Algorithms in our Academic Facebook
-An Academic Insider
Under ideal circumstances, the existence of social media platforms and their strong network creating abilities may help integrate a greater diversity of perspectives, opinions, and community mechanisms than are promised within the individual, institutional structures. As I started observing and being critical of the entire system and framework that social media platforms, such as Facebook, provide, I expected to see a more significant play of perceptions of fairness, inclusion, and equity dynamics informing all of these networks. I presumed that these networking systems and communities will result in creating spaces that house open-sourced information, academic knowledge, publications, tools, metrics, and methodologies that are debated openly, inclusively, and creatively. In its microcosmic avatar, it seemed like Facebook simply replicates and cedes to existing hierarchies despite emerging voices. The establishment is recreated and revamped in this digital space even, as the community and its potentially ameliorative practices of interaction and collaboration, are hinted at.
I mainly focused on the liberal arts and humanities groups on social media as intentional communities ideally meant to sustain intellectual cohesion. I see the groups to catalyze collaborative frameworks, adhere to a broadly structured common belief that fosters academic discussions enabling inclusivity, diversity, and interactive collaboration. The tensions I observed, however, replicate the politics of conservative blocs and abhor the evolution of collective, diverse wisdom. I share below the various group habits that characterize the nature of academic Facebook. I simulate the language of algorithms to code how it functions.
Academic (Liberal Studies and Humanities) Facebook: social media→ academic and social space for discussion ∧ includes personal posts occasionally
Netizens/Audience→ includes all interested Higher Ed individuals.
Intent→ Ideally having meaningful and inclusive discussions: academic, political, cultural, social. Improve academic networking skills in an online space. Grow spaces for intercollegiate collaborations and forums. Here I am using the term ‘safe spaces’ to refer to both queer/trans-inclusive spaces while referring to areas that equip intellectual growth without intimidation. Toxic behavioral patterns including bullying, shaming, isolating and other online mechanics of divisiveness were presumably going to be abhorred in these spaces. Many academics feel shunned in predominantly majoritarian academic spaces where intimidatory tactics are strategically used. As a reactionary mechanism, some form “Binders” groups, some stay out, some form groups outside of social media, and go gung-ho with other supportive platforms, such as WhatsApp or private email groups. Then there are the fence-sitters, they believe in safe playing regardless of their faculty/employment status.
Netiquette→ personal posts can be liked, but be selective in posting; self-promote, advertise, fundraise, and show the world how you excel in *everything. Gather a group of eager followers and keep going!
Observations→ academic Facebook replicates academic insecurities and cronyism; it is a microcosm of pro-establishment definitions of an intellectual and meaningful discussion space. It denounces out-of-the-box thinking, especially by juniors in the field. The enactment of academic cronyism, enabling academic nepotism and insecurities play out in this online space. No happy stories of inclusivity or equal collaborations characterize this space. In fact, academic impunity contingent on rank and academic celebrityhood, makes this digital space insecure, exclusive, and hierarchically ranked just like in real-life. The academics who command social media following belong to the same blocs of thought that uphold a certain kind of power structure and inhabit a similar sort of fan following that is specially reserved for them. Mentoring junior colleagues, opening a collegial conversation, or leading by inclusion is passé. The same exclusive groups hold cult status and recreate the same hierarchy that these digital spaces may seem to challenge.
Types:
Compartmental Academic Blocs→ Area studies folxs in one group, followed by cultural studies, history, political science, literary studies, literature, sciences, technologies, economists, etc. Library sciences and interdisciplinary folx? : eff off! Disciplines overrepresented primarily include area studies. Liberal arts disciplines such as English, Philosophy, History, Social Work, or Comparative Literatures, share a more extensive audience group than other more ‘reticent’ subjects, such as Education, Psychology, and Library Sciences. Friends, mentors, exclusive clichés, and fan clubs populate these pages. Membership is through word of mouth, ‘subject to the approval of group admin’ (code for past acquaintances and professional relationships, and/or institutional affiliation). They are also primarily enacted in the cis, white, upper-middle class, or elite spaces.
The swamp→ 4-year liberal arts faculty are routinely snubbed or disregarded by elite academic club members, either under academic clout, or school ranking, or school of thought identified with, or all three combined. The swamp recreates elite educational structures based on an invisible academic caste-system! It routinely promises to make space and support junior and upcoming faculty, keep up with their compartments, and fall back on their solidarity promises without the slightest professional scruple.
Thus, groups of visiting faculties, graduate students, aspiring HigherEd faculty, 2-year College faculty, retired and emeritus faculty, faculty on non-tenure-track are cast off. They are faculty colleagues who routinely serve as the proverbial footnote, if at all, unacknowledged. For most parts, they are an invisible citizenry. Some of these cast-offs have grouped differently: Binders are what they call themselves. These boxes sometimes follow the coda of secretive reinforcement of group values and mimic supremacist structures. At other times, they provide restful shelter to faculty seeking solidarity and good old camaraderie.
Divas and Devis→ Academic fan clubs routinely nominate academic divas known for their attitudes and tantrums worded in abstruse high falutin. Reactions range from crankiness to snobbery rooted in the cult status they enjoy! Like their real world academic occupancy, these cult figures seldom retire from these digital spaces. They uphold a set of values that aspiring sycophants hold dear to themselves. Usually centered on white, male, cisgender gurus, they reproduce academic status quo and hierarchy. If the cult status is not under a white guru, the diva taking over from the nonwhite group is an aspirational white! White support, white mollycoddling keeps them in standing. Their diva/devi persona utilizes their so-called cult status for a kind of conservative protectionism that routinely parades itself as woke and rad! Competitive memberships to these groups are often decided on the number of ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ you put on their personal profile page!
Publication/Conference group room→ if you are with your junkies and contemporaries, the calls for papers are not publicized: you get included if you ‘belong’ to that group. If it’s an academic conference, these netizens make sure their friends present papers where their ideas are reinforced and become axioms. Their publication clubs also perennially promote and advocate for voices that belong to their particular school of thought. Academic clichés simulate the real in the digital space as well. The cesspool promoting more snobbery and elitism is not unobtrusive, but just glaring! The nuance and sophistication with which junior faculty are glossed over, their posts shared without acknowledgments, their comments adapted without a side-eye even, and the general invisibility of BIPOC womyn and their intellectual and academic thoughts, are noteworthy. Senior and establishment academics don’t even think junior and upcoming faculty have anything worthwhile to contribute if it is not fan following, ‘likes,’ and emojis of adoration. If you do happen to fall out of luck by engaging with these posts/posters without so much giving them a sycophantic thumbs up, you are sure to land up in a space populated by a specially toxic group metaphorically likened to “Reviewer2”, a space reserved for an uncritical and biased group of people ready to dismiss you for being you.
Racial and Ethnic blocs→ usually most discussions on social inclusion (and critiques on exclusion) are initiated by BIPOC womyn folx, but limited within the groups following the compartmental bloc mentioned above! Academic hierarchy reproduces itself without any nuances. Men snub womyn, Black women get excluded by Black men and men in general, WOC gets snubbed or disregarded by their counterparts and white men. For queer-identifying colleagues, they get excluded from discussions on inclusions and in critical reading and writing practices. The few trans individuals get labeled as ‘privileged!’ In the academic circus, academic meanness gets overrepresented. For that, academic Facebook provides a ready stage! If you are a BIWOC or nonbinary identifying academic, prepare to get snubbed for your viewpoints, ignored, or reminded of your ‘mediocrity’! Again, compartmental clichés and elite isolationist groups rule the roost. Likely, kinds of viewpoints that do not affirm the status quo are ignored or snubbed. To be in the choir, you must sign the right tune. Presumably, your identity category stamps your specific belonging to this digital group, as does your intellectual input.
Self-Righteous/’fashionable’ liberal group bloc→ This bloc of members subscribing to this ideology are the flagbearers of righteous indignation. Often characterized by posts focused on news items or discussion threads on public and social welfare. The fashionable liberals have compartmental discussions on the issues posted, continue publishing stuff unrelated to social media online outrage, and wear badges of honorary sainthoods. They are outraged by everything everywhere but claim no ownership of that outrage! They are cautiously mindful of who is following them and who is commenting. They start their ‘anger exhibit’ group/compartment/bloc based on selective outrage. Here, academic hypocrisy and exhibitionism, a fierce loyalty underlying “go liberal to be woke” ideology colors every moral and intellectual compass. If you are looking for academics’ integrity, you go bust!
Rats and Snitches blocs →This comprises a few administrators and academic tattlers, keeping an eye on Fb posts to rat out faculty (mostly WOC, non-binary, BDS supportive, etc.). This is the group that police faculty behavior, usually ratting out the ‘disruptive’ colleague who makes the most uncomfortable but ethical comments on race, identity, and questions the politics of representation. This group functions as a rebound mechanism trying to ‘discipline’ unruly and ‘radical’ digital spaces by snitching on faculty and colleagues who seem to be non-conformative in their beliefs and politics. Screenshots are regularly taken to either get the concerned Facebook member to Facebook jail or present them to authorities that rally for some other form of the punitive measure. In any case, this online policing group represents the force that simulates the policing mechanism that throttles academic freedom and dissent in the real world.
Intellectuals and Such-likes→ Composed of seasoned establishment academics, this group is different than the “fashionably liberal group” above. This group is a possible offshoot of the diva/cult group. They spit out their thoughts and are not ready to see through any other perspective. Absolutionists in their own way, they keep up the swamp and are gung-ho about academic establishments while crying hoarse about conservative politics! They subscribe to the cancel culture and advocate for “free speech” only if they are not countered! The holier than thou attitude of these intellectuals and their spitfire attitudes give them a sense of invincibility, anything they say, no matter how daft, must be taken in. Argue at your own peril!
Insecure sycophants→ they try to survive by trying to agree with everything peddled by the swamp. Frequently, allyship is lost if agreeing with one master runs the risk of angering another. Poor souls! Usually junior, un/non-tenured, or graduate student individuals, insecure sycophants seek validity and credence; sometimes, it could be a publication with a journal from the same club they want entry into, sometimes it’s a favorable review they seek, at other times, perhaps a recommendation? In all probability, these are folks who seek entry into the exclusivity and enable the replication of the real structure of academic cronyism.
Summative Results →we are where we started off. Group centric interests keep us from reaching out, collaborate, form coalitional and active support groups for each other. There is nothing to learn unless it is top-down and nothing to talk about unless you get your five minutes of social media fame! The imaginary participatory liberal democratic space we write and talk about is best where it is, to get us published. In the digital world, we stand in line to support academic cult figures, with an unquestioning fan following, while promoting academic hierarchies and cronyism. We feel proud when we are spared being seen with X rather than with Y, depending on who is more fashionable and on the right side of the establishment!
My Comments→ Knowledge-making, networking, creatively connecting online and in the higher education circle is exclusive, shuns innovative new thoughts if they are resistant or new to the traditional academic bloc of thinking. If they are somehow agreeable enough, senior and swamp group identified academics ‘adopt’ them as their own. Juniors bite the dust and form their private groups that soon flounder without supportive alliance from the establishment groups. The nature of disillusionment and betrayal by academic spaces does not start with the geographical academic institution, it starts right here, on your phone, in your academic, social media page!
Restorative Spaces→ So, is there a digital therapy room possible? Where are these spaces? I am mindful of the supportive, recuperative spaces, less hostile, and more open spaces in private Binders group, in private chat rooms, and in a body of people called “allies and friends.” Sometimes they are your peers, sometimes the people you went to school with. They get you alright. They hold you tight and make sure they hear you out. There are disagreements for sure, but there is a camaraderie that the hostilities and the bullying sideroads of academic Facebook cannot stifle. It is those spaces that continue to sustain faculty like me and many others. That celebrates our little joys, pick us up, and hold us tight to see another chance waiting. There’s this invisible and underlying web of support that we actively create and maintain, the limited twilight spaces that continue to foil the negative culture at the center of academic Facebook. The alliances and advocacies we foster and embrace in these spaces keep us afloat, maybe they are the humane institutions that inspire us to continue to do the work we are doing. The ruthlessness of academic Facebook cannot undercut this ‘small place,’ which for most of us is our own slice towards growth and development.