Since Elon Musk bought over Twitter in 2022, he has made many changes to the platform. Most notably he changed the platform’s name to X, but controversially he also reinstated many banned account users (including Donald Trump) and sacked the inhouse team responsible for monitoring hate speech. Twitter is now considered a dangerous platform for minoritised groups and seems to be getting worse by the day.

As these changes have occurred, I’ve noticed I’m getting through the feed showing tweets from my followers much quicker than before suggesting lower levels of interaction on the platform. Are people leaving X in their droves? Well, this is difficult to answer as X is no longer a publicly traded company, so Musk is not required to share usage metrics. He claimed that X/Twitter has up to 250m daily active users in May 2024 but some independent estimates suggest the real figure could be as low as 121m with usage in the US alone falling by one-fifth. Is Twitter becoming a ghost town with limited dialog for academics?

One of the many reasons I loved Twitter was the fact it was such an open platform with a very diverse user base. The broad audience was one of its benefits, particularly within educational communities as both students and academics used it. It was possible to focus on academic bubbles as the platform’s algorithms suggested people working in similar fields to connect with. But at the same time, I could easily see what else people are talking about that day, keep up to date with political discussion and my guilty pleasures of ‘Strictly’ and local football teams (I know the correlation seems unlikely 😊).

My thoughts on using Twitter as an academic

It is sad to watch the demise of a platform which, while it always had problems, did offer something great to academics. For me, being part of an academic community on Twitter was fun. As a lecturer working from home in distance education, this was a social activity and allowed me a build a network that would be almost impossible to create and maintain otherwise. The Open University students I interviewed for my EdD research made similar points about how they used Twitter to build support networks and feel part of a wider community.

So should academics stay on this platform? There are some things to consider first. As an academic, why am I using Twitter? Who is my audience and who is in my network? Does Twitter still meet my needs? Am I able to use safety features on the platform to effectively tailor my feed and avoid the negative aspects? Those are questions each of us need to answer for ourselves. For me, Twitter still offers a lot of these things, although it is admittedly quieter.

With some academics already leaving Twitter, fragmentation of the academic community becomes an issue. Currently, there is no critical mass of academics on one single alternative platform. This has meant that many academics have chosen to remain on Twitter even if they’re interacting and posting less frequently.

As I’ve begun embracing some other platforms, none replicate how busy Twitter used to be. Perhaps I’m looking at this through rose-tinted glasses with a touch of nostalgia for something we’re unlikely to see again. As academics, we now must spend so much of our increasingly limited time and energy becoming our own digital communications manager. Rebuilding a community on a new platform takes a lot of effort with limited benefit, certainly in the initial stages.

Meanwhile, as multiple platforms emerge as possible places for academics to congregate, we’ve the added problem of how to maintain an effective presence across them all – more time and effort required! Is one platform likely to be the winner? That’s impossible to predict at this stage but perhaps a myriad of platforms is the new reality of social media.

My thoughts on official HE accounts using Twitter

Another issue to grapple with is how official university accounts should present themselves on social media. Is it ethical for universities to use platforms that promote hate speech and do not protect users? Should we be encouraging students to interact with the university in these spaces? The crux of this whole debate is what do we want to achieve from our use of social media. For academics, as discussed above, it’s more of a personal network. But for official university accounts, it’s about reaching out to students, representing the university, its achievements, purpose and principals. As organisations like Jisc and some universities have made the decision to move away from Twitter, others are likely to follow.

Universities need to continually adapt to the changing landscape of social media and ensure that any public facing accounts representing the institution aligns with its values. At the Open University, a university which prides itself of being centred around social values, is it perhaps hypocritical to have a presence on X which promotes everything but respect for others. For many universities, the argument can also be made that other platforms, such as Instagram, are likely to reach more of the student target audience anyway.

On the other hand, one of the benefits of Twitter was its wide-ranging audience outside of academia. It was possible to interact to politicians, companies, media outlets and local organisations. If universities move to more private platforms, they lose some of the impact higher institutions can have on public debate, especially when that relates to policy on education, health and inequalities in society.

If universities do encourage staff to move away from Twitter and focus more on other platforms, then it should also offer assistance with simple onboarding instructions and guidance.

Alternatives

I’ve begun trying some of the alternatives to Twitter to see if they can in some way replicate what Twitter offered to me as an academic. None appear to resemble the vibrancy that Twitter previously had but time will tell. For now, here is a table showing alternative platforms and some pros and cons which I found as an academic wanting to discuss policy issues in HE alongside interacting directly with students.

Conclusion

As a keen user of Twitter and someone who recently completed a (soon to be published) doctoral thesis on how useful it can be for students to build communities, it is extremely disheartening to see the demise of the platform. As other platforms emerge, it will take time to see what becomes popular with users. Maybe we’ll end up with something completely different rather than a better or worse version of Twitter. There may never be another Twitter – should we just accept that? Some older platforms are now completely forgotten. Who remembers Friendster, Bebo and MySpace?

For now, my advice for academics would be to spend as much or as little time as you wish on these platforms, see what helps you reach your audience or keeps you engaged. Give them time to develop as people begin to settle. Reflect on what you want from your social media network while reflecting on your overall aims and purpose of using social media.

My EdD research into Twitter as a space for students to build support communities showed the importance of an open online space for students and academics alike to engage and interact, share research and insights. An open academic space like Twitter is worth fighting for.

Are there any other social media platforms I should be considering? How have you found using alternatives to Twitter? Are you planning to hang around on Twitter for a while to see what happens or have you already cut ties? Let me know on X(Twitter) or Bluesky as @OliviaKellyOU or by commenting below.