- This event has passed.
Scientists on social media
13/05 12:00 – 14:00
Online (Teams)
The training is held in English and is suitable for doctoral students of all Estonian universities.
As all communication has moved heavily into online digital spaces, so has scientific communication. If you want to serve society, disseminate your knowledge, give back and make the world a better place, you have to reach out to audiences via social media.
Similarly to macro-societal concepts like mediatization (Couldry & Hepp, 2017) and social media logic (van Dijk & Poell, 2013), scholars have started to describe a specific influencer-culture-borne process termed “influencer creep” (Bishop, 2023). Influencer creep refers to how expectations, practices and norms that have been established within influencer culture have “crept” out into other professions and sectors.
In these seminars, we will take a look at different strategies that influencers use and discuss which of these can be useful for us in academia. Additionally, we shall weigh ethical dilemmas and role conflicts that are embedded in social media communication - in these virtual spaces, are you a private person? A representative of your organisation or your field? A public opinion leader? An influencer? An activist? An observer? It’s a mess 🙂
Together, we will organise the thoughts a little bit:
📅May 13 – two-hour online lecture-seminar on the theoretical foundations of social media communication and academics on social media.
📅 May 15 – three-hour face-to-face seminars where we will discuss in groups of max 20 people, how to actually “do” social media in a way that seems reasonable, feasible and fun for you.
Facilitator Maria Murumaa-Mengel
Maria Murumaa-Mengel (Ph.D in media and communication) is an Associate Professor of Media Studies at the Institute of Social Studies, University of Tartu. She is involved in research focusing mainly on young people’s use (and non-use, going “off the grid”) of social media, different literacies (e.g. digital, MIL, social media, porn) and various online risks (e.g. gendered online hate, online shaming, online child sexual abuse and grooming). To keep things balanced, she tries to sprinkle some opportunities into the mix as well, studying influencer culture and digital activism, as empowering phenomena.
Maria has contributed to several research projects as a member of national research teams (e.g. EU Kids Online; CORE- Children Online: Research and Evidence; Advanced Studies in Combating Disinformation); she was the lead in “IREX Media Literacy in the Baltics Program” (2020-2023). Maria is a member of various professional networks (AoIR, ECREA, ICA) and participates as an expert in a wide array of national panels, associations and organizations.
Register HERE. Registration deadline is on May 6, 2025.
The maximum number of participants is 80. If there are more registrants, the organisers will assess the representation of universities.
Contact: Jekaterina Bossenko, jekaterina.bossenko@ut.ee
Estonian Doctoral School joint event.
