This article is taken from the June 2023 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

#academictwitter should be a corner of social media where wiser counsels prevail. In reality, it is one of the most vacuous and depressing spaces on the internet. It is a world of preening posers, pseudo-academic humblebrags, never-ending book promotions, orchestrated pile-ons, and an unrelenting showreel of distinctly unimpressed cats. 

Any talk of Twitter is inevitably divisive in universities, since academics’ attitudes to it fall into three distinct camps. There are those too busy with teaching and research to have anything to do with it; they know its demerits far outweigh its benefits, and couldn’t much care what happens in that godforsaken hellscape. Then there are those who use it straightforwardly for academic communication — announcing conferences, advertising vacant posts, or querying particular points of detail. And finally, there are those who spend a significant, very often unhealthy, amount of time tweeting away, liking, lurking, and leaping on the unfortunate. 

The first of these stances is perfectly fine: life without Twitter really is none the poorer. The second is good, and even commendable for those who want to spread news and pool knowledge via the platform. But the third is rarely positive, and usually plays out to both public and private detriment. It’s this last group that needs to be exposed for what it is: an intellectually moribund cabal of cynical, work-shirking mediocrities.

So why should busy people care about the supposed “community” of Twitter academics? The answer is that this vocal minority in higher education is doing some real damage to university employees, students, and academic life at large. 

Twitter’s great strength is that it can offer rapid response to world events. It has also become the first port of call for those wishing to learn “what the public think” — except, of course, that most of the public are not active on the platform and those that are offer a skewered representation of society at large. 

Worse still, many Twitter users fail to treat the medium as what it is — a public, indeed global broadcasting service. Instead, we typically find the uneasy collision of private thoughts with a worldwide readership. Many an academic conveniently forgets that their gossip and banter, once tweeted, instantly gains the same permanence in the public sphere as a papal encyclical. Someone employed by a university may rage away “in a personal capacity” — but the rest of the world still witnesses this online version of a drunkard’s late-night rant at the television.

But the real issue arises when the university administration logs on. Numberless, faceless bureaucrats spend their empty days in ergonomic chairs, scrolling through the Twitterverse. In wide-eyed wonder they stare at the screen, keen to find out how their recent press release, fundraising video, or institutional rebrand is trending. But surveying the public is difficult, time-consuming, and not easily distilled into simple statistics. So why not just check Twitter and tell yourself it’s a fair sample — a place where you can not only hear the voice of Jo Public but gauge the prestige of Professor Pseud? 

Since their day job is damage-limitation and reputation-preservation at all costs, these comms-crunching jobsworths are ever-ready to fire their sole weapon: unthinking, knee-jerk responses — deployed without any intellectual deliberation or academic oversight. If an academic faces criticism for a controversial article or a less fashionable political opinion, or if an alumnus is suddenly to be tried for historic moral failings, or if any other story about the university’s conduct crops up, the response is increasingly rapid and ill-judged. 

Whether unaware of the distorting effects of the platform, or unconcerned because no-one will gainsay the main shop window in town, the managerial class treats Twitter as the sphere that matters. And, if circumstances require it, the crowd that needs to be appeased. In these image-conscious, principle-free days, the administrators’ brief is less to weigh criticism or praise, or even to establish its truth, than to make “the problem” go away soon. Thus, every day on #AcademicTwitter, grotesque mountains are made out of the most trifling molehills.

This phenomenon has long been observed in the corporate world, where one angry customer or committed activist can single-handedly turn the dial, forcing a handwringing company statement, a virtue-signalling boycott, or even full-blown staff dismissal. All this happens in a matter of days — even if a sheepish volte face may follow on soon, when someone higher up the command chain, having seen what utter absurdity has occurred, sidelines the intern. 

In a perfect world, Twitter would allow polite, precise debate to occur between anyone prepared to play by the rules of that game. Yet its narrow and unaccountable format affords no scope for proper discussion. Most dialogue is hollow, deprived of essential context and nuance: rarely do good-faith participants thrive. Instead, rapidly typed back-and-forths soon lose sight of the shared question; then it’s all about posturing in front of each team of partisan followers. 

A grim monoculture that can only operate in Manichean binaries

Worse still, with so few words to play with, it’s easy for anyone to wrest words from their proper place and misconstrue them in the most uncharitable manner. Any disagreement soon degrades into ad hominem abuse. The arrogant will “quote-tweet” a response, using a pithy put-down to summon their followers for guaranteed support; the cowardly will simply block their interlocutor once the debate goes against them. 

At this point the anonymous accounts start to do their thing. Disgruntled employees, airing their grievances in nameless, blameless guise, as well as sockpuppets of the academic under fire, will launch a confetti of “likes”, piping up with carbon-copy messages of agreement. Hilariously, these alternative anon accounts often slip up — with academics liking their own tweets (wrong account!) or accidentally tweeting what they meant to search for when bestowing their like (wrong box!).

So what is the peculiar appeal of Twitter for these hordes of grudge-grinding academics? Put simply, it is an alternative identity to burrow into — a space where the forces of good and bad do battle, without you having to meet a single student or colleague. 

All across this self-serving community you can encounter two-dimensional expressions of solidarity and unity. Yet far from creating a mutually supportive community, this vapid behaviour forges a grim monoculture that can only operate in Manichean binaries: the true Twitter ally is negatively programmed, in constant opposition to the conveniently manufactured enemy. 

Self-appointed “spokespersons” of disciplines that largely ignore them

To secure this false consciousness of shared mission, Twitter devotees doggedly patrol what others say and retweet and like, even whose accounts they follow. If someone fails to use the approved hashtag, or retweet the campaign message, they will be “called out” for flagrant unorthodoxy.

These daily episodes expose the ugliness of narcissistic twittercrats. When a vicious mobbing of the aberrant colleague gains momentum, it’s the massing swarm of academics who claim the role of brave and bold combatants. How courageously they denounce the person who has earned their wrath, confident that their number makes none of them individually accountable!

And who are these individuals, living their best #academiclife on Twitter? At first sight, it’s all and sundry from every quarter. But on closer inspection, certain groups emerge to be strikingly prominent. First, this is a largely female world, of all ages between 25 and 75. But world-leading professors are not among them: most are lower-level academics, or (very commonly) administrative staff. 

Second, there’s a group of lower-order male academics, usually aged 35 to 55, and typically childless or divorced — the sort of men for whom being liked by strangers matters more than being respected or read. Third, there’s a cadre of embittered post-doctoral students, angry that her (again, usually her) “intellectual labour” for the PhD has not been fully rewarded by a permanent position in academia. Together, these three groups make merry hell. 

Here, then, is academia in 2023: dubiously-educated figures acting as self-appointed “spokespersons” of disciplines that largely ignore them. While they claim to be curators of their given field, active on the “front line” to reach the wider world, they are in reality gatekeepers operating for their own personal aggrandisement. Leaving aside those who peddle pretty pictures, the accounts with the biggest followings are garnered by the inveterate Twitter addicts, whose stock-in-trade is tubthumping political activism, or hashtag-hammering gripe-gathering. In no sense do they represent academia at large.

It gets yet worse. Prominent figures on #AcademicTwitter are actively campaigning for their 280-character chinks of wisdom, and rambling threads of wonder, to be catalogued as a micro- species of academic publication. Yes, it’s not peer-reviewed, or even original — but just look at the viewcount it’s clocked up! Is this not a major form of public outreach? 

Well, beyond twitter.com, it certainly doesn’t reach the public at large — a public they disdain for not valuing the shallow knowledge and sham accreditations they have accrued. If the wider world really is to be inspired and encouraged to dive deeper into academia, it won’t be the increasingly inaudible chants from the Twitterati choir that welcome them in.

Elon Musk’s arrival in the Twittersphere has queered their pitch somewhat. The hoary legacy of “blue-tick” prestige has gone; some high-profile accounts have performatively exited the platform (and now lurk only in their anon accounts); echo-chamber algorithms have burst the comforting bubble of like-minded hive-liking. Some #TwitterAcademics now say that the platform is irredeemably broken. If so, few of us should shed a tear: all the while, researchers keep doing research, students keep studying, and the world keeps spinning.

Oh, and if you want a reliable and balanced view of how this piece is being received, where better to try than Twitter?