay if you don’t do any of that too
I have never had time for any of that at conferences, personally. In person events can be overwhelming for me as an introvert. Because of that, I don’t have the brain capacity to remember things like take a photo, much less record some videos.
Anything I just talked about – some of those things can be prepped in advance others you don’t have to do live (you can do afterward)
Next are ideas you can do after your presentation or talk is over.
Whether there was a recording of your talk or not, you could always record your talk and slides using zoom, then post the video to your website or social media. There are options to share the full version of your talk, if you like to. You can just share the title slide, or full text version of the talk, or even the full slides.
Connect with people when you’re back at home
If you didn’t connect with people during the event, sometimes connecting AFTER the event is easier. You can look at the conference hashtag. Look through the business cards you collected. See the conference program and look at the bios to see who is on social media.
Create and/or share resources
If you didn’t have resources to share at your talk, if there are things you want people to know after the fact, you can create a graphic or handout that is shareable on social media or a page on your website.
Celebrate other people
While you can post about your own talk, you can also post about your panel and thank the conference and event organizers. If you want to participate in the conference community but not want to talk about your own talk, you can celebrate others instead. It’s a great opportunity for PIs to celebrate their lab members or grad students who are at the event. There are so many ways to celebrate people instead of yourself, if that feels comfortable or more exciting for you.
These don’t have to be professional shots. A messy desk shot or photo of you working on your slides or going over your notes on the plane. Something that feels quick or easy to you.
Take pictures during the event
Snap a photo of things you see, people you meet, friends you catch up with. Ask someone to take photos of you while you’re speaking or pose at the conference.
You could record a video of your talk
This can be before, during, or after the event.
You can record a video about your talk
Record a short video introducing your talk and the main takeaways. This video is especially for people who couldn’t be there live for your presentation.
Record some b-roll
If you like video, record b-roll video. Take a sip of coffee, getting ready to speak, short travel clips, video of fellow panelists or friends. These might be put into a longer video or Instagram reel.
But these might feel like too much – so even though they are fun ideas, don’t be stressed if you do none of them.
Ideas for Your Online Presence Before, During, and After Your Talk or Presentation
The best time to share about your upcoming talk or presentation is before it happens. Some people find that their most engaged post on social media is announcing that you’ve submitted your abstract to speak (or your publication). People are excited by the possibility and what you care about. Telling your story of your upcoming speaking engagement is a great way to do that.
Sharing on social media can start early, but I don’t want you to think it’s the only way to help your online presence and the people coming to your talk. You’re going to explore many ideas today, but you don’t have to try all of them. I hope that there’s at least one idea that resonates with you and you’d feel comfortable trying it yourself.
Before your speaking engagement
When you submit an abstract for or are invited to speak
Add your website URL and social media handle to your bio. This will help people find you before, during, and after your presentation.
I’ve just submitted an abstract to speak at…
Announce that you’ve submitted – If you’ve been invited to speak, a good time to share on social media is when you’ve agreed or committed to that engagement. It’s great to add your social media handle and a link to your personal academic website if you have one, along with your bio. You might add that information to your CV.
Connect with people before you go
Once your talk is confirmed, you can add it to your website and you might take time to connect with your fellow panelists or event organizers before the event.
Conference Hashtag
If there is one, you can check out the conference hashtag and make plans with people who will also be at the event that you want to see, especially if you live in different cities or countries.
Business cards
If you have a business card, add your social media handle and website there is a good idea.
Share your talk on social media
When you’re sharing your talk on social media, people need more information than you expect. They need to know what your talk is about, when your talk is to know if they can attend, what the event is, and any link where they can learn more information. This is something you can share on any social media platform or across all your platforms.
Some professors hesitate to share their upcoming talk on Facebook where they may have a more personal audience, but these people are excited by what you care about when it comes to your research and how you choose to spend your energy. You might include , on all social media posts, any definition or story that helps people better understand why this talk or research matters to you.
Tag people or organizations that are related to your talk or event.
The conference hashtag can be added to your post about your talk but you can also add a hashtag that relates to the topic of what you are presenting on.
You can share the post about your talk before, during or after the event.
Create a graphic or infographic
If you create a graphic or share an image to go with your talk, a great resource is Writing image Descriptions on Accessible Social – which helps you create social media posts accessible for people with disabilities.
These are ideas are for your online presence and networking while a conference or event is happening.
Check out the conference hashtag, again
If you checked out the event hashtag, you might find that people weren’t using it. Once the event starts, you can start using the conference hashtag and check it out! See if there is a conversation you want to be part of, or an event you want to check out.
Be open about your online presence
The best thing you can do for your online presence while at an in person event, is to be open that you have a website or that you’re on social media.
Help people find and connect with you
You can make this easier for people by making a QR code that helps people go to your website, have this info on a business card, create a hand out with information or resource about your talk (that includes people need to your online presence) , or use an end slide in your presentation to help people connect with you after the event is over.
Resources to take home and share
When you create a resource like a handout or links /slides to share, that can go on your personal academic website. They can also be shared on social media using that conference hashtag to help people find this resource that you’ve already taken the time to gather.
Will this be recorded?
Ask if there is going to be a recording. Sometimes, there isn’t an official recording but you can ask if you can record yourself.
Stay connected once you’re gone
Connect with people you meet or you like and admire on social media, while at the conference. Helps others be more likely to learn about you.
It’s okay if you don’t do any of that too
I have never had time for any of that at conferences, personally. In person events can be overwhelming for me as an introvert. Because of that, I don’t have the brain capacity to remember things like take a photo, much less record some videos.
Anything I just talked about – some of those things can be prepped in advance others you don’t have to do live (you can do afterward)
Next are ideas you can do after your presentation or talk is over.
After your talk is over
Record your talk
Whether there was a recording of your talk or not, you could always record your talk and slides using zoom, then post the video to your website or social media. There are options to share the full version of your talk, if you like to. You can just share the title slide, or full text version of the talk, or even the full slides.
Connect with people when you’re back at home
If you didn’t connect with people during the event, sometimes connecting AFTER the event is easier. You can look at the conference hashtag. Look through the business cards you collected. See the conference program and look at the bios to see who is on social media.
Create and/or share resources
If you didn’t have resources to share at your talk, if there are things you want people to know after the fact, you can create a graphic or handout that is shareable on social media or a page on your website.
Celebrate other people
While you can post about your own talk, you can also post about your panel and thank the conference and event organizers. If you want to participate in the conference community but not want to talk about your own talk, you can celebrate others instead. It’s a great opportunity for PIs to celebrate their lab members or grad students who are at the event. There are so many ways to celebrate people instead of yourself, if that feels comfortable or more exciting for you.
These don’t have to be professional shots. A messy desk shot or photo of you working on your slides or going over your notes on the plane. Something that feels quick or easy to you.
Take pictures during the event
Snap a photo of things you see, people you meet, friends you catch up with. Ask someone to take photos of you while you’re speaking or pose at the conference.
You could record a video of your talk
This can be before, during, or after the event.
You can record a video about your talk
Record a short video introducing your talk and the main takeaways. This video is especially for people who couldn’t be there live for your presentation.
Record some b-roll
If you like video, record b-roll video. Take a sip of coffee, getting ready to speak, short travel clips, video of fellow panelists or friends. These might be put into a longer video or Instagram reel.
But these might feel like too much – so even though they are fun ideas, don’t be stressed if you do none of them.
Introducing Dr. Monica Cox, professor and change maker for equity in the workplace
Jennifer: I’m so excited to feature Dr. Monica Cox, a professor, author, and change maker. Monica, thanks so much for coming today to talk about your new book Never Defeated: Nine Lessons from the Workplace Front Lines. I wanted to be sure to get that right.
Monica: It’s okay. That’s fine. It’s very long. So you did a great job. Thank you. So great to be here and to meet you in person, kind of.
Jennifer: Yeah. I know we’ve been connected on social media for a while and I’ve been following your amazing work, but I’m so excited to introduce you to The Social Academic community. Would you mind telling people a little bit about yourself?
Monica: Sure, sure. So I am of course Dr. Monica Cox. I am an academic and a professor, an engineering education professor. I’m also a former administrator and I am an entrepreneur who is the CEO and founder of STEMinent, LLC, which offers a variety of offerings that have an umbrella of helping people to emerge whole and bold and strong in the workplace, or whichever environment they so choose. So that’s me in a nutshell.
Jennifer: Bold and strong. I love it. I love it.
Monica: Yeah, thank you.
Writing Never Defeated
Jennifer: Tell me, What prompted you to write Never Defeated? This is such a powerful book. What, what made you know that it had to be out in the world?
Monica: Okay, so there’s the business answer and then there’s kind of the other heart related answer.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Monica: So I would say from a business perspective, I have a Stop Playing Diversity brand, which is based on just my commitment to authentic diversity, equity, and inclusion. And the quick part of that story is that when I was hired in my most recent organization, I told them not to hire me if they were playing diversity. And of course, they didn’t know what that meant. But over time I realized that a lot of the things that I needed to be successful in that workplace as a black woman administrator just, they weren’t there. And I decided to trademark Stop Playing Diversity, and that meant that I wanted to have guides coaching the business arm, and I wanted to write a series of books. So Never Defeated is one of the books that I’m gonna write as part of the Stop Playing Diversity brand and the trademark for the business. Amazing. So, like I said, that’s the business part.
Monica: The personal part is that I went through hell at work. It was a mess. And there’s a quote in the book where I talk about a blueprint and I wished I had a blueprint before I started this experience. But I always said, sometimes you have to be the blueprint. And as I was learning and documenting what was going on, I would look at tweets and kind of just record the tweets. And I wrote essays based on the things that were resonating with people on social media. So that is the heart part of this, where it’s my story where it also is informed from the voices of people who’ve gone through situations very similar to mine. And as you know about social media, there was also the upheaval with Twitter/X. And I thought, if it goes away, what about all of that information, all of those conversations. And this book is kind of the way for me to almost take ownership, to take back some of the valuable conversations and resources that came out of a really good time for me on social media. That was the long story.
Jennifer: Ohh! And a beautiful one that really touched my heart. So I hear what you mean when you say the heart side of, of your reasons for writing this very important book. Never Defeated is so powerful because it reads as authentic, it reads like you’re talking to me. And I think that’s what made me pick it up and not put it down until I finished.
Monica: Thank you.
Jennifer: I mean, I was like walking around the house with it, trying to make sure that I got all of these words in because, you know, sometimes when we see things on Twitter, it does make a meaningful difference in our lives. But seeing all of it at once, like being able to read your words, it just, it was, it was quite meaningful for me. I really appreciated it. Yeah.
Monica: Thank you. And I’ll say something really quickly about it, even this morning, my husband was telling me that someone was reading it and the words were powerful. So I thank you for this. It is still kind of difficult for me to process all of it because I’m also healing as I share what I’ve talked about. So it’s not easy for me to just be like, let me read this every day now. No, that was my life and I lived it. And it was just a moment. And there’s just an element about that that I wanna put about the book too, where it felt like I was sharing a piece of myself and it’s just that it’s all compact, but that was really my life with the death of, you know, my parents and so many real things that have impacted me. So, so even now I feel a little emotional talking about it because it was that real to me as a person.
Jennifer: Oh, I hear you. I hear you. And I really appreciate that maybe despite the emotional weight of writing the book and sharing, like you, you still put it out there in the world and you still write your tweets, even though, I mean, I, I guess I wonder, is there some fear when you’re talking about, you know, things that happen that are maybe not talked about in the room, like, but like you are saying it on Twitter. And so I’m wondering what are your feelings about that? Was it different when you were writing the book?
Monica: So, when I talk about the tweets, this seems very spiritual and some people may not get this, but I will, I will be asleep. And when I wake up I hear like, it’s almost like the words come to me. And so I’m writing them because it’s like, this is what I’m supposed to say for the day. And sometimes it’s punchy, but it is almost like you, you and I talking right now. I just know that there’s a thought that has formed. And so that’s what that is. I don’t feel the fear. When I write things that are so truthful because it is just as clear as to me that that’s what I’m supposed to say.
Jennifer: It’s like already formed in your mind when you’re going to say, I get that. ’cause it’s a poet. That’s how I write poetry. It’s not how I write social media posts, but it is how I write poetry. And so I really, I hear you when you say like, the feelings that, like, that happens when you’re writing it in your head and then it’s out there and you’re like, but I’ve already, it’s already there. It, it exists.
Monica: Exactly. And sometimes I’ll even, I have my phone next to me and I’ll write something as a note. And so that’s something too, like I’ll wake up at 3:00 AM and that’s one thing, the part about the book is that I had a book consultant, a developmental kind of editor.
Jennifer: Wonderful.
Monica: Thank you. And at first I was not going to write stories. Hmm. The first draft was very much practical, and that was it. And she pushed me to include more of myself in the book. And I did not think that I was ready to do that because there are some stories people didn’t know about. And I knew that I would be very vulnerable sharing, for example, how I contacted the president of my university when there were things happening after the murder of George Floyd. And you know, kind of what happened, like I’m whistle blowing on myself. To say, this is what I did with other people during this time. And one thing that people have really complimented me on, and I was very careful about is making sure that I, I was very truthful with my stories without naming names.
Jennifer: Yes.
Monica: So if people do not know where I work, you would not know. And my developmental editor, even by the time she looked at it, she’s like, I don’t even know where you work. So I realized that that’s an immense skill to be able to tell so much. And I do that on social media as well. So, so much without fully telling you what’s up.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Monica: And that also is something I would say that I have to tread carefully with from a legal perspective. Yeah. Because I was so involved in a legal case for three years where I had to decide, am I going to remove myself completely from social media? Am I not going to write? Am I gonna shut down my voice? Or am I going to figure out how to still share my truths without incriminating myself without telling too much? It was, it is a slippery slope to do this work. And I’ll say it’s very strategic, very deliberate. And I hope that’s what you see even as I’m like teetering right there. But nah, I, I know how to say it.
Jennifer: I’m curious when you say that you really had, you approached a point in which you had to make a decision whether to remove yourself from social media or to stay, what helped you make that decision?
Monica: Well, it’s the motivation for me actually being on social media. Once I was an administrator, I said it in my book that it was kind of like an archive for me, but I got to a point in my organization where it became very dangerous for me to be there because of the lack of equity work that they were doing. But also I could tell that I was being set up to be this scapegoat. And I wasn’t going to be that person, I was going to fight. So I had an attorney who I worked with at the time, and two of the things that he mentioned about social media usage is that it’s archived. And I mean, it’s an archived record, of course, of what happens. And he said, you have to tell the truth. Like in, in a court of law, it would be like the timestamps and is what you’re saying true. So I used it very strategically and I always said, because it literally got to a point where I was being harassed because of some stuff. I said, if anything, God forbid ever happened to me, then my husband, maybe my legal team, the people around me could look at what I wrote on social media and have that as evidence of what I was going through. So I was hiding in plain sight.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Monica: And people didn’t understand. What, why does she do this every day? Because I want people to know what happened on say, you know, Monday, February 17th. You know, people would say, “Oh, it’s too much. Why would a department chair do that?” Because I was concerned.
Jennnifer: People tend to have fear when it comes to social media, but you actually found some protection in it in the sense that it was a documented record.
Monica: Absolutely.
Jennifer: I’m wondering, for listeners who may be experiencing something similar on their university campuses, what kind of documentation do you recommend that they practice?
Monica: Well, I would say social media could be good, but you don’t even have to use your real name. You know, so some type of pseudonym or something. And I mean, of course if it ever came to the point where people needed to know that was you, you could say it was you. But that’s one way that you can use it. Another way. I mean, it’s email. When I was a department chair, I used to think about this all the time. There are some like basics. When you have a meeting with someone, you wanna make sure that things are clear. So you can send an email afterward. One of the things that people need to be careful of is having conversations on the phone, because that’s not really documentation.
Jennifer: Right.
Monica: You need it to be written. You need the summary to be written. And one thing that I even learned through my organization is that I would send things and people would not respond. But when it was time for me to compile information, you know, I could have, you know, five examples for of like, when I did contact people, like, “Hey, I told you I was in distress on this date. I told you that I was having this issue with an employee.” And I think that’s going to be one of the big things that we do strategically moving forward to protect ourselves, particularly in an anti-DEI age. People are going to avoid, they’re going to want to walk that fine line, but if we are in distress, we need to put that out there in writing that this is unacceptable. I am being treated this way and this is how I move forward. And I think one other quick thing I’ll say, the reason this is, this is very vital is because I’ve also learned through my experience that the policies are not in place to protect certain issues like microaggressions. There is no law against someone microaggressing you. There is no law in place against workplace bullying. So when you are experiencing situations that make you feel that your life is in danger, or in the case of, I don’t know if you saw Dr. Bonnie, Dr. Antoinette Bonnie, her full name is Candia-Bailey, she ended her life. You know, we need to tell our stories in ways that sometimes are cries for help, but are sometimes those records after we have left an organization to say, this is what happened on this day. This is my voice. These are the people who knew, you know, et cetera. Sorry I went off. That was long, but.
Jennifer: No, Thank you for sharing that much about all this. I, and I think that I have wanted to ask this kind of question before, sometimes I’ve had guests on my show that have experienced some bullying on social media and other things. I know I had Dr. Carlotta Berry, who came and talked about it. But you’ve been through the kind of legal battle and something that’s public. And you’ve written about it in ways that I feel like people will really hear what you’re saying and it, they’ll take it in and they’ll start practicing some of those things themselves. Like, I want to help inspire change with this conversation. And so I really appreciate you being open and authentic about that.
Social media presence and growth, How it’s changed for academics
Jennnifer: Now, when I think about your time on social media, like it’s been so impactful for your thinking and, and your thought leadership and what you share with people. But how has it changed over time? Like, you’ve been on social media for a while, right?
Monica: I have. I think Twitter was documented. I think I started in 2010. So how has it changed? I think people are actually talking, which is funny to me. You know, academics were not talking back in the day. I think there’s still some fields where people just kind of post their accolades, but now people are having more conversations. I also think when it comes to marginalized communities, people are bold, bolder about talking about the issues that are going on in their personal lives. So they’re showing more of themselves. They’re also talking about problems that they experience. I see a lot more political statements.
Jennifer: Yes.
Monica: You know, even religious statements, displeasure with things. And I wonder if it’s like the younger generation that’s coming in, but I feel they just have less fear when it comes to displaying themselves. And just talking about. I’m southern and you know, I come from this more subdued, maybe cultural environment. But I mean, there are people who drop in their pics in tight dresses. They’re kissing up on folks, you know, they’re just like grown and sexy. And I think we need to see people who are just beautiful in every form, who are thoughtful and funny. And so that’s what I see. I see people who are human more and not afraid to be human. And that’s good.
Jennifer: Hmm. What about for yourself? Do you feel like you’ve leaned more into that over time? Or have you always shown up and been authentic?
Monica: You know what? I think that all of this connects back to our disciplines because I said I’m an academic. And so as an academic in a STEM discipline, it’s got its own culture. Engineering has its own culture. I’m in engineering education. So that’s got its own culture. So it’s like nested cultures. And I would say my culture is very, very, very conservative in how they move. And this was like the running joke of me on social media where everybody would say like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe Monica said this. Like, is she off?” And one of my friends even said in my community, she said she didn’t wanna look at my social media because she’s like, she’s gonna get fired for saying stuff.
Jennifer: She was scared for you.
Monica: That’s what she said. And that also speaks to that culture. So how have I changed? I have gotten out of the fear of my community and I have connected so much broader, like my platform, I think across all of my social media. And I probably have repetitive followers as well. But it’s about 75,000 people.
Jennnifer: Wow.
Monica: And you know, I started with a handful.. And the noise of my community is so quiet, it’s so quiet now in terms of what they think, because I see the impact of my work. I see the feedback that I get, like people who are leaving careers because of a book, because of a tweet, people who are sharing their stories because of things that I’ve said. And I’ll even give this as like a testimonial. I knew that. I know there’s something to it. I started a newsletter on LinkedIn in December, and I only have maybe like 13 editions. ’cause it’s biweekly. And I am up to, I wanna say like 8,500 subscribers right now.
Jennifer: Wow. Back from December. Since December!?
Monica: And I had maybe 700 in the first day. So there is something that is happening that is bigger than what I am. So that’s it. It’s the boldness, it’s the, I don’t care what my academic community says about me, because I know that what’s happening is more impactful and bigger than what’s in their box.
The Accomplice Academy with Dr. Monica
Jennifer: Hm. Ooh. Tell me a little bit about the Accomplice Academy. I wanna make sure that people who are listening can join if they’re a good fit for it.
Monica: Absolutely. So it is a really intimate group right now of people who want to be equity accomplices. And what I mean by that is people who we have, we focus on three areas. One is, I talk about like the level of risk. You know, as an accomplice, you’re gonna understand that what you’re doing is high risk. And so I engage through a subscription service, a monthly subscription service, where we talk about what it’s like to take those risks and how people can do this and protect themselves in the process. The second area that’s kind of connected back to being an accomplice is like looking at the level of change. And so I really focus on systemic change. So if you are in an organization, how are we making sure that we are offering sustainable solutions for people to remain safe and for equity to be real? And the third part is really having people focus on others instead of themselves. Many times when you see people who are allies, you know, they’ll, some of them will wear it like a banner and be like, “I’m an ally, I’m an ally. Come to me!” But I often tell people, you’re not an ally if I don’t say that you’re an ally. And it’s this space where sometimes as an accomplice, we do the work and people don’t even know that we do the work. But that’s what it means to do it. And I, I brought up the example in the book about, you know, going to the president of the University, of my university and saying, this is what’s happening in our organization. Please look at these statements from our engineering students. Look at the statements from our engineering faculty and staff, and take that into consideration when you hire the next leader of this organization. So, like I said, even though I shared what I did at the time, it wasn’t that people knew it. And as I told you, my developmental editor was like, you need to share stories. And I was like, okay, I’m finally gonna tell people that I was an equity accomplice in my institution at a very dangerous level, at a pretty high level. And I knew that the consequences could have been a lot worse if the leader was not committed to racial equity. That was a lot. So those examples, that’s what The Accomplice Academy is. It’s like doing the work and having the support to talk about it in a safe space. And I would say a couple of my most active people, one is an LGBTQ plus advocate who is a burnout coach, and another is a professor in a state where they have anti-DEI laws now. And you know, we really talk about this, what does this look like in your roles as a coach or as faculty. So thank you for mentioning that.
Jennifer: That is amazing. It sounds like a group where real change can happen, not just change within ourselves, but change in our communities. That sounds so cool. Thank you. Oh, I’m curious, since we were just talking about being a good accomplice and, and how being an ally is really about making sure that other people feel that we’re good allies, not just ourselves. What’s one way that we could be better accomplices or allies on social media?
Monica: Man, there are a lot of ways. I think one is like amplifying statements that I think are very courageous. You know, so if there is someone who is saying something that the world needs to hear, and if they could be, you know, criticized for it, or if they’re in a vulnerable position by saying that, I think that the very public way that we show support sends messages to organizations that we are aligned with that person. Another is actually putting real content out. You know, being brave, being courageous and saying, you know, this is what systemic change looks like. Or here are some examples. So, so tips. You know, I think social media is a wonderful place to educate. And if we have handbooks, if we have resources that have helped us, if we have contacts, you know, other books, this is the prime place for audiences to see how to do the work really well. So sharing is another piece, but I think being authentic, like once you’re there, and I feel like this gets to like the risk part, but once you are on there, it’s about being that consistent voice so people know that you are trustworthy, that they can rely on you, that you are that person who is for the cause. And so consistency. I feel like that’s an internal thing, you know, for you to, for someone to be courageous, there’s a difference between the theory and action of it. And that’s what I mean. Like my inner circle of accomplices is so small right now because anyone can post just a good statement. But it’s the translation of that statement into action, under pressure that shows me if you are really an accomplice, because it can come with negative impacts on your livelihood.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Monica: And that can include a job. Maybe you lose an opportunity because you’re too dogmatic or because you know, you’ve said something that is really pushing the envelope. But from a business perspective, I often tell people, anyone who reads what you present and they’re turned off wasn’t someone you probably needed to connect to in the first place, because you are gonna have a lot more issues down the road. And that’s what I say even about doing equity work. You know, if someone’s like, “Oh, can you tone it down? Can you do whatever,” guess what? I’m not the consultant for you. Go to the one who’s going to help you to clear things and make sure everything is measured in your organization because that’s what you’re looking for. You’re not really ready for the accomplice level. That’s the work that I’m proposing.
Jennifer: Ooh, that’s really helpful. And I think it also helps people know whether they should join the Accomplice Academy. Like, are you, are you really ready to, to do the work and to take action in your organization? Oh, that’s fascinating. Absolutely. Oh, I love that. Okay. Well, I wanna show the book again.
Monica: You know, just, I’m also an author. I write fiction. Yes. I have one that’s dropping this week.
Jennifer: I’m gonna get it. I’ll say I love romance books. I do.
Monica: Thank you. Thank you. Because you know what, that’s a taboo. So we can talk about that.
You know, we talk about authenticity, people like, what are you doing? Are you out there writing smut? What’s happening? And I’m like, my people love each other. Okay. They love, they love on each other. They love each other. So I will say that, and the thing that I will also mention is that I put social justice things in my book as well. So even in the one that’s coming up, and I’ll say this really quickly. My protagonist did not earn tenure, but she was involved in a domestic abuse situation. And we have an issue where she goes to Alabama and because of their laws, she can’t be an unwed mother and keep her job.
Jennnifer: Oh wow.
Monica: Yeah, with STEM students because of donors. And so that sounds very familiar. The arranged marriage part of my romance is when, spoiler alert, her principal boss doesn’t want to lose this amazing teacher. And so, they kind of like each other anyway.
Jennifer: Oh, That sounds great.
Monica: It’s this whole social justice thing that’s embedded in romance and how they have to move forward. So I’m just putting that teaser out there to say, it’s not just smut, although you get it, but it’s the lessons behind how women of color have to move professionally and personally to be successful and to be whole, bold and strong. Same thing.
Jennifer: I so appreciate that. As a survivor of domestic violence, myself, I found love. I found romance. Like I can’t wait to read this book. It’s, it’s, yeah, it’s on my reading list. I’m very excited. Okay.
Monica F. Cox, Ph.D., is an unstoppable force who has made it her mission to disrupt and trailblaze her way through the world. Her unapologetic approach to life has made her a change agent and leader who is unafraid to make people uncomfortable. Despite facing personal and professional adversity, Monica was raised by her educator parents to persist and pursue her dreams.
As a 2020 Fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), Distinguished Professor of Engineering, and former department chair at The Ohio State University, Dr. Cox is no stranger to conflict. Her unwavering dedication to advocating for people and women of color has transformed the fabric of her department and the larger organization.
Dr. Cox’s research focuses on the infusion of equity in STEM education and the empirical exploration of women of color in the workplace. With over 130 publications, a presidential award for research, and approximately $20 million in led and collaborated multidisciplinary projects, she is a true expert in her field.
If you’re writing a book and you want people to read it, watch this. Dr. Jane Jones invited me to talk about how to share your book on social media for academic authors.
Who is your reader? Who’s interested in reading your monograph, edited collection, or academic book? How do you get a bigger audience for your book as an academic? You deserve a stronger online presence for your book. Let’s talk about finding your book’s audience on social media.
What can we learn from watching reality tv? Well, quite a bit. Today I’m going to talk about 7 things you can learn from The Circle, a reality television show about social media on Netflix.
Hi there, I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. I help professors feel confident when showing up online. I empower them to build an online presence so they can help more people with their research and teaching. Welcome to The Social Academic, my podcast about your digital footprint as a professor in Higher Education.
Now, if you’re on my mailing list you may have seen my email about my application to be on The Circle Netflix. If you’re watching the new season, you already know that I did not make the cut. But I love this show, and learn so much from watching it. So, I’m excited to talk with you about The Circle today. I still have my fingers crossed that I’ll appear on a future season. Seriously, my goal is to be on a Netflix show in my lifetime.
What is your online presence? It’s what people can find about you when searching your name online. It’s what people can discover about your research and the work you most care about. I’d love to help you have the online presence you deserve in 2024. Let’s talk about working together on your website, social media, or bio writing.
First, let me tell you a little bit about The Circle because I know some of you may not have watched this show before. By the end of this episode of The Social Academic podcast, you’re going to go and watch The Circle. This is one of my favorite shows, and I hope you love it too.
The Circle Netflix is a competition reality show where strangers move into an apartment building where they can only communicate with each other through a closed social media network called The Circle. Each person gets their own Circle profile where they can share a bio and a profile photo. Here’s the thing, if you’re in The Circle there’s no way to tell if the other contestants you see there are real, or if they’re catfish. Some people enter The Circle as themselves. Other people enter The Circle with a fake profile they think will advance them further in the game. The winner of The Circle gets a cash prize and bragging rights.
I love reality television. I especially enjoy watching The Circle because contestants build real relationships through chat, interactive games, and virtual parties. Because contestants interact with The Circle by speaking their messages out loud (it’s a voice-activated social media network), we get to see their reaction to the Circle Chat when a new post is shared. They also verbalize their thinking before sharing their own messages in the chat.
This will be a fun episode of The Social Academic, so pop some popcorn, take a seat, and listen up. We’re about to dive into 7 things you can learn about social media and building relationships from watching The Circle on Netflix.
1. People don’t know anything about you when they come across your profile for the 1st time. Have photos on your profile that show your personality.
When you enter The Circle you don’t know anything about the other contestants. If you’re coming on the show, you’re aware that there are other people in the same apartment building you are. But, each of you walk into your own uniquely designed apartment. You get a few minutes to explore before The Circle sends you an Alert.
The 1st Alert invites contestants to set up their profile on The Circle. That way, other contestants in the building can learn a little bit about them when they engage in conversations in the Circle Chat.
Choosing what to include on your profile is so important. The people who are visiting your profile don’t know anything about you. The first thing that you can learn from watching The Circle on Netflix is that having photos on your profile that show your personality makes a big difference. Your photo is the first thing that people see about you on social media.
I love getting to hear contestants talk about which profile photo they’re choosing. When you’re looking at your photos trying to decide which one to use as your profile photo, think about which shows your personality best. What are you trying to communicate with your profile? Think about the outfit that you’re wearing, what kind of expression is on your face, and what’s in the background.
When you have a profile photo that shares your personality, people learn a little bit more about you instantly. Your profile photo leaves a lasting impression on social media.
For academics, sharing a photo of yourself on social media helps people recognize you. If you’re headed to a conference and tweet about your talk, you want your fellow conference attendees to be able to learn a bit about you. And it’s great if they can see a photo of your smiling face.
2. Remember things about the people you talk with to help you have deeper conversations.
The Circle on Netflix is a closed social media platform. You might compare it to Slack or MightyNetworks. You can only engage in conversations with people through the general Circle Chat and through direct messages, messages which can be with one or more people.
Having conversations with people in The Circle is the only way to build your relationships. And yes, this does advance you in the game. But it also deepens your relationships in real life. Whether these people, the other contestants in The Circle, are catfish or not, the conversations you have with them are real.
The only way that you can learn about the people in The Circle is by having conversations with them. My second tip is that remembering things about the people you talk with helps you have deeper conversations. What do I mean by deeper? Well, more meaningful, lasting, and relationship-building conversations.
For the competition in The Circle on Netflix, this makes a lot of sense. When people give you more information, they might slip up and let you know that they’re a catfish. They might let you know about who their friends are and who they are most loyal to. They also might share a story that you can relate to, something that tells you about who they are, what they care about, and why they are here. What you share with people in The Circle, can help the influencers each week decide if you should stay or be voted out of The Circle.
Whether you’re on a closed social media platform like Slack, or a public network like LinkedIn, Remembering the conversations you have will help you have deeper, more meaningful relationships. Networking is all in the details.
Academics, you have so much to remember, I get it. I’m not saying memorize what people tell you. One way to help you remember the details about the people you meet is to see if you can find 1 way you connect with them. One thing you have in common. Maybe it’s a shared research interest. Maybe you both like dogs. You’re more likely to remember something you share, something you have in common, so that’s my tip for you!
3. People can tell when you’re not being yourself online.
I realize I just mentioned catfish in The Circle and I didn’t quite explain what that is. A catfish is someone on social media who is pretending to be not themselves. Someone is “catfishing” when they have a profile on social media that does not reflect who they are in real life.
This is different from an anonymous account, where a person chooses not to share their real name. “Catfishing” is intentionally appearing as a different person. The term grew in popularity after the MTV show Catfish Began in 2008. The show is now on its 8th season where the show’s hosts uncover fake profiles of people in romantic relationships where one person is catfishing the other online. One thing I find notable about the show Catfish, is that many of the people who have fake profiles have real feelings. Even though the person is fake, oftentimes the relationship is based in real emotion.
On The Circle Netflix, being a catfish might help you make a lot of money if you make it to the end of the game. However, it can also hurt you to be a catfish. This is because of tip number 3. People can tell when you’re not being yourself online.
And yeah, okay, in real life this is a little bit easier now that we have video chat. But in The Circle on Netflix, you don’t have this option. You can’t see if someone’s real. You can’t even hear their voice. You can only go by what they share with you in the chat and on their profile.
At some point on every season of The Circle, some contestants hunt catfish. They’re looking for fake profiles. It’s an easy reason to vote someone off of the game. And may help you determine if you can trust someone to be loyal to you (or not). So if you are thinking about applying to be on The Circle you can totally be a catfish. You’ll probably have a fun time playing. Just know that it’s hard to convince people you’re someone you’re not. Authenticity shines through. People want to see you. And they get suspicious if they can’t tell who you are.
One of my professor clients wanted to know if they should have an anonymous account on social media. When I asked why, she said, “I’m not sure if I’m allowed to have a social media account. But I don’t want to miss out.” It’s not the 1st time I’ve heard this from an academic, so I said, “That’s probably not the case, but since you’re worried, let’s figure out who to ask.” Luckily her university had a great social media manager who had contact information accessible on the university website. When they got back to the professor, she learned that the university would love for her to be on social media. I was delighted! Of course I wanted her to be on social media. But I don’t recommend anonymous social media profiles if you can help it because people just aren’t sure who you are. They want you to be yourself.
4. Nothing builds loyalty and friendship like opening up about yourself.
What really sets the good catfish apart from the catfish who get caught on The Circle is how they open up about themselves. Tip number 4 is that nothing builds loyalty and friendship like opening up about who you are and what you care about.
The season finale aired today. Yes! I watched it before recording this episode. I won’t tell you who won. At the end of the show everyone from the season, including eliminated players, return to meet in person in a luxurious lounge with host of The Circle, Michelle Buteau. Two of the players take a quick moment for an aside. Tom Haughton, a British comedian, thanks his fellow player, Chaz Lawry, a Los Angeles entrepreneur, by saying: “You were the 1st person to show me that being open is key to forming relationships.”
People get pretty deep on The Circle on Netflix. People have conversations about life defining moments, loss, trauma, family, and the values that matter most to them. The friendships that you make in The Circle determine how well you do in the game. The deeper your friendships are, the more likely you are to stay in the game.
When academics open up about their research, they can only help more people. When you share your story, you invite people to engage deeper. You invite people to care.
When you open up about yourself, and tell your friends and colleagues about yourself, it makes a big difference for your real life. This is because people will better know what you care about, how to help you, and how you can help others.
5. Your friends will stick up for you and go to bat to protect you.
That loyalty brings us to tip number 5. Your friends will stick up for you. They’ll go to bat to protect you. The deeper your relationship is with your friend, the more likely they are to protect you with everything they can. Spoiler alert.
On The Circle Netflix, contestants build alliances with each other to help their friends stay in the game. Sometimes, the game forces you to do something you might not otherwise. For instance on this season an O.G. player, Shubham Goel, AKA “Shooby,” who was a fan favorite from season 1, returned. Pretending to be a sexy young woman named Sasha, Shooby made the mistake of trying to start a “rebellion” of the newer players in The Circle.
His reasoning was that the players on The Circle who arrived on day one, had more opportunity to build loyalty with each other, over the newer players. So, the new players should bad together to ensure their spot at the final table.
Why did this backfire? When Shooby was first on The Circle, he was loved by all the players. He was so nice, open, and thoughtful, that people loved who he was. Even though he didn’t win his season of The Circle, Shooby is one of the most well-known personalities because of his authenticity. When Shooby asked to return to The Circle this season, the producers said yes, but he had to be a catfish. Not being able to be his authentic self hurt Shooby in the game. He didn’t have the social capital it takes, the loyalty needed for a rebellion.
You see, other people in the Rebellion Chat had already built up loyalty with their other friends in The Circle. People they met before Shooby’s fake profile, “Sasha” entered the game. This meant that by the time Shooby approached them for the rebellion these Circle contestants were no longer interested in turning on their friends.
Shooby thought that his Rebellion would create new loyalties based on shared goals to do everything it takes to win. But doing what would have worked best for these players in the game, joining the Rebellion of new players, didn’t happen because people felt loyal to their original alliances. Your friends will stick up for you and go to bat to protect you when given the opportunity.
This is true in real life too. You may have seen on Twitter that one of my tweets at the end of 2022 went viral. Let me tell you, people had a lot of opinions. And they shared their opinions with me. Many of their feelings were negative. People didn’t like what I had to say.
There’s a cute coffee mug from Social Media Tea that reads,” you can’t handle going viral, I promise.” That’s me. I couldn’t handle going viral. At least, I felt that way at the time. I was getting dozens of notifications every minute with people angry at me for speaking the truth. For sharing something that was important to me because of equity, which I value highly.
Here’s the thing, I could handle going viral. I could handle it because of my friends. I got more messages of support from people who care about me, from friends, from people who read The Social Academic, and clients whose lives I’ve transformed. In 2 days, I got more messages of support than I’ve ever gotten in my life. Even from strangers who saw my viral tweet and felt empowered to ask for equity in pay for their speaking engagements for the 1st time. The outpouring of love and support made going viral bearable. And, people were open that they were reporting some of the disgusting, racist tweets people said to me. Friends told me that what I do matters. That I’m helping the world. I could handle going viral, because of them. The support of people you care about means so much more than the anger of people you don’t know. At least, that’s how it was for me.
In the weeks following my viral tweet, I saw not one but five friends and former clients, people I truly admire, go viral in a negative way for something they shared. If this happens to you mute that conversation. Take care of yourself. And, ask your friends for help. People can only help if you open up to them.
On The Circle Netflix, your friends want to stick up for you and help however they can. If you ask for help, they’ll be better aware and will help if they are able.
For academics, making friends can help your career. For many of my featured interview guests here on The Social Academic, the people they’ve met through social media and having an online presence has quite literally been life changing.
6. Seeing what you create is fun (even when it’s not very good) – Think “Nailed it!”
There are fun games on The Circle. Some games are meant to help you learn more about your contestants, so you can make more informed decisions when ranking your fellow players. You see, the ranking determines who is an influencer that week. And it’s the influencers who decide who goes home.
I love that on The Circle one of the activities they get to do is crafting! In past years, contestants have decorated a cake and drawn portraits of each other. This year they got to design their own outfit on a mannequin. Their outfit was meant to express their personality. The judge for this design activity was Tan France from Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. And people had fun with it! During the judging the contestants had big smiles, thinking about the friends they’ve grown close to wearing some of the over-the-top outfits that fit their personalities to a T.
What you share about yourself doesn’t have to be a text-only post on social media. When you add a photo or video of something that you’re up to, especially something you create, people get really engaged.
People love seeing what you make, even if it’s not very good. You might have heard of another popular Netflix show called Nailed It! where contestants try and fail in incredibly hilarious ways to make impossible desert creations from Jacque Torres.
Seeing what you create is fun, especially when it’s not very good. I want you to apply this thought to social media. Stop trying to get the perfect selfie. Your video is never going to be perfect. People want to see your messy desk, your haphazard office bookshelf, not a picture perfect ‘magazine’ shot of your space. They want to see your struggles and failures if you’re willing to share them. They’ll relate to any post that is authentically you.
7. More people know about you / care about you than you might think.
On this new season of The Circle Netflix, Shooby returned as a catfish. And after the rebellion, it was no surprise that Shooby was voted out of The Circle. The influencers saw through him and felt that he didn’t make a convincing woman teacher named Sasha. They thought he was a catfish. And they were right.
When you’re eliminated from The Circle on Netflix, you get the opportunity to visit one other contestant in The Circle. You get to see the person behind the profile and have a candid conversation about the competition. Shooby thought hard about who he should visit before leaving The Circle. He chose to visit another player called Jennifer.
I’m telling you about this episode because I thought it was really cute. Shooby expected Jennifer to be a middle-aged blonde woman. Much to his surprise, Jennifer turned out to be not one, but two players staying in the same apartment and sharing the Jennifer profile. Shooby discovered that the two players pretending to be Jennifer had been the first to be eliminated from this season of The Circle, on Day 1. They were subject of a double elimination, and given the opportunity from The Circle to come back as a catfish, named Jennifer. Their real names behind the Jennifer profile are Brett and Xanthi.
You might know Brett Robinson if you’re a fan of the reality competition show, Big Brother. Earlier in this season of The Circle, Brett was talking with Xanthi about Shooby. He said, “Shooby can’t possibly be as nice as he seems in real life.”
If you haven’t watched Season 1 of The Circle, Shooby comes across as the sweetest person. He doesn’t like social media. If you look at his Instagram profile, he shares low resolution selfies and photos of his family. Even though he came in last in the rankings on Day 1, he made it to the end of the game being himself. So this season when Brett said, “Shooby can’t possibly be as nice as he seems,” it was because Shooby seemed SO NICE. Maybe even too nice. Like it was maybe too good to be true?
Well, they came face to face when Shooby chose to visit Jennifer before his exit from season 5 of The Circle. It was an interaction full of excitement and open admiration. Brett and Xanthi got super excited to see a player they were fans of. They enthusiastically shared their own journey in The Circle with Shooby.
Tip number 7 is that more people know about you and care about you than you think. When Shooby entered the apartment to meet Jennifer, he recognized the man standing in front of him and said, “Brett! I’m a fan.”
Brett’s face when he realized Shooby knew who he was – it was adorable! The recognition and admiration was real between the two. And when Shooby finally made his departure from The Circle, Brett jumped up and down and said, “He knew who I was! Shooby knew who I was, did you see that?” Brett and Shooby were reality stars on separate shows. And, they were fans of each other without knowing it.
More people know who you are than you might think. More people care about you, and your research, and what you share on social media than you know.
Don’t hesitate to reach out to the people you admire most. Tell them why you care about them. Tell them how they touched your life. Nothing bad can come from telling someone they matter to you.
One of my clients, an amazing professor, was catching up with me on Zoom. He said he’d just come home from an academic conference and more than one person introduced themselves to him. And they had read his bio, explored his website, and even read his research. He was literally recruited for a job at the conference because someone was able to learn about him and his research. They were excited to meet him. Your online presence invites more people to know about you, and to care about your research.
Wrap up
I could talk about The Circle all day. It was hard to narrow my list down to just 7 tips to share with you. I’m going to run through the full list for of tips for you now:
People don’t know anything about you when they come across your profile for the 1st time. Have photos on your profile that show your personality.
Remember things about the people you talk with to help you have deeper conversations.
People can tell when you’re not being yourself online.
Nothing builds loyalty and friendship like opening up about yourself.
Your friends will stick up for you and go to bat to protect you.
Seeing what you create is fun (even when it’s not very good) – Think “Nailed it!”
More people know about you / care about you than you might think.
The conversations you have online build real relationships with real people, people that can impact your life. People that can help you, people who you can help. The Circle is just a reality show on Netflix, but it can teach us so many things about creating deeper relationships on social media. And, in real life.
I hope that you watch an episode of The Circle. Or, binge watch the whole series! If you do, let me know. Maybe you’re a super fan like me! If you’ve watched The Circle before, but you didn’t pay close attention, go back and watch an episode to see what people say about the posts they read. I love seeing their reactions to what they see in the Circle Chat, and hearing what they think about what they’ll say in the chat, before they say it. What I noticed each season is that you can’t control what other people think about what you say. You can control what you say, when you say it, and how open you are with what you share.
I hope you love The Circle as much as me. Thanks for listening to this episode. If you’re ready to take control of your social media life, I would love to talk with you. My online presence services for professors are here to help you make greater impact with your research and teaching in efficient ways that fit into your busy life. I want you to feel confident when talking about yourself online. I want you to feel your authentic self is enough, that you are who people want to see.
I have so many amazing Ideas to share with you on The Social Academic podcast this year. So, please subscribe to the podcast, blog, or YouTube channel. If what I’m sharing resonates with you, please share it with a friend. And do reach out to me! I would love to hear from you. You can find me on social media @HigherEdPR.
What can we learn from watching reality tv? Well, quite a bit. Today I’m going to talk about 7 things you can learn from The Circle, a reality television show about social media on Netflix.
Hi there, I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. I help professors feel confident when showing up online. I empower them to build an online presence so they can help more people with their research and teaching. Welcome to The Social Academic, my podcast about your digital footprint as a professor in Higher Education.
Now, if you’re on my mailing list you may have seen my email about my application to be on The Circle Netflix. If you’re watching the new season, you already know that I did not make the cut. But I love this show, and learn so much from watching it. So, I’m excited to talk with you about The Circle today. I still have my fingers crossed that I’ll appear on a future season. Seriously, my goal is to be on a Netflix show in my lifetime.
What is your online presence? It’s what people can find about you when searching your name online. It’s what people can discover about your research and the work you most care about. I’d love to help you have the online presence you deserve in 2024. Let’s talk about working together on your website, social media, or bio writing.
First, let me tell you a little bit about The Circle because I know some of you may not have watched this show before. By the end of this episode of The Social Academic podcast, you’re going to go and watch The Circle. This is one of my favorite shows, and I hope you love it too.
The Circle Netflix is a competition reality show where strangers move into an apartment building where they can only communicate with each other through a closed social media network called The Circle. Each person gets their own Circle profile where they can share a bio and a profile photo. Here’s the thing, if you’re in The Circle there’s no way to tell if the other contestants you see there are real, or if they’re catfish. Some people enter The Circle as themselves. Other people enter The Circle with a fake profile they think will advance them further in the game. The winner of The Circle gets a cash prize and bragging rights.
I love reality television. I especially enjoy watching The Circle because contestants build real relationships through chat, interactive games, and virtual parties. Because contestants interact with The Circle by speaking their messages out loud (it’s a voice-activated social media network), we get to see their reaction to the Circle Chat when a new post is shared. They also verbalize their thinking before sharing their own messages in the chat.
This will be a fun episode of The Social Academic, so pop some popcorn, take a seat, and listen up. We’re about to dive into 7 things you can learn about social media and building relationships from watching The Circle on Netflix.
1. People don’t know anything about you when they come across your profile for the 1st time. Have photos on your profile that show your personality.
When you enter The Circle you don’t know anything about the other contestants. If you’re coming on the show, you’re aware that there are other people in the same apartment building you are. But, each of you walk into your own uniquely designed apartment. You get a few minutes to explore before The Circle sends you an Alert.
The 1st Alert invites contestants to set up their profile on The Circle. That way, other contestants in the building can learn a little bit about them when they engage in conversations in the Circle Chat.
Choosing what to include on your profile is so important. The people who are visiting your profile don’t know anything about you. The first thing that you can learn from watching The Circle on Netflix is that having photos on your profile that show your personality makes a big difference. Your photo is the first thing that people see about you on social media.
I love getting to hear contestants talk about which profile photo they’re choosing. When you’re looking at your photos trying to decide which one to use as your profile photo, think about which shows your personality best. What are you trying to communicate with your profile? Think about the outfit that you’re wearing, what kind of expression is on your face, and what’s in the background.
When you have a profile photo that shares your personality, people learn a little bit more about you instantly. Your profile photo leaves a lasting impression on social media.
For academics, sharing a photo of yourself on social media helps people recognize you. If you’re headed to a conference and tweet about your talk, you want your fellow conference attendees to be able to learn a bit about you. And it’s great if they can see a photo of your smiling face.
2. Remember things about the people you talk with to help you have deeper conversations.
The Circle on Netflix is a closed social media platform. You might compare it to Slack or MightyNetworks. You can only engage in conversations with people through the general Circle Chat and through direct messages, messages which can be with one or more people.
Having conversations with people in The Circle is the only way to build your relationships. And yes, this does advance you in the game. But it also deepens your relationships in real life. Whether these people, the other contestants in The Circle, are catfish or not, the conversations you have with them are real.
The only way that you can learn about the people in The Circle is by having conversations with them. My second tip is that remembering things about the people you talk with helps you have deeper conversations. What do I mean by deeper? Well, more meaningful, lasting, and relationship-building conversations.
For the competition in The Circle on Netflix, this makes a lot of sense. When people give you more information, they might slip up and let you know that they’re a catfish. They might let you know about who their friends are and who they are most loyal to. They also might share a story that you can relate to, something that tells you about who they are, what they care about, and why they are here. What you share with people in The Circle, can help the influencers each week decide if you should stay or be voted out of The Circle.
Whether you’re on a closed social media platform like Slack, or a public network like LinkedIn, Remembering the conversations you have will help you have deeper, more meaningful relationships. Networking is all in the details.
Academics, you have so much to remember, I get it. I’m not saying memorize what people tell you. One way to help you remember the details about the people you meet is to see if you can find 1 way you connect with them. One thing you have in common. Maybe it’s a shared research interest. Maybe you both like dogs. You’re more likely to remember something you share, something you have in common, so that’s my tip for you!
3. People can tell when you’re not being yourself online.
I realize I just mentioned catfish in The Circle and I didn’t quite explain what that is. A catfish is someone on social media who is pretending to be not themselves. Someone is “catfishing” when they have a profile on social media that does not reflect who they are in real life.
This is different from an anonymous account, where a person chooses not to share their real name. “Catfishing” is intentionally appearing as a different person. The term grew in popularity after the MTV show Catfish Began in 2008. The show is now on its 8th season where the show’s hosts uncover fake profiles of people in romantic relationships where one person is catfishing the other online. One thing I find notable about the show Catfish, is that many of the people who have fake profiles have real feelings. Even though the person is fake, oftentimes the relationship is based in real emotion.
On The Circle Netflix, being a catfish might help you make a lot of money if you make it to the end of the game. However, it can also hurt you to be a catfish. This is because of tip number 3. People can tell when you’re not being yourself online.
And yeah, okay, in real life this is a little bit easier now that we have video chat. But in The Circle on Netflix, you don’t have this option. You can’t see if someone’s real. You can’t even hear their voice. You can only go by what they share with you in the chat and on their profile.
At some point on every season of The Circle, some contestants hunt catfish. They’re looking for fake profiles. It’s an easy reason to vote someone off of the game. And may help you determine if you can trust someone to be loyal to you (or not). So if you are thinking about applying to be on The Circle you can totally be a catfish. You’ll probably have a fun time playing. Just know that it’s hard to convince people you’re someone you’re not. Authenticity shines through. People want to see you. And they get suspicious if they can’t tell who you are.
One of my professor clients wanted to know if they should have an anonymous account on social media. When I asked why, she said, “I’m not sure if I’m allowed to have a social media account. But I don’t want to miss out.” It’s not the 1st time I’ve heard this from an academic, so I said, “That’s probably not the case, but since you’re worried, let’s figure out who to ask.” Luckily her university had a great social media manager who had contact information accessible on the university website. When they got back to the professor, she learned that the university would love for her to be on social media. I was delighted! Of course I wanted her to be on social media. But I don’t recommend anonymous social media profiles if you can help it because people just aren’t sure who you are. They want you to be yourself.
4. Nothing builds loyalty and friendship like opening up about yourself.
What really sets the good catfish apart from the catfish who get caught on The Circle is how they open up about themselves. Tip number 4 is that nothing builds loyalty and friendship like opening up about who you are and what you care about.
The season finale aired today. Yes! I watched it before recording this episode. I won’t tell you who won. At the end of the show everyone from the season, including eliminated players, return to meet in person in a luxurious lounge with host of The Circle, Michelle Buteau. Two of the players take a quick moment for an aside. Tom Haughton, a British comedian, thanks his fellow player, Chaz Lawry, a Los Angeles entrepreneur, by saying: “You were the 1st person to show me that being open is key to forming relationships.”
People get pretty deep on The Circle on Netflix. People have conversations about life defining moments, loss, trauma, family, and the values that matter most to them. The friendships that you make in The Circle determine how well you do in the game. The deeper your friendships are, the more likely you are to stay in the game.
When academics open up about their research, they can only help more people. When you share your story, you invite people to engage deeper. You invite people to care.
When you open up about yourself, and tell your friends and colleagues about yourself, it makes a big difference for your real life. This is because people will better know what you care about, how to help you, and how you can help others.
5. Your friends will stick up for you and go to bat to protect you.
That loyalty brings us to tip number 5. Your friends will stick up for you. They’ll go to bat to protect you. The deeper your relationship is with your friend, the more likely they are to protect you with everything they can. Spoiler alert.
On The Circle Netflix, contestants build alliances with each other to help their friends stay in the game. Sometimes, the game forces you to do something you might not otherwise. For instance on this season an O.G. player, Shubham Goel, AKA “Shooby,” who was a fan favorite from season 1, returned. Pretending to be a sexy young woman named Sasha, Shooby made the mistake of trying to start a “rebellion” of the newer players in The Circle.
His reasoning was that the players on The Circle who arrived on day one, had more opportunity to build loyalty with each other, over the newer players. So, the new players should bad together to ensure their spot at the final table.
Why did this backfire? When Shooby was first on The Circle, he was loved by all the players. He was so nice, open, and thoughtful, that people loved who he was. Even though he didn’t win his season of The Circle, Shooby is one of the most well-known personalities because of his authenticity. When Shooby asked to return to The Circle this season, the producers said yes, but he had to be a catfish. Not being able to be his authentic self hurt Shooby in the game. He didn’t have the social capital it takes, the loyalty needed for a rebellion.
You see, other people in the Rebellion Chat had already built up loyalty with their other friends in The Circle. People they met before Shooby’s fake profile, “Sasha” entered the game. This meant that by the time Shooby approached them for the rebellion these Circle contestants were no longer interested in turning on their friends.
Shooby thought that his Rebellion would create new loyalties based on shared goals to do everything it takes to win. But doing what would have worked best for these players in the game, joining the Rebellion of new players, didn’t happen because people felt loyal to their original alliances. Your friends will stick up for you and go to bat to protect you when given the opportunity.
This is true in real life too. You may have seen on Twitter that one of my tweets at the end of 2022 went viral. Let me tell you, people had a lot of opinions. And they shared their opinions with me. Many of their feelings were negative. People didn’t like what I had to say.
There’s a cute coffee mug from Social Media Tea that reads,” you can’t handle going viral, I promise.” That’s me. I couldn’t handle going viral. At least, I felt that way at the time. I was getting dozens of notifications every minute with people angry at me for speaking the truth. For sharing something that was important to me because of equity, which I value highly.
Here’s the thing, I could handle going viral. I could handle it because of my friends. I got more messages of support from people who care about me, from friends, from people who read The Social Academic, and clients whose lives I’ve transformed. In 2 days, I got more messages of support than I’ve ever gotten in my life. Even from strangers who saw my viral tweet and felt empowered to ask for equity in pay for their speaking engagements for the 1st time. The outpouring of love and support made going viral bearable. And, people were open that they were reporting some of the disgusting, racist tweets people said to me. Friends told me that what I do matters. That I’m helping the world. I could handle going viral, because of them. The support of people you care about means so much more than the anger of people you don’t know. At least, that’s how it was for me.
In the weeks following my viral tweet, I saw not one but five friends and former clients, people I truly admire, go viral in a negative way for something they shared. If this happens to you mute that conversation. Take care of yourself. And, ask your friends for help. People can only help if you open up to them.
On The Circle Netflix, your friends want to stick up for you and help however they can. If you ask for help, they’ll be better aware and will help if they are able.
For academics, making friends can help your career. For many of my featured interview guests here on The Social Academic, the people they’ve met through social media and having an online presence has quite literally been life changing.
6. Seeing what you create is fun (even when it’s not very good) – Think “Nailed it!”
There are fun games on The Circle. Some games are meant to help you learn more about your contestants, so you can make more informed decisions when ranking your fellow players. You see, the ranking determines who is an influencer that week. And it’s the influencers who decide who goes home.
I love that on The Circle one of the activities they get to do is crafting! In past years, contestants have decorated a cake and drawn portraits of each other. This year they got to design their own outfit on a mannequin. Their outfit was meant to express their personality. The judge for this design activity was Tan France from Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. And people had fun with it! During the judging the contestants had big smiles, thinking about the friends they’ve grown close to wearing some of the over-the-top outfits that fit their personalities to a T.
What you share about yourself doesn’t have to be a text-only post on social media. When you add a photo or video of something that you’re up to, especially something you create, people get really engaged.
People love seeing what you make, even if it’s not very good. You might have heard of another popular Netflix show called Nailed It! where contestants try and fail in incredibly hilarious ways to make impossible desert creations from Jacque Torres.
Seeing what you create is fun, especially when it’s not very good. I want you to apply this thought to social media. Stop trying to get the perfect selfie. Your video is never going to be perfect. People want to see your messy desk, your haphazard office bookshelf, not a picture perfect ‘magazine’ shot of your space. They want to see your struggles and failures if you’re willing to share them. They’ll relate to any post that is authentically you.
7. More people know about you / care about you than you might think.
On this new season of The Circle Netflix, Shooby returned as a catfish. And after the rebellion, it was no surprise that Shooby was voted out of The Circle. The influencers saw through him and felt that he didn’t make a convincing woman teacher named Sasha. They thought he was a catfish. And they were right.
When you’re eliminated from The Circle on Netflix, you get the opportunity to visit one other contestant in The Circle. You get to see the person behind the profile and have a candid conversation about the competition. Shooby thought hard about who he should visit before leaving The Circle. He chose to visit another player called Jennifer.
I’m telling you about this episode because I thought it was really cute. Shooby expected Jennifer to be a middle-aged blonde woman. Much to his surprise, Jennifer turned out to be not one, but two players staying in the same apartment and sharing the Jennifer profile. Shooby discovered that the two players pretending to be Jennifer had been the first to be eliminated from this season of The Circle, on Day 1. They were subject of a double elimination, and given the opportunity from The Circle to come back as a catfish, named Jennifer. Their real names behind the Jennifer profile are Brett and Xanthi.
You might know Brett Robinson if you’re a fan of the reality competition show, Big Brother. Earlier in this season of The Circle, Brett was talking with Xanthi about Shooby. He said, “Shooby can’t possibly be as nice as he seems in real life.”
If you haven’t watched Season 1 of The Circle, Shooby comes across as the sweetest person. He doesn’t like social media. If you look at his Instagram profile, he shares low resolution selfies and photos of his family. Even though he came in last in the rankings on Day 1, he made it to the end of the game being himself. So this season when Brett said, “Shooby can’t possibly be as nice as he seems,” it was because Shooby seemed SO NICE. Maybe even too nice. Like it was maybe too good to be true?
Well, they came face to face when Shooby chose to visit Jennifer before his exit from season 5 of The Circle. It was an interaction full of excitement and open admiration. Brett and Xanthi got super excited to see a player they were fans of. They enthusiastically shared their own journey in The Circle with Shooby.
Tip number 7 is that more people know about you and care about you than you think. When Shooby entered the apartment to meet Jennifer, he recognized the man standing in front of him and said, “Brett! I’m a fan.”
Brett’s face when he realized Shooby knew who he was – it was adorable! The recognition and admiration was real between the two. And when Shooby finally made his departure from The Circle, Brett jumped up and down and said, “He knew who I was! Shooby knew who I was, did you see that?” Brett and Shooby were reality stars on separate shows. And, they were fans of each other without knowing it.
More people know who you are than you might think. More people care about you, and your research, and what you share on social media than you know.
Don’t hesitate to reach out to the people you admire most. Tell them why you care about them. Tell them how they touched your life. Nothing bad can come from telling someone they matter to you.
One of my clients, an amazing professor, was catching up with me on Zoom. He said he’d just come home from an academic conference and more than one person introduced themselves to him. And they had read his bio, explored his website, and even read his research. He was literally recruited for a job at the conference because someone was able to learn about him and his research. They were excited to meet him. Your online presence invites more people to know about you, and to care about your research.
I could talk about The Circle all day. It was hard to narrow my list down to just 7 tips to share with you. I’m going to run through the full list for of tips for you now:
People don’t know anything about you when they come across your profile for the 1st time. Have photos on your profile that show your personality.
Remember things about the people you talk with to help you have deeper conversations.
People can tell when you’re not being yourself online.
Nothing builds loyalty and friendship like opening up about yourself.
Your friends will stick up for you and go to bat to protect you.
Seeing what you create is fun (even when it’s not very good) – Think “Nailed it!”
More people know about you / care about you than you might think.
The conversations you have online build real relationships with real people, people that can impact your life. People that can help you, people who you can help. The Circle is just a reality show on Netflix, but it can teach us so many things about creating deeper relationships on social media. And, in real life.
I hope that you watch an episode of The Circle. Or, binge watch the whole series! If you do, let me know. Maybe you’re a super fan like me! If you’ve watched The Circle before, but you didn’t pay close attention, go back and watch an episode to see what people say about the posts they read. I love seeing their reactions to what they see in the Circle Chat, and hearing what they think about what they’ll say in the chat, before they say it. What I noticed each season is that you can’t control what other people think about what you say. You can control what you say, when you say it, and how open you are with what you share.
I hope you love The Circle as much as me. Thanks for listening to this episode. If you’re ready to take control of your social media life, I would love to talk with you. My online presence services for professors are here to help you make greater impact with your research and teaching in efficient ways that fit into your busy life. I want you to feel confident when talking about yourself online. I want you to feel your authentic self is enough, that you are who people want to see.
I have so many amazing Ideas to share with you on The Social Academic podcast this year. So, please subscribe to the podcast, blog, or YouTube channel. If what I’m sharing resonates with you, please share it with a friend. And do reach out to me! I would love to hear from you. You can find me on social media @HigherEdPR.
How do you get the news media to care about your research? Dr. Sheena Howard helps academics who want a larger media presence. She’s been featured in ABC, PBS, BBC, NPR, NBC, The L.A. Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.
We talk about gaining visibility for your research. And the income you can make as an authority from things like speaking engagements! We even get into how much to charge when you speak. What should a PhD charge for a 60 minute talk? The minimum is probably more than you think.
Dr. Sheena Howard is a Professor of Communication at Rider University. She won an Eisner Award for her book, Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation. She is founder of the Power Your Research program. See full bio.
Meet Dr. Sheena Howard
Jennifer: Hello, everyone! Welcome to The Social Academic. I’m so excited for this interview today.
I’m speaking with Dr. Sheena Howard, a Professor of Communication. And she’s an expert at helping academics really find the media attention that they deserve. So, Sheena, I’m so excited that you’ve joined me today.
Would you mind introducing yourself for everyone?
Sheena: Sure, I’m happy to be here. A big fan of your work, Jennifer.
My name is Dr. Sheena Howard. I am the founder of Power Your Research, an academic branding company. I’m also a full professor and an author.
Jennifer: Not only are you an author, you’re an award-winning author. I’m so impressed with the amount of research that you’ve been able to produce and you’re also helping these people in so many different ways!
Can you tell me a little bit more about your research?
Sheena: My writing career started out as an academic. I did my dissertation on gender and race in comics like: comic books, comic strips, superheroes. That’s what my dissertation was on. Also, looking at African-American communication dynamics in Black comics.
Since then, I’ve been publishing fiction, non-fiction. I write comic books and graphic novels.
“All of my work is there to really inspire people to challenge the status quo, stand up for themselves, and to feel empowered when they are in situations where they feel like they need to sort of speak truth to power or just stand up for themselves.”
Jennifer: Oh, that’s really interesting! I recently got your book Why Wakanda Matters: What Black Panther Reveals About Psychology, Identity, and Communication. Your chapter was just fascinating to me. I hadn’t really thought about Black Panther in that kind of deep understanding of how people are communicating, how people are making decisions. I was just fascinated. I’m so excited for the new movie that’s coming out. I can’t wait to re-watch both of them now that I have your book.
Sheena: Yes.
Jennifer: One of those things that was really interesting to me is how much media attention you’ve been able to get for your comic research. I loved your appearance in Milestone Generations on HBO. I’d love to hear a little bit about how gaining media attention for your research has impacted you.
Sheena: Yeah. There’s a lot of research out there that shows that when you get media coverage and visibility it actually brings more people to your academic research articles. I know these things sound separate where academics are publishing in academic journals, and those things tend to only be read by academics.
But when you start branching out to get media coverage on NPR, BBC, all of the places you may have seen me—It actually translates into more academics citing your work, using your work. It also helps you to reach the people, the everyday people who are not in academe.
That has always been super important to me. I want to help and change the lives of people who are not in Higher Ed, who are not in the academic space. But who are actually the people that I research, and write about, and for.
Jennifer: Hmm. That’s something that so many people don’t consider, much less taking steps to even approach that.
How much should PhDs charge for a talk or speaking engagement?
Jennifer: I know one of the reasons why some women professors especially are hoping to get more media attention is because they want to speak more about their research. They want to actually bring in some money from speaking fees. I know you have amazing advice for this.
What’s your advice for women PhDs who are looking to speak more about their research?
Sheena: When you have a PhD, or even a master’s degree, being in Higher Ed for so long in that way, especially if you are a faculty member, or want to be a faculty member…It makes us forget that our work actually has value outside of Higher Ed. By the time you get a PhD, in your mind, unfortunately for a lot of us the only thing we can do is be a professor, is to be a faculty member.
In my academic branding program I’m helping people to understand that no matter what your PhD is in, you have value outside of Higher Ed. That translates into speaking engagements because a lot of academics are asked to speak for free. Or, are asked to do a 1 hour talk for $500 or $1000. And when people do that, especially women right? When women with academic credentials do speaking engagements at those low rates, it’s actually a disservice to everybody with a PhD who is interested in doing speaking engagements.
Because it happens so often, and is so prevalent. Particularly universities and institutions think that it’s okay and normal to ask someone with a PhD to do a speaking engagement for $500 and $1000.
I’m really doing the work to empower people not to accept those rates. Because we’re in our own world, in silos, we think we have to accept those rates. Particularly for women. We like to tell ourselves, “Well I need to do these free ones, and I need to do these speaking engagements for $500 because I have to build up my speaking career. But that is not true. You already have a PhD. You’ve already defended a dissertation. You are already a subject matter expert, more so than someone that doesn’t have a PhD. And people without academic credentials are charging $10,000 for 1 hour talks. And they are not even subject matter experts in the traditional educational way.
Jennifer: We’re talking about a really big difference from what many—especially academic women—are accepting for their speaking fees (an honorarium of maybe $500 to $1000) and what other people are getting paid for their speaking fees (up to $10,000). Maybe even more depending on the talk. That’s a huge range.
What do you recommend for women? What even is a speaking fee that might be acceptable for PhDs?
Sheena: “I teach people that your speaking rate is $3500 if you have a master’s degree or a PhD for a 1 hour talk. It’s $3500. And you shouldn’t be paying to travel there so that $3500 is just the speaking fee.”
Because you have to think about the hours that you’re spending preparing the 1 hour talk. And then the talking that you have to do after you come off stage.
$3500 for a 1 hour talk is not unreasonable. It might sound unreasonable to a listener who has been only doing speaking engagements for that low rate. But I can assure you that your male counterparts are charging more than $500 or $1000 for a talk.
A lot of this is psychological. Because if you just say, “Yes,” then you’re always going to be offered $500 or $1000. Sometimes it’s as simple as responding with an email saying, “I am so honored that you reached out to me. I would love to speak at your institution. But, my speaking engagement rate is $3,500.”
Jennifer: I love that! It sounds like a simple email thanking them for the invitation and setting your rate (regardless of what they offered you) is the next move. And that’s something that’s so scary for so many people.
I mostly work with academics who are not already looking for this kind of really big paid speaking engagement rate. Or, they haven’t done it before. So if I mentioned it to them, “Oh, you should get in touch with Dr. Sheena Howard if you want to do more speaking and media things. She’s an expert in that! But your minimum rate should be $3500.” I mean their minds are just blown. It’s just a totally new concept for so many people.
And many universities too. I think you’re so right when universities get the positive reinforcement that that is the fee people are willing to accept, they are more likely to offer it to you whether they have a bigger budget or not.
Sheena: Exactly.
Jennifer: So setting your own rate is how to protect yourself and ensure that you’re getting paid for the quality work that you’re doing:
Stop doing free talks for exposure by setting boundaries
Sheena: Right. This is why I say most of this is psychological, because a lot of times the academic will convince themselves that, “Well I don’t know. This High-End University asked me to speak. And I’ll be getting exposure.”
“No. You’re not going to get exposure. You’re not going to get a return on that investment. You’re literally only going to get what they’re paying you.”
Sometimes you have to tell them, “Hey, I suggest you come back to me once you have a chance to connect with other student organizations so you can put your budgets together.” I’ve had to tell people that and a lot of times, magically, all of a sudden they find the money.
But the point is, when you have boundaries right? Because setting your rate, not just changing the rate based on who’s asking you, means you have to have boundaries. When you have boundaries, the ball is in your court. Because if they come back and say, we really don’t have $3,500 in our budget. Well then now you get to decide.
I would say don’t do it. But now at least you get to decide. Because the best leverage you have is to walk away.
Jennifer: Right! Walking away is always an option.
One of the things that I love about what you share on LinkedIn and on Twitter, is that it is a decision-making process. Choosing whether to do that free talk, or not, is a decision-making process. You have a number of steps that you go through to decide whether it’s something that you’re open to, things like
Having a past connection with the organization
Being able to reach the public
Helping more people
You have things that you’re looking for, that you will get out of the talk instead of money. I think that that’s really important too. Like, it is okay to take a free talk. But you want to think about
How it’s going to help you
How it’s going to help other people
How it’s going to look like in your schedule
What’s going to work for you
I just love everything you share about it.
Sheena: That’s right. I do teach people part of your boundaries is actually having a checklist of when you will do a speaking engagement for free.
But you shouldn’t be wavering from that checklist. If your checklist has 4 things on it, right? I’ll do a free speaking engagement if it meets X, Y, Z criteria…it has to meet all those criteria for you to do it for free. If it doesn’t, you can’t do it for free. I walk people through a criteria around doing a speaking engagement for free to determine if you should be doing that or not.
Jennifer: I love how much you’re talking about setting boundaries for yourself. Was that something that was hard for you when you first started speaking? Or, did that come naturally?
Sheena: When I talk about building a brand, you’re essentially building a business. Because you’re making money off of leveraging your academic credentials. That money goes into your business pot, not your personal pot. Because you are the business and you can’t run a successful business if you don’t have boundaries. Right?
I run my coaching program. If I just change my coaching schedule based off of everybody else’s schedule, I wouldn’t have a coaching program. Right? This is my schedule. This is when I’m available for coaching calls. I’m not going outside of that. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have a business to run because it would be completely out of control.
It’s the same thing when we’re thinking about speaking engagements to be quite honest. You can’t really build your brand successfully and leverage your academic credentials successfully if you’re trying to financially protect your future. If you don’t have boundaries.
And yes, I had to learn that because I wouldn’t be where I am with my two businesses if I didn’t. You have to take the emotion out of boundaries. These are the parameters and that’s it.
Jennifer: Now not only are those the parameters but like that’s how you make it work with your lifestyle: with being a Professor, with actually having two businesses. It wouldn’t work unless you kept those boundaries.
Sheena: Oh my God. Jennifer, that is so true. I am a single mom. I am a full Professor at a university. I run two businesses.
I have to have boundaries to make all of this work. Yeah. I mean it’s just so important.
Jennifer: Now we’ve talked a little bit about speaking engagements and how having that kind of online presence and being found by the media can help get more attention to your research.
What makes up your online presence?
Sheena: One thing that’s really important is to know when your name is mentioned anywhere on the internet.
Now they have paid tools where you can monitor when you’re mentioned. I don’t use any of those paid tools. I just use Google Alerts. All different versions of my name are in Google Alerts—Sheena Howard, Dr Sheena Howard, Sheena Howard PhD, like all different versions are in Google Alerts.
This is really important because sometimes the media will quote me in things that I didn’t even know they were quoting me in. Or, I didn’t know the article was out. But I get it immediately when my name is mentioned. This is important in having a digital footprint, a digital presence. To just even know what is out there about you because you need to be intentional about your digital space.
The other thing is your personal website.
I teach people you need to own your virtual real estate. Your stuff online is real estate. You literally can make money off of it. And you need to think about your online presence as literally the equity that you’re building in your house.
When you have your website, you should own your name. So SheenaCHoward.com, I should own that URL. DrSheenaHoward.com, I should own that URL.
If you don’t own your name right now in the virtual space, in terms of buying that URL which you can do for like $15 a year on like GoDaddy or something like that. You need to go and buy all those different versions of your name. That makes up your digital footprint as well, just owning your virtual real estate.
Your website should have good SEO [Search Engine Optimization]. When someone types in like “black comics,” I want my name to come up. It will, if anybody’s listening to this they type in “black comics,” something about me is going to come up on the 1st or 2nd page of Google Search results.
But also when someone types in my name, I want my website to come up because I’m controlling my brand to some extent. This is what I want people to know about me when they type in my name. Not some random video that I did 10 years ago.
Your website is definitely something that makes up your brand. And then everything that people are saying about you, like reviews: Google reviews, all of those public places where people can leave reviews about you, your business, your work makes up your digital footprint, your online presence.
Jennifer: I love that you talk about it like real estate. I speak with so many professors that have maybe been given space on their University website to create a page, or they use a page that has been given to them by Humanities Commons, or another organization. It’s different than owning your own space, than having complete control over a website and a domain that you own.
I love what you said about comparing it to owning real estate and really investing in having control over your own name. Thank you for sharing that.
Sheena: Yeah, for sure. It’s about ownership because it’s kind of like your website is hosted by wherever it’s hosted by. And obviously you don’t own that company, but you own it more than you own your Instagram page, or your Facebook page, or your or your Twitter page. Right? You can directly be in contact with people. You can track your traffic to your website. You can send them to your mailing list.
If something happens with any of these platforms you still can be in direct communication with the people that are your fans and followers and that kind of thing.
Jennifer: I love that because you’re really talking about people who are trying to make those kind of longer term connections, inviting people to their website.
A lot of the people that I work with have never really thought about the audiences for their website before. They’re just thinking of other academics, or other researchers at that point when they first reach me. So that’s really normal if you’ve never thought about it before. That’s normal.
However, your website will reach so many more people. And it does invite more people, and media, and other researchers of course. But also the public, to explore your work. Owning that real estate is not just inviting people to your research, it’s inviting people to learn more about you as a person and see how your work can help them. I really enjoyed that comparison to real estate. That’s great.
Why you want a larger media presence for your work
Jennifer: You’ve created the Power Your Research program because you want to help academics have a larger media presence, to get real recognition for their work. Why should academics want that?
Sheena: There’s two reasons why I created Power Your Research. The 1st is because unfortunately a lot of people with PhDs are living paycheck to paycheck. Or, they’re not getting the income that they want to be getting from their universities. So you have people with PhDs who can’t even break into academe, because at this point getting a tenure track position is almost like making it to the NFL, if we’re being honest.
Then, we have people who are on tenure tracks, or who have tenure, who now all of a sudden they realize, “Oh my goodness, there is a pay ceiling to this once I get tenure, I got to go for Full.” And Full [Professor] is the highest promotion that you can get. You’re just not going to make any more money for the rest of your career because you’re a Full Professor. What a lot of people will do is they’ll go the administration route because they want to make more money, not necessarily because that’s what they want to do.
I created the Power Your Research program to empower people. To say, “Hey, look. You can make more money building your brand than any university or institution can ever pay you anyway.” If you have tenure you might as well do that because your work can leave an impact on people. You can reach more people. You can really do the things that you want your work to do.
If you’re not on a tenure track, and you’re one of these PhDs or people with master’s degrees that are not even in Higher Ed, you can leverage your academic credentials to make six figures and more.
That’s the 1st reason why I created the program: to empower people to own their academic credentials in their career.
The 2nd reason why I created Power Your Research is because with these free tools that we have out here, unfortunately, educators and academics are not the ones with the microphones reaching everybody. And they are the subject matter experts.
There are people who are very good at digital media, good at using these tools, who are not subject matter experts who have the microphone and are reaching millions of people.
I personally believe that society is better when the subject matter experts have the microphone. And have the visibility and media coverage to reach more people. Because they’ve done the academic and educational work. They should also be the ones out there on the forefront.
Those are the two reasons why I created Power Your Research for my academics and educators.
Jennifer: I love it! Oh that sounds amazing. I think there’s so many women who are listening right now that are like, “Oh, I need six figures. That sounds like the program for me.”
Can you tell people a little bit about what to expect from the program? Like who should reach out and actually book a call with you to talk about this.
Because more people should be in this program and get that expertise to actually communicate and get the money that they deserve.
Sheena: Yeah, so there are kind of two buckets of people in the program. There’s people who, have PhDs, some people have master’s degrees, who are not like working as faculty members. But they might have a small business that they just started and they’re trying to get lead generation and just trying to figure it out. Maybe they have a different full-time job, they’re trying to figure it out.
The other bucket of people are people who are on tenure track positions or who are tenured, who are the people that we just spoke about, where they’re like, “Hey, there’s a pay ceiling.” They’re feeling unfulfilled in Higher Ed. They’re looking for the next thing. They want to make more money. They’re living paycheck to paycheck, or not making the income that they want to make.
Basically anybody with academic credentials, I can teach you how to leverage those so that you can own your future, and protect your future, and build equity in your brand.
Being an academic expert in a documentary
Milestone Generations (2022) was released recently on HBO. It is a documentary that asks, “Where are the Black superheros?” exploring the history of Milestone Media hosted by Method Man.
Jennifer: You’ve done it for yourself. You really are an expert who’s been on all of the national outlets, and in documentaries, on TV shows.
What was it like being in Milestone Generations? I know you’ve been on other TV spots before, but that was the one that just came out and I watched it.
Sheena: Oh, thank you.
Yeah, that was that cool. It’s always awesome to kind of get recognition like that, in my opinion. Because I get to reach more people. I get to help more people.
It was amazing. I got to go to New York. I was on set. It was during COVID, so we had to do multiple COVID-19 tests. But it was amazing.
It was a big honor and, to be honest, I worked hard to be able to get positioning like that without spending money on a publicist. I don’t pay publicists.
I do this all on my own by just really honing in on the things that I teach academics to do around leveraging their brand. And I’m focused. I’m just focused.
Once you get the media coverage and visibility, and you’re consistent for a period of time, you don’t have to pitch yourself anymore because you already have the online presence. When someone types in “black comics” or whatever, something about me is gonna come up. And so I’ll be able to kind of get to the top of the list of experts that can talk about black comics, the comic space, that kind of thing.
Anybody can do that with their educational backgrounds. This is really what I want people to understand. Anybody can get to that place, just a period of time that you have to do a specific set of activities until you can kind of sit back and kind of enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Jennifer: You just mentioned something that I’d like to ask about. Because I think a bunch of people are maybe going to have this question.
Sheena: Yeah.
Jennifer: Can you hire a publicist? And if so, how much does it cost? You teach people how to do it themselves, but hiring a publicist probably sounds more attractive to some people. So what does that actually look like? I think it’s really expensive, right?
Sheena: Hiring a publicist sounds more attractive because people actually have a misconception about what publicists do. I actually did a live video on this the other day.
“People think they’re going to hire a publicist, the publicist is going to do all the work for them. They’re going to put their content out there, they’re going to run their social medias, they’re going to get them media spots. That is not what a publicist is there for.”
You have to provide the publicist with the content. You need to come to the publicist with something for the publicist to put out into the world. A publicist doesn’t just work with you and then call up The New York Times and be like, “Hey, I got a client.” You have to be the publicist for things.
You have to work with the publicist for at least 3-6 months before you see any results because they have to build up to getting you that media coverage and visibility. But they also have to have something to build upon.
A publicist is like $3,000-$5,000 a month.
You’re not gonna see results for a while. You’ll probably get a couple of media spots. But you will have no idea what your brand is, who you’re trying to reach, or any of that.
I want to be clear that publicists are not scams or anything like what people might be thinking. Publicists are actually really good at their job, so they have to have something to work with.
I used a publicist one time. And I might use a publicist in the future. But there’s a very specific way you should go about this so that you’re not paying $3,000 to $5,000 a month. The 1st is to build your brand on your own. Have something for the publicist to build off of. So do the work.
The second is if there’s a high-end media outlet that you want to be on…Let’s take me for example. I was on The Breakfast Club, it’s a very high-end podcast known worldwide. You see politicians go on there all the time.
I did the work on that. I got in contact with Charlamagne tha God, who is the host, on my own. I got him to follow me on Twitter. Eventually, after about 6-8 months, I got the email address of the producer. I emailed the producer on my own. Then at that point, I hired a publicist to just go into the end zone and lead the rest of the way because that was high-end.
Instead of me having to pay $3,000 to $5,000 a month, I could pay a little bit less for a shorter period of time. Because I just wanted the publicist to really do that one thing. So, that’s a different way to go about getting a publicist. Save yourself some money.
But I mean for all the places I’ve been, I have not had a publicist with me—ABC, Good Morning America, Digital BBC, NPR—that was all me working working the systems that I teach.
Jennifer: Amazing! Well for everyone who’s listening, Power Your Research, is the program that’s going to teach you how to do that. You get to work with Dr. Sheena Howard and learn how to really control your own media. And reach out to people and actually make those connections yourself.
Dr. Howard, is there anything else you’d like to discuss before we wrap up?
Sheena: I want to say since I did mention the publicist that I worked with for a little bit, shout out to Sam Mattingly, the publicist that I did work with a few years ago. She was amazing, and believed in me, and believed in my mission, and believed in my message. But I came to her with things for her to use to promote my brand. I had been promoting my brand for years before I reached out to her for that limited period of time. Shout out to her.
Hopefully your listeners found this valuable. Hopefully there are some things in there they can take and implement right now. That is my goal: to empower all of my academics and educators.
Jennifer: Well thank you so much for coming on the show, Dr. Howard. Thank you so much!
Sheena C. Howard, is a Professor of Communication. She is an award-winning author, filmmaker, and scholar. In 2014, Sheena became the first Black woman to win an Eisner Award for her first book, Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation. She is also the author of several critically acclaimed books and comics books on a range of topics. Sheena is a writer and image activist, with a passion for telling stories, through various mediums, that encourage audiences to consider narratives that are different than their own.
In 2014, Sheena published Black Queer Identity Matrix and Critical Articulations of Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation. Sheena is the author/editor of the award-winning book, Encyclopedia of Black Comics and the cowriter of the comic book Superb, about a teenage superhero with Down Syndrome. In 2016, through her company Nerdworks, LLC, Sheena directed, produced and wrote the documentary Remixing Colorblind, which explores the ways the educational system shapes our perception of race and “others.”
Dr. Cheyenne Seymour wrote the book on the real-life impacts of social media. The collection, Successes and Setbacks of Social Media (Wiley Blackwell 2020), brings together diverse narratives about how social media can influence the pursuit of Higher Education.
Cheyenne joins me for a featured interview about her social media research. She is an Assistant Professor of Communication, Arts, and Sciences at CUNY Bronx Community College. She was an amazing editor for my piece in the book, “Social Media: From Deleted to Private, Private to Public Profiles.” Be sure to get your copy today from Wiley.
Is it okay to not be on social media? Find out in this featured interview.
Jennifer: Hi everyone, this is Jennifer van Alstyne on The Social Academic. Welcome to the featured interview series. Today I’m talking with Dr. Cheyenne Seymour who is an author, a professor. We’re going to be talking about social media, online presence, and what it’s actually like to work on an edited collection about social media experiences in the academy.
Cheyenne, I’m so glad you’re here to talk with me today. Would you please introduce yourself?
Cheyenne: Absolutely, thank you so much for this opportunity, Jennifer.
As you mentioned, my name is Dr. Cheyenne Seymour. I am an Assistant Professor of Communication, Arts, and Sciences at Bronx Community College, which is part of the City University of New York.
I happen to teach various courses on communication including social media. I also teach courses on public speaking, as well as rhetoric. I’m very fortunate to have all of these interests within the communication discipline that I get a chance to explore and help students with.
What inspired your book about social media?
Jennifer: I love that. I work a lot with professors on social media, so it’s awesome to talk with someone who’s really in the classroom and working with students and seeing that kind of larger perspective.
One of the things that I really liked about your book is that it covers academic experiences from a lot of different perspectives from undergraduate students, graduate students, university administrators.
Tell me a little bit more about your book, Successes and Setbacks of Social Media: Impact on Academic Life. What inspired you to work on this collection?
Cheyenne: This is a wonderful, wonderful topic to explore. And I was delighted to have this opportunity. And one of the things that led me to an interest in social media was how it continued to come up in the classroom.
For example, when teaching classes on interpersonal communication, we were exploring the relationships between two people.
It was often interesting that students wanted to talk about mediated communication and how they were forming relationships because of social media, ending relationships because of social media as well.
And we were really thinking about the differences in terms of how people present themselves in person when chatting with someone on the street or in a classroom, in the workplace, versus how they were connecting online.
And there were some clear distinctions that were cropping up.
Jennifer: Wow.
Cheyenne: Also, when we were talking in classes like on public speaking, lots of students were saying, you know what, “I’m starting to go live. And I’m not only talking to people in a live setting, I’m actually talking to people in a virtual setting. And it feels different.” And we were kind of exploring those as well.
I found that social media was kind of like intersecting with so many areas of life that it just was like calling for a little bit more attention. [Jennifer and Cheyenne laugh.]
Jennifer: Oh, I think that’s amazing. It sounds like you were really impacted by your experiences in the classroom. And the conversations that you were having with people, that influenced the research that you were doing. And ultimately this collection that you put together, some of them are firsthand experiences, some of them are more research based.
And I love all of the little introductions to each section that you have that talk about this kind of greater understanding of what social media is and how it’s interactive with our society. That’s fascinating.
Can I ask about the book in terms of the process of releasing it? Is that something you talked about on social media?
Cheyenne: I didn’t really explore that so much on social media. But let’s dive into that a little bit.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Cheyenne: It’s really, really exciting when you get multiple perspectives. And as you’ve kind of described, it does just that. We’re getting student perspectives, we’re getting perspectives of educators and administrators, who are sometimes thinking about themselves when they were in the seats in the classroom. And then also sometimes thinking about themselves in the role.
And it’s really interesting how we see it impacting so many avenues of life. Like how social media was able to help some students, connect with others, understand course content, and meet their academic goals.
Where we had some who just were feeling a little defeated because perhaps they were spending too much time on social media and not using that time to complete their homework. Right?
We kinda see a little bit of a difference here. And it was really important to me to capture that not everyone is going to have this same cookie cutter experience on even the same platform.
It was really, really wonderful that we had various identities reflected, various professional roles reflected in the book. And I worked really hard to try to synthesize the current research on it.
As many of us know, social media is really a young subject, right? Although it has probably consumed a lot of our lives it hasn’t been around for quite so long. There’s so much to explore. But I wanted to take a look at some of the data on the more concrete assessments, the statistics that have been out on the topic. To share those and couple that with firsthand experiences to really paint more of a clear picture in terms of how it’s impacted us in the past and how people began to retool with it currently.
Jennifer: I love that. Can I ask it, was there something in particular that your research showed that you found surprising? That you were like, ‘Oh, I am so glad I can include that in the book.’ [Laughs.]
Cheyenne: That is an excellent question. I think there is a lot of shocking bits of info. But I guess as one who identifies as a woman, I was quite surprised. And then it kinda reflected experiences that I had had, or had heard from others.
I was quite surprised at just how much social media can have a negative impact on women.
Although there’s a lot of great things out there, a lot of women were worrying about self-esteem, about their parents. They were essentially having issues with romantic relationships. With platonic relationships.
Whereas the data was not quite showing that for men, people who identify as men.
We didn’t quite to be fair, assess non-binary. And maybe next time around, we’d love to include that particular demographic in the data.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Cheyenne: But ultimately a lot of researchers were kind of just like finding that anyone who identified as a woman…and I shouldn’t say anyone, but many who identified as a woman was definitely finding a lot more negative experiences.
Jennifer: Mm-hmm [Affirmative].
Cheyenne: That was important for me because we wanna enlighten individuals. And not just make them feel like, oh my gosh, I should log off right now.
No, we wanna empower them so that they can understand, ‘Okay, maybe I need to think about this differently. Maybe I need to limit how much time I’m using it.’ Just so they ensure they understand the full scope, right? Of the impact.
Jennifer: Oh, I think that’s so important. One of the questions that I always ask people when I’m working with them on social media is: how do you use social media now? And is it how you want to be using it?
Because most people have this idea or this preconception about how they should be or how they should appear on social media. And that’s not always gonna work for them. It’s not always something that’s gonna meet their goals, like why they joined Twitter or something in the first place.
Asking that kind of introspective question to people, I always find that the people I ask are surprised, cuz they’ve never really sat down and been like, ‘Okay, let me think about my social media life and like what I want from it. And like what I’m getting from it. And, maybe those two things aren’t the same.
I’m actually really glad that you brought that up because that introspection is something that all the people who were writing for your book, for that collection had to do, but it’s not really something that we do in general in our everyday lives.
Cheyenne: Yeah, that’s a really great point. And I’m glad you bring that up because when I teach social media, which is typically an introduction course, that’s one of the things that I encourage the students to explore.
I ask them to think about how they want to be perceived. Right? And whether or not their activity (their reposts, their posts), whether it’s leading to that perception.
Jennifer: Mm-hmm [Affirmative].
Cheyenne: And many of them find that there are some small changes that they can make that will help them better align with their social media goals.
And it’s something that I think most individuals don’t often think about, just jump right in. “Oh, I like that. I’ll unfollow this person or this organization.”
We just kind of move along. But if we think about our goals, and keep that in mind as we make those choices, it sometimes might even empower us a bit more on these platforms.
Jennifer: Ooh. I love that. I love that. Now, actually, I wanted to ask about your online presence. I mean, you wrote a book about social media. You teach social media. What does your online presence look like?
Cheyenne: That’s a great question, Jennifer. I’ll preface this by saying oftentimes some of my friends are like, why don’t you post more? [Jennifer laughs.]
I get that question a lot. When I think back to when I first joined social media, which was shortly after undergrad…I kind of was like one of those individuals would chat with friends. I would post my thoughts because that was during the time when Facebook asked you what you were thinking.
Jennifer: That’s right!
Cheyenne: Yeah. I was like sure, I’ll tell you what I’m thinking.
And I think now I’m a little more private, if you will, when it comes to things. I love to share content that connects to education, women’s empowerment, culture, politics. Things that kind of reflect my core values, the things that I find important.
But ultimately I try to not necessarily sort of put my personal life on display, if that makes sense.
Jennifer: Yeah, it does.
Cheyenne: And for me it kinda gives me a little bit of, I should say like a curtain. I don’t feel like I have to constantly live on display or perform.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Cheyenne: A lot of things on social media are performative.
That for me has been the difference, I think, as I’ve grown, as I’ve learned.
I decided, okay, I wanna use social media to stay connected with friends, to read about the issues, to make sure I’m current. But I try not to make it so that my entire life has to bleed on the platform. If that makes sense. [Laughs.]
Jennifer: I think it makes so much sense.
And I love that you talked about that distinction, how your specific goals played out in terms of the content that you actually do share. And why you share it because of your values and those things are important to you.
But it’s not the same as like sharing your thoughts with Facebook. I remember that prompt. That was when it was always like, “What is Jennifer thinking? What is Jennifer up to?” [Laughs.]
Thanks for sharing that with me. And I think that gave me a little bit more insight into kind of your motivations for everything. But I would like to hear more about your online presence. It sounds like you do have social media. Which platforms are you on?
Cheyenne: Primarily I tend to use Facebook.
Jennifer: Okay.
Cheyenne: That’s my go to. I know it’s kind of tried and true. I’ve been around for a long time, but I’m a big, big fan of Facebook in terms of its ability to kind of offer various modes of communication.
Meaning of course you can post. You can go live. You can add stories. You can make phone calls.
I think it does a really great job of offering lots of various avenues also. It’s kind of near and dear to my heart in the sense that that’s where I really fell in love with social media.
Jennifer: Me too.
Cheyenne: I continue to use it. And I’ll be frank and say, I really have very intentionally limited my consistent use of other platforms.
Because, not to say that I don’t think that they all have value or that they’re all great. I am definitely familiar with them. But I know that if I were to like really engage on all of those platforms, I would have very little time in the day. [Jennifer laughs.] I try to limit it.
I also utilize LinkedIn quite a bit. Great for networking. I always encourage students to start building their profiles as well. That’s a really good one. Students can add colleagues from their workplace, they can add classmates, professors and really just start to kind of build this wonderful professional catalog of all of the things they’ve done and all of the people they’ve interacted with. Those are the two that I use the most.
Jennifer: Oh, that’s great. Actually, I’m so glad that you brought that up about teaching your students that having that profile early on is really helpful for them on LinkedIn.
I get that question a lot from graduate students and even from early career researchers, like: ‘Should I be on LinkedIn? Is it the right time for me now?’
The answer is definitely yes.
Even if you’re thinking about academic jobs, if you’re thinking about staying in the academy, LinkedIn can still be beneficial because it has really powerful search capabilities.
And you can even ask for recommendations from like your professor, or your advisor, someone you work on a committee with…that helps more people understand kind of what’s important to you, what you’re working style is like. And this is great when you’re talking about research funders, or you’re trying to network with other people in your field from different universities.
I do encourage you as early as you can start a LinkedIn profile. I’m so glad that you brought that up.
Cheyenne: Yes, and I’ll add one more thing. Depending upon where users are in the world, there are different ages that they can start creating a LinkedIn page. But, primarily in the United States, it’s often recommended as early as high school. Right? So to start there, so great advice regarding LinkedIn.
Jennifer: I love that. It sounds like your social media, you share things that are about your values. You share things that are important to you. It’s not like a diary, but you do connect with people personally there, is that correct?
Cheyenne: Yeah, I would absolutely say so. While I may not share what I’m having for lunch on social media, and no shade to anyone who does [Jennifer laughs, holding her hand up] [Cheyenne aughs]…I will typically share things that are kind of a reflection of the current times. If there are topics that are highlighting a cause that really kind of gets me excited, ignited, those are the things that I often share.
I do often share pictures of my travel when I go to a new place, learn about a new culture. Perhaps self snap a pic, share something really interesting that I learned. It’s like, I can take the knowledge that I’ve come across in my travels and share that with those who are on my pages. Things of that nature: articles that are of interest, pictures that kind of represent my experiences.
And oftentimes I love to comment. To like photos. Or posts of jokes and other memes that my friends and family share.
Yeah, I try to stay pretty connected on social media. It’s a great way to feel like you haven’t missed anything. Even during the pandemic, right? We’ve been so far away what feels like from our friends, our colleagues, family. And this is a really nice way to stay close.
And so I love to see what my fellow followers are sharing.
Jennifer: You actually mentioned something that I wanted to talk about and I’m hoping you’re, you’re open to talking about it.
During the pandemic, I feel like social media use and online presence became more important to people who were social distancing, maybe traveling to conferences less to present with other professors and other researchers.
How have you noticed the kind of trends about social media changing over the past couple of years?
Cheyenne: Yeah, that’s a great question.
I think primarily there are two things that stood out to me: the good and the bad. Right? And that’s pretty general. Let me explain a little bit.
So the good: I noticed that there were lots of things that were bringing families together, like the TikTok dances and trends. Those were really, really phenomenal at getting people excited to kind of share content, learn new dances. Even just like something as simple as that. It was a really nice way…And what we saw were multi-generational families doing these things, public figures. It was like a really nice way for us to all say, ‘Okay, you know what? We’re far apart, but let’s grow together.’ Not to mention TikTok had a huge boost in their numbers during the platform in terms of their enrollment, if you will, on their site.
But ultimately then we kind of saw a lot of heavy things. I found out about the loss of some friends through social media who had unfortunately lost their lives to COVID-19. And so it was really heavy. It was like a heavy time to kind of log in, see what’s going on. Lots of people were posting about their illness or their sadness. Or just sort of some of the difficulties that they were dealing with in isolation or just kind of struggling through the unknown.
It was like it was one of those situations where you weren’t really short where you were gonna scroll upon whether it was gonna be something that made you smile or perhaps something that brought some tears to your face.
I think as a result of that, that really shows just how much social media can reflect the times.
Jennifer: Right.
Cheyenne: It’s like a great reflector of what’s going on in our lives in our communities. And sometimes it’s great. And sometimes it’s challenging.
Jennifer: That’s really interesting. When you think about that kind of really early on Facebook prompt that’s like, “What are you thinking?”
And I remember at that time, most people would share like 1 sentence, maybe 2, about what was going on. And a kind of trend that I’ve been seeing more recently is that opening up. These kind of longer posts where people are getting personal and sharing more about the good and the bad.
And people can really connect with that, but they can also be affected by it emotionally. It’s really interesting that you brought that up.
Cheyenne: Yeah, that’s a really great point. I love that connection with that initial question, like the original Facebook question.
Hashtag activism and what your students care about
Jennifer: Now I also wanted to talk about hashtag activism, which is something that you mentioned in the Looking Ahead section of your book at the end, when you’re talking about these bigger trends in social media.
I know that social media can really bring groups together. It can help people share their voices and even be heard, in some cases by universities, even having to address issues that they were experiencing on campus.
What are your feelings about hashtag activism and what are you seeing in those trends?
Cheyenne: Yeah, hashtag activism is something that is really, really widespread. Sometimes, I think students don’t even consider it in terms of that title. They just feel like ‘I’m just sharing hashtags that are passionate.’ Or I should say, that reflect their passions rather.
They’re excited about these topics. They wanna get them out there. And a lot of them really don’t think about it as activism from my experience, talking to college students. They primarily just see it as like a way of life.
But it is a really, really great way for students to have a voice. To learn about getting their thoughts out not only within their college communities, but really across the nation.
It’s a really fast way for lots of trends to start kind of cropping up in areas where there’s a lot of need for change. So I’m noticing that.
I think what’s really great about it though, is that this is also an opportunity for colleges to recognize the needs of their students. If advisors, faculty, staff, administrators are able to really be in tune with what students on their campuses are sharing about, are posting about what’s the hashtag that’s currently trending. It will allow them to say, ‘Okay, you know what? Maybe we need to provide some resources in this area. Or perhaps let’s, let’s arrange an event on this particular topic so we can invite panel speakers to offer some insights.’ Or perhaps it’s even a situation where students are in need of an outlet, right? And maybe they want to bring in more outside resources like counselors or specialists who can help students to essentially address their concerns. There are a lot of ways for students to kind of speak out and for faculty, staff, administrators to respond.
I also think there’s a really great opportunity for employers to intersect as well. Because if you think about college, of course, many of the goals lead to professional goals, professional aspirations. If we can also start to work in a way for businesses, organizations to kind of recognize what students are interested in because those are essentially their employees in the future…They can too start to make sure that their policies, that their procedures are in alignment with what’s going to attract qualified, skilled, thoughtful citizens.
And it’s really a great way to kind of start connecting with not too much effort required, to be honest.
Jennifer: Very cool. Now if I’m listening to this and I’m like a university administrator and I’m all the sudden like, ‘I need to figure out what my students are saying on social media.’ Like, what can they do? I mean, there’s social listening out there, but that can be expensive.
What is something that maybe a college administrator can do to start hearing more of that conversation, to seeing more of it, and actually seeking it out?
Cheyenne: Yeah, that’s a wonderful question. Many colleges and universities happen to have social media teams. Oftentimes, they are the ones who are posting content, inviting students to engage. You might of course start there and ask the team to kind of perhaps start noticing the comments that students are actually posting. To notice that there are hashtags that are trending. And sometimes even just to kind of look at the trending topics, even regionally. That will kind of provide some insight.
If you are following, for example, students on your own pages, or perhaps even students who are using your institution’s hashtag, there’s a lot of popular ones. Sometimes it’s the nickname or the acronym for the school. Again, that will kind of start to open up those trends.
And one might even think about offering some platforms for students to kind of freely do so. It might be like another version of “What are you thinking?” What are our students thinking? What’s important to you?
When I talk to students right now, there are a couple of topics that are really national, topics that are in the forefront. Of course we’ve got things like the right to seek an abortion, social justice, voting rights. These are topics that students are really getting worked up on. Even when it comes to the cost of education or student loans. These are things that are super important to students.
And also it’s a great way for the individuals who are running these institutions, who are teaching at them, to really figure out what the students need. Because sometimes the needs are not only in the classroom. They are outside of the classroom when they’re at home, when they’re in the dorm, when they’re at work. And we wanna make sure that we’re producing well-rounded students.
And so just starting with, again, the staff that you have managing social media platforms. And perhaps even using hashtags that reflect your school to see what is out there’s a great way to open that door to a productive conversation.
Jennifer: Ooh. I love that advice. I think that’s gonna be so helpful for some of the people who are listening.
Jennifer: Now, I know we definitely have some listeners that are like really anxious about social media. Like they’re watching this video on YouTube, or maybe reading it on the blog. But they’re not on Twitter. They’re not on Facebook and they really are trying to find out, is it okay to not be on social media? I mean, you teach social media. You wrote the book on it. [Cheyenne laughs.]
What do you think, do you have to be on social media these days?
Cheyenne: That’s a great question. And I think that individuals can lead themselves to these decisions. In other words, you don’t have to feel like you’re compelled to be on social media.
I know some individuals who have made the choice to stay away. And we actually had a really great contributor in the book who actually wrote about her decision not to engage on social media. And she talks about that in relation to teaching high school students and how that kind of has informed her life, and her decisions.
I don’t think we all have to be on it, but I do think it’s important to be aware of the platforms that exist. And perhaps even you might decide later that there’s a particular platform that suits your needs. Some individuals, for example, like Twitter, because it primarily focuses on short messages. And they don’t have that overwhelming visual content. Whereas some of the younger college aged students love the visuals and that’s really what pulls them in.
It’s okay to not be on social media.
But I don’t think we should ignore it in total. But perhaps just kind of be aware of the ways that it’s reflecting modern society. And perhaps even think about what type of social media you might want to see or use in case one introduces itself. And then, you’re excited to join.
Jennifer: Ah, I love that. What a great response. I think that so many people will feel relieved after hearing that, you know? ‘Okay, well, I don’t have to join. I can really think about what I need and what will make sense for me. And it’s okay. If that changes over time, maybe I’ll wanna join social media later. Gotta be open to it, but I don’t have to do it now.’ So I love that.
Is there anything else you’d like to add? I have had so much fun with this conversation.
Cheyenne: Well, there’s one other thing that I have been doing, and I’d love to just kind of encourage others to maybe even consider this. One of the things that I’ve been doing, Jennifer, is I’ve been using my cell phone to monitor how much time I am on the phone, how much time I’m on certain apps, like social media apps.
And I’ll be honest, [laughs] when I was looking at my time, I thought, “Wow, I’ve been devoting a lot of weekly time to social media.”
In my case, I was like, okay, if I dial this back just a bit, if I spend even 30 minutes less, what could I do with that time? For me, it’s spent going outside, taking walks, hobbies, things of that nature. Just kind of reclaiming that time a little bit.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Cheyenne: And I’ve also invited some younger individuals in my family to do the same. They’ve identified things they’d like to do. One said she wants to spend more time working out. And the other ones said that she wants to spend a little bit more time working on her jewelry hobby. It’s a really nice way to kind of think about how we’re spending our time.
On the flip side, though, you might have someone who says, ‘Gee, I don’t think I’m connecting enough and I really wanna have more of a presence.’
Then maybe you might think about how you can efficiently use maybe another half an hour or so. Maybe there’s a new platform you wanna check out. Or, for perhaps you wanna use that time to create some content.
It doesn’t mean that the time has to be good or bad, but it’s all about the individual in terms of how you interpret it. I think that’s a really helpful tool. All phones are a little different. You might have to play around with your settings to get how much time you’re spending on social media each week. But once you do, most people find it’s kind of mind blowing. You might wanna check that out.
Jennifer: Oh, that’s great. I’ve checked this stats myself and been slightly embarrassed about how much time I was spending. And I really have to break it down and like look at the platforms.
And I realized that even though I was saying Instagram was my favorite platform, I spent way more time on Facebook and I had to admit, [laughs] I liked Facebook more than I thought I did.
It really gave me insight into what I was doing. I wasn’t folk focused on what I was doing at the time. But when you see it all in the data. And you’re like, okay, well that took more hours than I expected it to…that can really help you make better decisions for yourself.
I really liked that. It’s all about that time, what you wanna do with it. And it’s okay if you wanna put more energy into social media. It’s also okay if you wanna put more energy into your hobbies or things that you enjoy doing, or that you need to get done too. Both of those choices are great. And it’s really up to the individual.
Cheyenne: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It’s a great point.
Jennifer: Wow. Well, Cheyenne, thank you so much for talking with me. It was so great to feature you for this interview. And if you’re listening, be sure to check out Cheyenne’s book, Successes and Setbacks of Social Media: Impact on Academic Life from Wiley. I’m gonna drop that link in the video Cheyenne Seymour, EdD joins me to talk about her book Successes and Setbacks of Social Media: Impact on Academic Life. below.
Like and subscribe to The Social Academic on YouTube. We’ll see you next time for the next featured interview.
Dr. Cheyenne Seymour aims to instill in her students that carefully crafting messages can increase interest and aid in understanding. Her areas of research include social media, rhetoric, and public speaking. Dr. Seymour is an experienced television news producer with a passion for sharing information that can positively impact individuals and communities.
She has earned a Doctorate of Education from New England College, a Master of Arts in English from Trinity College, and a dual Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Media Arts from Long Island University. Dr. Seymour enjoys traveling and experiencing new cultures.
Technology in education has transformed over time to better meet the needs of teachers and students. Dan Marrable, founder of 448 Studio in the United Kingdom talks how they’re jumping on this wave of technology to bring solutions for academic conferences and virtual events.
I met Dan back in 2020 when he invited me to speak at the All Day All Night 24 hour conference. It was a production to behold. Well managed, well organized. Speakers from all over the world joined in to share knowledge for Higher Education professionals. I’ve been on the steering committee ever since for this great online event.
In this interview, Dan Marrable opens up about some of the struggles professors have with virtual events (event organizers, speakers, and attendees). And, he asks for your help with their virtual teaching study funded by the Scottish Government and European Commission.
Jennifer: Hi everyone. My name is Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome back to the new season of The Social Academic. Today, I’m here with Dan Marrable, the founder of 448 Studio, who is an amazing person I met in 2020. We worked together on the All Day All Night Conference.
He’s here to tell you about some ed tech software today that’s really amazing for faculty, for professors. If you’re in Higher Ed, I’m excited to share this interview with you.
Dan, how are you today? Would you start us off by introducing yourself?
Dan: Sure. Well, first of all, Jennifer, thanks for having me on the podcast.
My name is Dan Marrable. I’m the founder and CEO of a company called 448 Studio, launched back in October 2018. After working a stint at the University of Glasgow, I launched it as a consultancy to, to work with a variety of different higher education institutions working on their social media strategy, working on the support for digital media within academia.
That’s been going on for the past 3 years. It’s been quite an interesting time.
Obviously everyone knows that the past 2 years a lot of things had to pivot and change. And I think that’s kind of why I’m really excited to speak to you today about the evolution of not only 448 Studio, but kind of how we managed to jump on that wave of technology in teaching and learning. And what education institutions have had to cope with and deal with them the past couple of years [during the pandemic].
Technology changes for education during the pandemic
Jennifer: Yeah, it’s been increasingly difficult for faculty, but I love that you’re creating solutions for them. I’d really like to just let other people know, you know, what does your company do? Who are you helping and why?
Dan: Yeah. So primarily at the moment, we are very much embedded within higher education.
We have done some work with further ed, and with schools and things like that. That’s kind of more on the horizon. But I think for the company to grow, we’ve had to really focus on what I know. And what the people that worked for me know. And that is within universities.
Primarily we help not only academics, but also people within professional services.
It started out as you know, as workshops and support for social media and working with academics to represent their research in a digestible manner for widening participation as well as for international connections. And we still do that. And it’s still very much the core of 448 Studio.
But two years ago, when everything went into lockdown, we launched a conference called All Day All Night, which is where I met you. That was for education professionals and academics based off the fact that I felt that the core of what we did and the core of networking and knowledge share had almost been stunted as soon as all these conferences closed. And as soon as you couldn’t meet people in person. So we launched this 24 hour conference.
That’s what started me on that journey of saying, okay, well what can we do? And what can we do better? Specifically for education. Now there’s a lot of solutions for private companies and for corporations. But it does seem like at the moment we’re trying to kind of cram corporate technology into education. And trying to kind of balance the two, which I find is working in various degrees, but not necessarily the most fit-for-purpose thing.
Jennifer: It feels like we’re at this explosion of all of this technology all at once. People aren’t always sure where to turn to. And with so much to learn it just becomes difficult because you’re finding lots of solutions for the same problem, not even sure which one to turn to.
Forumm, a solution for virtual events and conferences
Jennifer: I think that’s why I like what you’re doing with Forumm. Can you tell us a little bit about Forumm?
Dan: Yeah. No, of course. So off the back of All Day All Night I met with some of the guys that were doing the live streaming for it. And very quickly realized that there’s kind of two elements to a virtual event. One is a platform that you host the event on. But a very separate element that a lot of people overlook is a broadcast element of it. So I think we had the broadcast…
The platform that we were using wasn’t necessarily fit-for-purpose. It worked fine, but we just felt that maybe we could do a little bit better from an actual event perspective.
As of last year, January, we started Forumm, which is a virtual event space for the education sector. So something that’s fully customizable.
You’re able to change things like the registration and the user journey. Been able to update simple things like branding and stuff like that.
But also have elements, for example, PDF readers or PDF things for journals. We had academic poster competition within the platform. And 3D and virtual spaces as well, embedded in.
So it’s really focusing on the technology and seeing where the technology can make a virtual event better, as opposed to trying to replicate a physical event virtually.
It’s really trying to find those core things that people within education struggle with and try to find a solution for them on a virtual event in space.
It’s been quite a journey. Yeah. We’ve been doing it for a year and a half and learning as we go. We get so much feedback from the institutions and the people that we work with that it’s great. It really feels like a partnership there. They know that we’re dedicated to the sector which I think makes a big difference as opposed to going for everything.
Jennifer: That does make a big difference, especially because it means that you know the types of struggles that professors, that faculty, that other educators are dealing with when they attend virtual conferences. You’re finding solutions to those.
One of the things that I really like about it is that it’s the kind of this all in one platform. Like if you need that conference space to fit a certain way or to fit your needs. Maybe you’re a journal and you have a series of publications to share. Or again, like that poster competition.
Dan: Yeah.
Jennifer: That can make a really big difference in higher education for researchers and for professors to really create that engaging space. I love that.
Dan: Yeah, no. I think it’s been a real learning experience, Jennifer. And I think the big thing that’s come out of it is how much professional services within universities find it a challenge to run events.
It’s either the fact that you know, that they need a bit of upskilling, which we’re happy to do.
It could be a case that, you know, they’ve got a million and 1 different jobs. And all of a sudden they’re like, okay, now I’ve got to run a virtual event.
Where I think we’ve been able to support that. Show that and set and support where we’ll come alongside you help you
Plan the event
Build the platform
Run it
Broadcast it
Wrap-up
So then that’s where we’ve realized we can really provide a lot of support because when you do boil it down to an event platform, they are starting to pop up everywhere. And they do seem a dime a dozen at the moment. But a lot of times it’s just, you know, “Here are the tools,” and they’ll just step away.
Jennifer: Right.
Dan: And then everyone has to become a professional virtual event individual, whereas maybe they’re doing physical events to begin with and now they have to switch over.
Then obviously now, we can go down that hybrid route, which means so many things to so many different people. That’s that’s another challenge.
I think one of the vast refreshing things that I have seen is the fact that we’re not constrained by geolocation anymore. We’re not restrained by how much is it going to take to fly someone over and put them up and speak?
And, I think it also broadened your access to knowledge because you would get speakers that are like, “Sure, I can give you half an hour, 45 minutes of a talk.” Whereas before it would be a major thing saying to bring someone like that in.
I mean, we’ve had events hosted by hosts in Sydney, in Australia, with the actual event taking place in the United Kingdom. They’ll have the event. Then they’ll go into breakout rooms, which need to be recorded with transcripts done because it influences policy decisions.
That was amazing to see, you know, somebody’s hosting it in a completely different time zone, but still being able to, you know, gain the knowledge that they need from individuals within the UK. I think it’s just opening up that space right now.
Jennifer: And with the All Day All Night Conference, you had people coming in from all over the world. And we had presenters in how many different countries? I mean, it was truly amazing to see the power of that kind of platform and that kind of organization.
So it sounds like it’s not just the platform that you’ve created. It’s the system for really supporting the people who are creating that virtual event. So that together with the platform, it can really produce something that’s engaging for all of the participants.
Dan: Yeah. I think that, and that’s just the whole thing as well, Jennifer.
Obviously we would love everyone to use our platform. But some people, you know, they’ve got their own things set up. Maybe they’ve actually developed their own space within university, the university team on the website. Which I think is great. It’s truly ambitious.
And obviously our platform is great, but I think where we’re really leaning to as well is that support mechanism to help people manage and run the events that they need to run.
And I think it does fit hand in hand with what we’re doing as a consultancy at the very beginning and being embedded within higher education. Now we’re continuing that, but then we’re adding on more layers of support where people need it.
Jennifer: Yeah. Well, I like it because it’s almost like the software production of this idea of how can people connect better online? How can people share their research online?
And this product is almost, it feels to me like this evolution of like here we can create this space in which this knowledge sharing can happen in real time. Asynchronously, it can happen. You can have your recordings and go back later and watch those as well. I just think that that’s so cool.
Compared to all of those other platforms for events. You’re actually focused on education in a way that many of the others are not. And I think that stands you apart, especially when paired with that support.
That’s what I would do. I did events like physical events for my university. And I loved that.
But virtual events presents is like whole new set of challenges. And really getting people engaged. Well, that takes extra planning and extra work and creativity to figure out how these academic spaces can also be online.
Dan: Yeah, and I think the physical event in my opinion can, can never really be replaced. I think there is a space for that. Nothing really compares to just being able to sit in a room with someone and just share knowledge and share information and talk about specific tailored topics and things like that based off of conferences.
But, I think in its own right, a virtual event needs to be looked at with different eyes. Trying to run a virtual event the way you would run a physical event is almost impossible.
Yes, there’s probably some crossover in terms of registration. There’s probably some crossover in terms of some of the communication that you send out to people.
But when it actually comes to the event itself, you know, having to organize different broadcasts of things, different tracks. The support that comes alongside of it as well from a technical perspective, when people aren’t able to log in or having trouble doing different things.
And then dealing with your speakers as well. You know, making sure that they’re up to speed on the technology, making sure everything’s running.
So there’s a lot of things from a virtual event in space that people have had to learn quite quickly.
Where we’re talking about the hybrid space, it’s such a broad term. I’m hoping that people are understanding that, you know, a hybrid isn’t just trying to replicate a physical event to virtual audience. Because I’ve found time and time again one of the audiences loses out.
Whether it’s the virtual guys at home where they don’t feel like they’re part of the event. Or maybe the people in person feel like too many things are catered towards making sure the live streaming is happening, everything’s working properly. So that could even cause delays in, in the event.
So I think it’s still just trying to crack that kind of where those two types of events interact with each other. And I think our platform where we’re trying our hardest to try and figure that out. And I think a lot of other people are trying to figure it out too. But yeah. It’s quite an interesting space to be involved in and to watch.
Jennifer: That’s fascinating.
Struggles with virtual events, the problems people encounter often
Can I ask what are some of the biggest struggles that you’re seeing people have with these virtual events? The educators that you work with.
Dan: I think it depends on the question I guess, Jennifer. I think that the struggles are different for an event organizer, as opposed to a participant, as opposed to maybe a speaker.
Jennifer: Oooh, ok.
Dan: I think from an event organizer point of view. Yes, there’s a lot of technical challenges that need to happen. In terms of making sure everyone’s prepared for the event, making sure speakers are ready, making sure all the right communications are going out to the attendees. Not to mention having to promote it and things like that.
But I think the challenges for people that are speaking is the fact that without maybe more of a guiding hand, sometimes they’ll just have to show up and do everything themselves. I think that can be a huge challenge and a bit frustrating from a technical point of view.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Dan: I think there’s a bit of a barrier as well from the audience. And I think this is something that people have been seeing for the past couple of years, you know, from a webinar perspective. Not necessarily getting that instantaneous feedback. So you’re almost just sitting there talking to a screen and trying to be animated for it.
I think from an attendee point of view, some of the challenges are again from the technical side. Being able to even just simple things like log in, and network, and connect.
But also to be able to get as much out of it as possible from a networking point of view. I think a lot of people go to these events or virtual events hoping to make those connections. But we find time and time again, you know, you have your breakout rooms that people can join. But they’re really under utilized. People are scared to go into these spaces and just turn their camera on and talk to people.
We’ve been advising event organizers to really structure those breakout spaces and say, this is a topic. One of our guys will be in there and we’ll make sure that everything’s fine. And trying to facilitate that networking.
I think, yeah, as soon as they try to replicate a physical event, virtually it shows up a whole lot of challenges for organizers.
So I think their approach should be: We’re going to focus on a virtual or focus on a physical event with maybe some virtual elements to it.
Jennifer: Oh, that makes sense. Hearing all of those struggles also makes me understand why as an event organizer, you know, really thinking about the participants and the speakers is why going with something with support like 448 Studio offers, that can be beneficial.
Educators, university staff. They’re so busy. They’re overworked. And they need help and support with this kind of event. So I just love what you’re bringing to the table. And I’m really glad that you joined me for today’s interview.
Developing a new teaching and learning tool for lecturers
Dan: One of our core focuses over the next nine months because we received a grant from the European Commission to actually do a feasibility study.
Jennifer: Oh, congratulations!
Dan: Thank you. Yeah, it was about a year long process that gets it. But I think we realized quite quickly during the pandemic that the traditional tools that were being used by universities had pretty big barriers when it came to actually teaching.
So I guess aside from the event side of things and conferences side, I think, you know, university students and lecturers were really struggling.
I do commend all of the Higher Ed institutions, and further education, and schools as well for trying to utilize the tools that were given to them. And it ends up being, you know, the Teams or Zoom or something like that, where they really had to completely change the curriculum and the way that they taught to adapt to these tools.
Jennifer: Right.
Dan: We’re really focusing a lot over the next 9 months on understanding that learning and teaching process, that hybrid learning teaching process. And hopefully trying to develop a tool specifically for lecturers.
At the moment we’re doing a lot of sending out surveys to different academics and lecturers to find out where their pain points are. And we’ll hopefully have something to show for it,
I just think there’s quite an interesting time from a learning and teaching perspective. And yeah, just seeing if there’s better ways for tools.
Obviously, I think there’s overlap between learning a teaching platform and Forumm. But learning teaching is really is kind of its own space. It needs its own tools as well.
Jennifer: Yeah, I think that’s fascinating.
How are you soliciting those surveys? Do you want people who are listening to, to reach out to you?
Dan: Yeah, of course I would! I’d love to. I’ll send it across to you to share.
Jennifer: Yeah!
Dan: We’re definitely trying to get as much feedback as possible. We just kind of polished it up as of actually today. So we’ll hopefully in the next week or so we’ll be putting it out.
Jennifer: Yay! [Claps.]
Dan: Yeah, no, I think finding as much information as possible is really key for us at the moment. And then we’ll be developing something closer to the end of the year.
We’re really excited about it and really grateful to the European Commission and Scottish government as well for supporting us on this. It’ll be quite an interesting journey as well.
Jennifer: That is excellent. I love seeing how your business is growing, and changing, and adapting to meet the needs of the people that you serve.
I’m so glad that you’re working on all of that. And congratulations on that grant. That is so exciting. I can’t wait to see what you build.
Dan: Thanks. I know. I think it’ll be quite interesting because I think we’re definitely embracing the flexibility of it. I think, you know, going in with blinders on to say we’re going to create a live streaming that does X, Y, and Z that’s going to do this will be detrimental.
I think trying to find as much out as possible from lecturers and from people on the ground is really important.
And really exploiting technology as opposed to trying to replicate things. Getting that application to do things with the tech that you could never do in person. I think that’s what I really want to explore. As opposed to trying to find a way to replicate things.
So, yeah. It’s been a really interesting. We’re in the real thick of it for research at the moment. So it’ll be really interesting. I’ll make sure to keep being informed when we start to release some of the information.
Jennifer: Yes, I’d love to hear more about it. And I think that everyone listening will be very excited as well.
Yeah. Thanks for sharing that sneak peek with us. [Laughs.]
All Day All Night Conference
Jennifer: Well, Dan Marrable of 448 Studio, thank you so much for coming on The Social Academic blog podcast, YouTube channel. It’s going to be on all of it.
Where can people get in touch with you if they want to learn more about 448 Studio or Forumm?
We also have All Day All Night coming up on November 10, 2022. So we’ll, we’ll be sending more information out about that as well. Which I’m very sure you’ll be involved in some capacity, Jennifer.
Jennifer: Yes. I would love to be involved!
Just for everyone who’s listening. They might not know what All Day All Night is. So could you just end us with a couple of sentences about it?
Dan: Yeah, of course. So it’s a conference for the education sector. This year steam is regrowth. It’s a 24 hour virtual conference that starts in the United Kingdom. And then follows the sun around the world with speakers from Canada, United States, Australia, South Africa. Well, people from all over the place, I think.
It’s fully live, 24 hours. And again, it’s hosted on Forumm.
It really is out there for them for digital knowledge sharing. And I think it’ll be a really great event on the 10th of November.
Jennifer: I love it. November 10th, adding it to my calendar now.
Dan, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you have a great rest of your day!
Dan: Great. Thanks, Jennifer!
Bio for Dan Marrable
Dan Mararable is the founder of 448 Studio, an EdTech company that is committed to the future of knowledge sharing with a product called Forumm; a ground-breaking virtual event platform designed for the education sector.
The company supports institutions such as the University of Glasgow, University of Leeds, LSE, Lancaster University, the Welsh Parliament and Cornell University.
