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Do young philosophers *really* need to be on social media for professional reasons?

Brian Leiter

The answer I would have thought is obviously 'no,' but philosopher Rebecca Kukla (Georgetown) takes a different view.  She writes:

I will focus on the role of social media for graduate students and untenured faculty in philosophy. I think there’s no doubt that staying off of social media altogether can actively harm your career, while using it wisely can actively help you, and can genuinely enrich your professional and intellectual life. A huge number of professional opportunities show up first and most prominently on Facebook, both as formal announcements and through informal discussions. A great deal of philosophical conversation that shapes the debates in our field happens on social media. Co-authorships and collaborations often take root online. People get to know one another’s personalities and research through these media. it clearly helps in getting interviews and invitations if people already know who you are, and like you and think highly of your ideas. I have certainly learned about the work of graduate students and young scholars through social media, and then offered them invitations and opportunities, used and assigned their work, and sought out their company at conferences as a result.

This may, indeed, have been her experience in some of her fields, and so to that extent, it's worth noting for those with similar interests.  But in philosophy of law, or post-Kantian Continental philosophy, none of this is true:  I've never seen "philosophical conversation" on Facebook or similar social media platforms having any affect on the actual debates, which arise from actual scholarly work presented in the traditional fora and formats.   I'm not aware of anyone in these fields who got an invitation based on Facebook presence either.   So I wonder:  how widespread a phenomenon is the kind Prof. Kukla describes?  I'm skeptical based on my corner of philosophy and social media.

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38 responses to “Do young philosophers *really* need to be on social media for professional reasons?”

  1. RT

    Professor Kukla is surely correct about this in the sense that some people have raised their professional status through their social media activities. I would never have heard of a good number of people in the profession but for their internet hobby. But my impression of people I've learned about from social media is also overwhelmingly negative. (The tag on this blog, "posturing preening wankers" is also how I classify them.) The surest path to success through this strategy is to post nasty public comments about people hated by other hyperactive social media philosophers. My guess is that people confuse the dopamine rush they get from the approval of the nastiest people in the profession for widespread adulation, and don't realize how little the adults think of them.

    In other words, my guess is that social media is not just professionally optional, but usually counterproductive. Some might use it well, but most don't, and you probably aren't a reliable judge of how you're coming across online.

    Reply
  2. Charles Pigden

    I think it depends on the medium and the venue in question. When I was young (or at any rate a lot younger than I am now) I used to post regularly on the Russell-l email list which was devoted to matters arising from the life and work of Bertrand Russell. I think that my posts got me several invitations to contribute to Russell-based collections, plus the chance to edit Russell on Ethics which was a big career feather in my cap. So, yes, besides being fun, being active on *some* social media can be very useful from a careerist point of view (though it was the intellectual pleasure rather than the hope of careerist profit that motivated me to post). Nowadays there are Facebook groups of a similar nature (for example the Medieval Logic group) where sufficiently intelligent posts might get you noticed by the right kind of people. So thus far I am with Rebecca Kukla and against Brian Leiter. However I think that young scholars should be very careful about commenting under their own names on blogs such as this, since it is easy to make influential enemies with unduly outspoken posts. People with reasonably secure jobs can afford to be courageous; less so those condemned to flitter from one job to another. And in fact my advice seems to be consistent with the common practice. It’s the reasonably well-established who comment under their own names: the young and the compulsorily restless sensibly prefer the safety of a pseudonym.

    Reply
  3. Brian Leiter

    I don't think of an e-mail list service specific to a philosopher or topic as quite the same as bullshitting on Facebook.

    Reply
  4. P.D.

    Brian: Given your stature, lots of people e-mail you directly. And if you want to have an informal exchange on some topic, you post here and people reply. So it wouldn't come to your attention that some people actively use Facebook for making professional connections and talking philosophy.

    I have several friends in the profession who post thoughtful things straight to Facebook, and I've been part of many rewarding conversations.

    For my part, I have had a number of conversations which arose out of blog posts. Years ago, people would have commented at my blog. Now they see the cross-post on Facebook and comment there, and I suspect they wouldn't see it at all if it weren't cross-posted.

    Reply
  5. Brian Leiter

    I do share your sense that Facebook functions like a blog for many academics and it's true that, for the obvious reasons, I don't use Facebook that way. In your fields, do you think it is essential for a junior person to be on Facebook for the kinds of reasons Prof. Kukla identifies? I am still confident it is not essential in the fields I know something about.

    Reply
  6. Fritz

    I think this is right for at least my areas of philosophy–which are substantially similar to hers. For bioethics, for example, there is a really strong Facebook group where almost everything is announced. For just war theory, there's another. I don't see it as much for philosophy of law (another interest). If Prof. Leiter says it doesn't exist in his fields, I'd surely trust him on it: maybe the upshot is just that it differs by fields.

    More generally, I think social media can be harmful for job and career stuff if it's done poorly (e.g., writing stupid stuff that comes back to haunt you), but can certainly help if done well. At the margins, it probably doesn't matter. I think the bigger risk is just the time suck that it can become, with people spending all day on Facebook or Twitter and not doing real work.

    Reply
  7. Phil

    Tangentially, the other day I found myself thinking nostalgically of "that forum I used to be on" – the one that was warm and friendly and full of silly jokes. On reflection I realised it was Facebook, just after I started using it – when there was nobody 'there' except for a handful of personal friends. Broaden your circle and scale up the numbers, even for the best of reasons, and it's not long before you're screening out the posturing, ranting and bullying (at best – or at worst, joining in). I suspect the people who have managed to make productive use of Facebook are using it with so tight a focus that it might as well be a private mailing list called Merleau-Ponty-L, or whatever.

    Reply
  8. Revaluation

    If it's okay, I'll take this opportunity to try to post a comment that was apparently disallowed yesterday at Daily Nous regarding Prof Kukla's own interesting social media behavior about a certain APA presentation:

    —–

    Here's the actual comment, though I've redacted the names in case they don't want to be identified so obviously:

    "X and Y are terrible, awful philosophers with abhorrent views and no talent but I do give them integrity and courage points for speaking under their own names. Although those are points that the rest of us get all the time without any fuss."

    At the time, I believe both X and Y were both on the job market. X was a graduate student. Y was a recent PhD. Y is also a person of color.

    Whether this constitutes "punching down once in any way that has harmed anyone" I leave for the reader to decide.

    Reply
  9. Grad student

    As a graduate student who actively conferences and attends workshops, I have not found that social media has been especially helpful in any direct sense for me professionally. I am a member of a Facebook group for graduate students in my department that is used for coordinating social events, so it is helpful in the sense that it facilitates a healthy and lively department atmosphere. But know very few people who use social media for substantive philosophical discussion. People I know (and myself) use it to signal boost issues of interest to others in the profession and for social networking. I do use it to keep in touch with people I meet at conferences, but again that is networking rather than philosophical work in and of itself. My feeling is that social media does not fill the same roles as traditional philosophical exchange, though I recognize that for geographic or financial reasons (i.e., conference travel can be prohibitively expensive) some people use it for those purposes.

    Reply
  10. Early Modernist

    I can think of at least two early modern graduate students, both in programs outside the top 50 in the PGR, whose active presence on Facebook (particularly by posting abstracts both of their own, often regional, workshop and conference presentations and of conference presentations of others which they appreciated) has definitely raised their profile. I think this has already had a minor beneficial impact on them, especially since some such programs don't have as many resources to provide more traditional networking opportunities. Of course none of this entails a social media presence is essential.

    Reply
  11. Jonathan Reid Surovell

    I find it unlikely that staying off social media could have actively harmed my career. (By 'social media' I mean platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter that have newsfeeds–I'm not talking about blogs or email lists.) The few connections I've made in the profession were not established or maintained through social media. I had some pleasant Facebook conversations with people I met at conferences but these had no effect on my career.

    I could imagine Facebook conversations benefiting a few people's careers in the way described by Charles Pigden. But I think people considering using social media for that purpose should ask whether it would be worth the tradeoff. My guess is that very few job seekers could enjoy such a benefit: very few are gifted enough to make such a big impression through a social media comment and most of those who are will have already been noticed. On the other hand, the psychological costs of having a social media account are moderate to large:

    https://quillette.com/author/jonathan-reid-surovell/

    And as had been noted, there's a risk you'll say something that will harm your career. People should keep in mind that social media use is highly habitual or automatic–it's unclear how much of a role intentions play. So intentions to use social media in only the beneficial ways may not be enough to guarantee avoidance of the harmful uses:

    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2010.01360.x
    https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/54aa/9bcd23445cc4fb3adeca9db828257039951f.pdf
    https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1dc4/530a0635c9a321c325193fd0a67a35ab6b82.pdf

    As for keeping up with current research, the ratio of wise to unwise ideas (to put it diplomatically) is vastly lower in social media discussions than in published work. Sure, this might mean that eschewing social media in favor of publications will extend the delay before the latest ideas to reach you. Is this such a bad thing? Do hiring committees really prefer someone who reads social media comments daily just to find out what the latest hot topic is rather than devoting that time to an article that won a journal award last year, a classic that said candidate hasn't gotten around to yet, or even a conversation with a colleague? If so, how sad for our profession.

    For those who have good reason to be confident they can manage their social media use in a way that will benefit them professionally, my unsolicited advice would be to minimize the habit-forming and well-being-lowering effects of social media as much as possible. That means avoiding your newsfeed and getting as few notifications on as few devices as possible.

    Reply
  12. Brian Leiter

    A propos comment #10, it's worth stating explicitly that of course doing substantive philosophical work on-line can redound to someone's credit, though it rarely happens. The two examples I can think of are Clayton Littlejohn and Richard Chappell, both of whose smart, substantive blogging on philosophical topics attracted favorable attention from many quarters.

    Reply
  13. Anon PhD

    From my own observations it seems that social media is more often than not used by philosophers for blatant self-promotion and smug virtue signaling of various sorts. It never ceases to amaze me how self-unaware these folks are. But I suspect that, in Kukla's corner of the profession and social media, this is indeed a plus.

    Reply
  14. Tim

    Regardless of whether it is good for your career or not, the evidence suggests that Facebook is bad for your mental health and well-being. Grad students especially should stay far far away, and make better uses of their time outside of work. Encouraging all this Facebook use because not doing so will "harm your career," even if good professional advice (is it?), is terrible life advice.
    Also, discussion on Facebook is set up to encourage seeking of others' approval– as Facebook's first president Sean Parker pointed out, the entire platform is a "social validation feedback loop" that hacks into our desire to be liked. If I want to stay out of the whole thing because I find the kind of status-seeking that social media involves to be distasteful, and even in some measure to go against the goals of the type of philosophy I want to study and pursue, that should be my choice. I always considered getting into big philosophy debates on social media to be a kind of quirk on the part of some individuals in the profession, which the rest of us can choose to participate in if we like, or just read along while nodding in appreciation of their extraordinary insights, or avoid entirely, while in the meantime the real work of philosophy goes in the more traditional venues, which while not perfect themselves are less subject to the kinds of twisted psychological mechanisms that pervade social media. I don't think Kukla is right that "A great deal of philosophical conversations that shapes the debate in our field happens on social media," but If she is, then I am worried.

    Reply
  15. Geoff Pynn

    For me, Facebook is probably a professional net negative at this point. I waste too much time there and project an unserious persona, since I don't talk in a careful way about philosophy and tend to bloviate about politics and assorted trivia. I think of my time there as leisure, not professional activity, but I have a lot of professional friends — a dangerous combination that I would recommend junior people take pains to avoid! However, before I had tenure, it was an extremely valuable networking tool, in particular because (a) I am not part of elite circles in my fields, I am in the farm leagues, and (b) family circumstances made it almost impossible for me to travel to conferences. Several professional opportunities that wound up being important to my tenure case sprang more-or-less directly out of Facebook connections and interactions (in epistemology and philosophy of language, so broadly part of the same fields Prof. Kukla works in, though not at all in the specific areas of her research). So while I don't think that staying off will actively harm your career (though I suppose it *can*, I mean anything's possible), I certainly agree that using it wisely can actively help you professionally, at least in epistemology and language. There are also some good closed epistemology groups where you can find out about what other people are reading & talking about quite easily.

    Reply
  16. Julia

    There are two excellent facebook groups for epistemologists, "Board Certified Epistemologists" and "Social Epistemology Network", which feature excellent discussion of questions in epistemology. I often turn there for advice or reading recommendations, and I have learned a lot from following and participating in the discussion threads.
    In my view, epistemology graduate students who don't participate in those groups miss out on valuable information, and on an opportunity to be a member of a supportive community. Those groups also often post information about relevant conferences.

    Reply
  17. bzfgt

    I think anyone hoping to get a job in any field should never have any social media accounts in their own name. It can't really help much, and it can hurt in ways that are hard to anticipate.

    Reply
  18. Ken Taylor

    Since the election of Donald Trump, I use Facebook primarily to vent about American politics and, more recently, to try out brief ideas for a book I am toying with writing about the same. Though most of my venting is political, a small amount is philosophical, mostly consisting of jotting down a germ of a philosophical thought to get reactions from other philosophers. Such jottings mostly go unnoticed, but I have engaged in a few extended philosophical conversations over facebook as a result of a few of them. Some of them were quite interesting. In my forthcoming book, "Meaning Diminished: Toward Metaphysically Modest Semantics" I actually credit such a conversation with Mark Lance, Axel Meuller, Carl Sachs, Quayshawn Spencer, Michael Weisberg, Eric Winsberg, (some of whom are know well, others of whom I have never met in person) with "helping me to see that the Carnap of the deflationists neo-Carnapians may be a mere pseudo-Carnap (pun intended) and perhaps not the actual historical Carnap." That is the exception rather than the rule.

    I mostly avoid joining in on facebook "flame war" and "virtue signaling' conversations — of which there are many.

    If I were advising younger people on professional advancement, I would not at all say that it is important to have "a social media strategy." Companies need a social media strategy. So do movie stars and other celebrities maybe (but many of them would be better without the one they actually have).

    But young scholars … not so much. Main difference between a company with a social media strategy and a young scholar is that the company has a bunch of people adept at that sort of thing who will relentless strategize about it, thoughtfully develop it, and then execute it. Individual scholars…. not so much. Many, many scholars are truly terrible at strategic self-presentation anyway, without being aware of how bad they are at it. Even those who think they are good at it and get positive strokes from their buds, come across to many others outside of their circle of like minded folks, as preening self-promoters, legends in their own minds, relentless virtue signalers more prone to self serving moral licensing than to true virtue. I could name names, but won't.

    Reply
  19. Anon PhD

    Speaking of self-unaware, it's ridiculous that the APA is letting Kukla, well known for her bullying and obnoxious online outbursts, take the lead on a discussion about social media use. The suggestion that to advance my career I must engage with (i.e. obsequiously fawn over and certainly never offend) Kukla and others like her on social media is repulsive.

    Reply
  20. Brian Leiter

    While I understand why someone would have reservations about the messenger here I would ask that we focus on the substantive issues raised by the bit I quoted. Thanks. This has been informative for me so far.

    Reply
  21. P.D.

    "…do you think it is essential for a junior person to be on Facebook…?"
    Certainly not essential. But it can be potentially helpful.

    Reply
  22. Daniel Kaufman

    A few things on this.

    1. I find it difficult to understand how any philosopher — and especially one concerned with questions of ethics and social justice — could maintain that in order to be an active participant in the field, one must be a customer of a particular company. Especially one with the negative psychological, social and civil liberties impact of a Facebook.

    2. Kukla's own use of social media to hurl invective against her political opponents illustrates a well-known and toxic effect of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter and seems to undermine her suggestion that they are good places for philosophical discourse and networking to occur.

    3. Networking is most effectively done by way of real human interaction, which traditionally occurred at conferences, meetings, etc. Of course, university support for faculty travel has declined, making this more difficult, but it seems to me that we would be better off fighting for such support than simply throwing in the towel and turning to unreal, shallow, online interaction, in which misrepresentation of oneself and over the top behavior is the rule rather than the exception.

    Reply
  23. Adam Omelianchuk

    What I posted Daily Nous: Ever since reading Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together I’ve been worried about the practice of “image management” inherent in social media platforms. The pressures and pitfalls surrounding the advice to “curate” (what a word!) an image for professional purposes seems like yet another good reason to get off it entirely. The general worry I have is over the distorting effects I either wittingly or unwittingly communicate to others (and are communicated to me), which I don’t believe serves human relationships very well (just my experience). That said, I do feel the need to “network” (another charming word), and some of the connections I make through Facebook are quite helpful. To use or not use social media is always a balancing question in my mind: do the benefits outweigh the drawbacks? I can never tell and I don’t think I’m alone in that uncertainty.

    For Leiter Reports: For those of us who adopted a medium like Facebook in 2004-05, it's hard to give up for all sorts of reasons, though I would like to. The Philosophical Underclass (an article sharing group) keeps me on it more than anything else.

    Reply
  24. M

    I'm a grad student. (So I have nothing to say about the Kukla/Kaufman battle.) But I do agree with Professor Kukla about the importance of social media in my own areas of interest (metaphysics and philosophy of science), which have little overlap with her own. Social media (esp. Facebook) has been absolutely crucial as a means to reach out to people (particularly other grad students, but also younger faculty) all over the country; and I have gotten an enormous amount of useful feedback – and pointers, and suggestions – as the result of using it. Additionally, the friendships I've made over social media have gotten me invited to several universities, where I in turn met faculty whom I would otherwise have not met; and they have started fruitful co-writing partnerships. Social media is definitely not essential for success in our field (and I'd feel ashamed if it were); but it is very helpful, particularly for those who find in-person conversations tricky.

    Reply
  25. Russell Blackford

    My blog attracted a bit of attention a decade or so ago, when it was quite popular (it's since fallen largely into disuse). It led to contacts, speaking gigs, and publications, and those in turn upped my ability to get further publications. I'm not saying that social media is necessary for conventional academic success. It probably, almost certainly, isn't. But in my case having a somewhat popular blog did play a role in helping me get books published.

    Reply
  26. Charles Pigden

    In response to Brian’s post at 3, (‘I don't think of an e-mail list service specific to a philosopher or topic as quite the same as bullshitting on Facebook’), it seems to me that *some* focused Facebook groups are similar in tone and content to the dedicated email lists (now mostly) of yesteryear. I would cite the Medieval Logic Group (of which I am an inactive member) as an example. The fact that a discussion group is Facebook-based rather than email-based does not automatically deprive it of academic value nor make it more prone to flaming, posturing or bull-shit artistry.

    As for those who extol the benefits of face-to-face interactions as opposed to online encounters, it seems to me that some of these posts smack of what might be termed ‘metropolitan privilege’ It is relatively easy to acquire a philosophical reputation through face-to-face encounters if you work at a well-funded university near (say) London, Los Angeles or New York. It’s a lot more difficult if you work at a state-funded university subject to periodic financial crises that is located at the ends of the earth. It would have been simply impossible for me to achieve the reputation as a Russell-scholar that I managed to acquire in the nineteen-nineties if I had confined myself to face-to-face encounters. The funding simply was not there to go to more than the occasional conference (it is very expensive to travel from New Zealand to almost anywhere else); I did not at that time have a substantial record of conventional publications in Russell studies to justify such trips, and the university would have been unlikely to give me the benefit of any doubt since I was often at odds with the senior management because of my political activities. Without the Russell-l list I would have been nowhere. So I think Kukla is right in her basic point (though there is a lot to disagree with when it comes to the details of her post): having the right kind of online presence can be extremely useful, perhaps even vital, both in developing as a philosopher and in advancing your career. It is less important perhaps if you are the beneficiary of metropolitan privilege, but if you live in the boondocks, your online activities can be absolutely crucial.

    One further point: both here and on Daily Nous, moral objections have been voiced to the use of both Twitter and Facebook to advance philosophical discussion. But there is a much more serious objection to gadding about across the face of the globe in search of face-to-face encounters of the philosophical kind. Airplane travel is one of the principal drivers of catastrophic climate change. It is perhaps worth asking whether the good you may be doing to your philosophical career (or even to philosophy as a subject) by making frequent trips is worth the damage you are doing to future generations. Online interactions produce a lot less GHGs than the kind of face-to-face encounters that result in frequent-flyer miles. One reason for preferring the one to the other.

    Reply
  27. Grad Student

    I suffer from panic disorder with agoraphobia. If not for social media, I'd be virtually non-existent. (Fortunately the senior scholars in my field are very supportive, so my mental health has never felt like a handicap. Though I'd imagine without social media these senior scholars wouldn't even know I exist.)

    Reply
  28. Brian

    Any individual's decision about air travel has no discernible effect on climate change, so that's an irrelevant consideration.

    Reply
  29. Daniel Kaufman

    I'm one who spoke out in favor of real, human interaction, as opposed to the shallow and often toxic simulacrum provided by Facebook and Twitter. Teaching as I do at an unranked program, in an relativiely undistinguished public university in the lower Midwest, I hardly suffer from "Metropolitan Privilege." And appealing to climate change as a further argument against meeting people is just bizarre.

    Reply
  30. David Livingstone Smith

    I can only speak for myself here. I work in a small, undistinguished university were they pay is bad, the travel budget small, and where it is impossible to have philosophy speaker series or regular colloquia. All of this adds up to me being out of the loop of much of what's going on in the field. Facebook has been a godsend to me, and I've made more that a few important collegial friendships there–connections that have led to speaking engagements and publications, as well as acquainting me with publications that have proved to be important for my research.

    Reply
  31. Jonathan Reid Surovell

    The points about geographic isolation and the environmental consequences of air travel, taken together, make a strong case for philosophizing on social networks. (Causal impotence considerations might undermine the point about air travel, but that's too delicate an issue to support the bizarreness charge.)

    I wonder if we could have the best of both worlds (or close to it) by moving online discussions to other forums, e.g., the PhilPapers discussion forums once they're up and running again (with follow-up through email) or even a return to good old fashioned email lists. These forums should allow geographically isolated philosophers to engage with their philosophical communities without raising as many concerns about mental health, addiction, group polarization, or privacy. I'm not saying such a shift is likely, but we collectively have the power to make it happen. This conversation has persuaded me to give some of those other forums a second look.

    Reply
  32. ex nihilo nihil fit

    Rebecca Kukla writes, 'People get to know one another’s personalities and research through these media. it [sic] clearly helps in getting interviews and invitations if people already know who you are, and like you and think highly of your ideas. I have certainly learned about the work of graduate students and young scholars through social media, and then offered them invitations and opportunities, used and assigned their work, and sought out their company at conferences as a result.'

    To borrow from Bernard Williams, is that a confession or a boast?

    Philosophers today are bludgeoned with certain conjectures in social psychology journals concerning implicit bias that are treated as theoretically on a par with general relativity. Putting implicitness aside, does Professor Kukla has good biases?

    Today's central dogma in hiring is that diversity, whatever that is, is the best measure of whether persons are treated fairly in a selection process. Are Professor Kukla's Facebook friends, or perhaps friends of friends, sufficiently diverse to pass muster with the diversity police?

    Maybe there is more to be said for an old-fashioned process whereby one reads a philosopher's serious philosophical work before coming to assess her level of philosophical talent.

    Reply
  33. Charles Pigden

    Here are four points that should not be controversial.
    1) As I can testify from my own case and as several others have testified from theirs, having an online presence on the right kind of lists, blogs and Facebook groups can do you a power of good both in your development as a philosopher and in your professional career. (It’s also fun.) I owe a substantial part of the academic good fortune that I have enjoyed to the reputation that I won on the Russell-l list. (Incidentally, since I like to be honest, let me correct myself. During the nineties I did get the funding to attend ONE mini-conference on Russell’s work though I certainly would not have gotten the invitation in the absence of all those Russell-related posts.) I am sure that there are many young philosophers nowadays who are both developing their talents and getting themselves noticed by posting on the many specialized lists, blogs and Facebook groups with which the subject abounds.
    2) You don’t have to be a toady or a sycophant to do this. Nor do you have to be obnoxiously self-obsessed or self-promoting. All you have to do is post intelligent comments on the issues that you are passionate about. (And if you don’t have anything to say about some philosophical topic or other, I would refer you the self-addressed question in Radiohead’s ‘Creep’.) Unless you inhabit an unusually corrupt sub-field in philosophy *that’s all it takes*. I don’t think that in my entire online career as a Russell-scholar I have ever deferred to anyone. As for the idea of buttering-up the leading figures in the world of Russell scholarship, this simply never occurred to me.
    3) Metropolitan privilege is a Thing. It’s easier to get yourself noticed in the philosophical profession if you live near the big cultural and population centers for the simple reason that it easier *and cheaper* to meet other philosophers especially influential ones. On the whole people are more likely to read the work of those that they have met than those that they haven’t. Better-read philosophers are more likely to be cited and philosophers who have made a personal impression on the movers and shakers are more likely to get invitations to submit. It is true of course that metropolitan centers tend to attract talent. But it is also true that talent in the metropolis is more likely to be recognized than talent in the boondocks. [Incidentally Dan Kaufman is deeply incensed by the idea that he enjoys metropolitan privilege, presumably because it interferes with his self-image as an underdog. As it happens, I wasn’t particularly thinking of him when I mentioned this. But these things are relative. A glance at the map should convince him that when it comes to metropolitan privilege, an inhabitant of the Mid-West is rather more well-endowed than an inhabitant of Dunedin, New Zealand.]
    4) Since metropolitan privilege *is* a Thing, if you are one of the underprivileged, it is a particularly a good idea to be active online in order to compensate for the fact that not many philosophers are likely to meet you in the flesh.

    In so far as she is arguing for points 1) to 4) I think Rebecca Kukla is on the right track. But she also seems to be suggesting that the ambitious young philosopher should use her personal Facebook page as a platform for self-promotion. This seems to me a much more dubious proposition but I shall have to defer discussion for now as it is way past my bedtime. As for the morality of academic air travel (which I regard as highly problematic) Brian has asked me not to derail the discussion by getting into that issue. Fortunately my argument that it is useful, perhaps even vital, for a young philosopher to be active online does not depend on that premise.

    Reply
  34. A view from Europe

    I expected this advice to be rejected, but having looked at some of the comments above it seems Prof. Kukla is really on to something. I'm ignorant, clearly, of the magic of social media. Still I remain baffled by the explicit reasoning. Social media avoidance "can actively harm your career". This is without obvious sense, even in the terms of the remainder of the quoted paragraph. It goes on to describe the serendipitous discoveries & collaborations that happen on social media. How can it be actively harmful to stand back from involvements that have no determinate relationship with your best interests? But then a different driver becomes apparent: "I have certainly learned about the work of graduate students and young scholars through social media, and then offered them invitations and opportunities, used and assigned their work, and sought out their company at conferences as a result." It is harmful not to be a social media follower of someone who sees themselves as an influential dispenser of beneficence…? I think I see.

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  35. Daniel Kaufman

    Apparently, Dr. Pidgin — whose professional digs are far more distinguished than mine, by any relevant measure — characterizes as "incensed" someone who simply pushes back against an unfair assignment of privilege. Fortunately, what I actually wrote is there for anyone to see. One can only deem it incensed from a very strange perspective.

    The issue is not whether it is "vital for a young philosopher to be active online." It's whether, specifically, young, aspiring academic professionals' careers are "actively harmed" if they decline to participate in the shallow, nasty, typically hyper-partisan engagements that characterize so much of the Twitter and Facebook experiences, in particular. As I indicated, Kukla's own behavior in the medium should serve as a cautionary tale: a good reason for avoiding these platforms as a young, vulnerable academic, is because one doesn't want to risk running afoul of the political sensibilities of such folks, who can do a person's career prospects real harm.

    Steven Cahn recently posted on the APA blog, regarding whether a person with heterodox political views (relative to the overwhelming tendencies in the philosophy profession) should hide their affiliations and activities, rather than run the risk of having them being used against them, professionally. He discussed a particular student whom he advised to do so, back in the '90s. That student was me.

    https://blog.apaonline.org/2018/07/02/politics-and-appointments/

    Things are a hundred-fold worse in this regard now, with social media being a good part of the reason. So if you are a young academic, looking to make it in the profession as it currently is, I recommend serious caution. If it happens that your views align closely with the social justice crowd that is so dominant today, you likely have nothing to worry about, although you may find yourself surprised as to just how thinly the distinctions may slice within that community. (Look at the savaging done to Kathleen Stock, who despite being a far Left, lesbian activist, was treated as if she was a Trump supporter, simply for breaking with the current fashionable views regarding gender identity.) But if your views are heterodox at all, I strongly recommend staying off of social media, if you want to have a shot in the profession. I have my own independent platforms now with zero investment in the infrastructure of the profession, so I can pretty much do as I like. But a young, newly minted Ph.D. seeking to make his or her way is highly vulnerable and should take care accordingly.

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  36. Anonymous Colleague

    I recently was invited to do a chapter on something I was writing, but only because I used Facebook to kvetch about what I was writing. I also use it talk to others about ideas based on the philosophical writing that I do (Continental and American philosophy). These opportunities arose out of befriending other likeminded philosophers because someone suggested you should befriend that dude over there because he does what you're interested in doing. So there are ways to use it.

    Kukla often complains a lot in a way that I'd never want to grab a beer with her at the APA. So, yeah, Facebook has its uses like that too…much like the way too honest student who tells you he didn't make the test because he got STD testing. World's full of over-sharers.

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  37. Nichole Smith

    I think, while there are some dangers to Facebook (e.g. increased visibility for poor choices of what to say, and a potentially massive timesink), there are some benefits that have kept me around.

    On the consuming side, paying attention to philosophers who post philosophy stuff and the serious philosophy groups seems to have the same benefits as following blogs and email lists. (And the same drawbacks. I find as a general rule, though, avoiding saying anything too negative avoids a lot of problems. Though that seems to apply in person, anyway.) Sometimes events and opportunities make it on FB or Twitter before I see them via email or PhilEvents, if I ever see them in the latter two. And having an eye on the more casual conversations makes expanding breadth a bit easier than going straight for the article( abstract)s. E.g. without a longer excursion into epistemology, I probably wouldn't have knowledge-first epistemology on my radar as a notable thing right now. It's not what I do, but I can imagine how it's relevant to what I do.

    On the producing side, even when I block social media to reduce the temptation to waste time, I still keep open an avenue to post on occasion. I've definitely gotten some interesting and useful interactions out of posting some of my partially-baked thoughts on social media. I imagine, though am going on a reasoned guess, that staying on people's minds is a net benefit for me. (At least my main goal of continuing to talk philosophy even when the seminars are over and nobody wants to chat at the bar is fulfilled sometimes. Or to throw ideas at people and see which ones work. If being "someone who posts interesting or funny things on the social media" happens to be something I do and doing so is beneficial professionally, yippee.)

    That said, I'm not quite sure I understand what it is for not doing something to be a harm. Is it just the same as for doing the something to be a help? Or is it for the something to be the norm plus not doing it to be worse than doing it? I'm curious what the difference between "being on social media is helpful" and "not being on social media is harmful" some people in this thread have in mind.

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  38. Charles Pigden

    To Nichole Smith,
    In a competitive situation, not doing something that is beneficial can cause you to lose out in to the competition and can therefore constitute a harm. Not doing X can harm you, if doing X increases your chances of achieving limited good which to you is vital, and your rivals are busy doing X. For it diminished your chances of achieving that limited good. If professional survival depends on a certain level of success, if you don't do the things that help you to succeed you may not survive as professional. And not surviving as a professional – or behaving in a way that makes you less likely to survive as a professional – surely constitutes a harm, given a young philosopher’s presumed projects. Being active online is an important way of increasing your chances of a permanent job in philosophy and it is a strategy being pursued by many of your competitors. So not doing it may harm you. HOWEVER, not doing X may not constitute a harm if you can *also* do Y where Y is *another* method of achieving this limited good. And there are other methods Y whereby a graduate student at a top Californian department can get herself noticed without resorting to the internet (most obviously by being an intelligent participant in *face-to-face* discussions). So not being active online might not be harmful to you although it might be very harmful to a similarly talented young philosopher from the boondocks.

    Even if your survival has been achieved, not doing something (specifically not being active online) can reduce – and therefore harm – your chances of professional success. Now I am going to assume, Nichole that, although promotions and fancy professorships are all well and good, success means for you what success means for me, namely producing good work that is published, read, discussed and recognized. And I am inclined to say that being active online can increase your chances of all these kinds of success, starting with your chances of producing the good work. For you can hone your philosophical skills in the right kinds of online debates. But again, this is much more important for boondock philosophers than for Californian philosophers such as yourself who can get much more of this kind of action and attract much more of the right kind of attention via face-to-face encounters.

    However, I do not recommend what Kukla seems to be suggesting, namely using your Facebook Page to as a platform for self-promotion by developing a carefully-constructed and highly 'likeable' online personality. This strikes me unduly reminiscent of the dystopian culture depicted in the Black Mirror episode 'Nosedive'. It is degrading to be dependent on the ‘likes’ or even the reactions of philosophical panjandrums and servile to create an edited version of yourself designed to attract such ‘likes’.

    Instead what I recommend is that young philosophers should contribute to debates and discussions in online topic-focused online fora, such as blogs email-lists and Facebook discussion groups. This is the online equivalent of asking good questions or making incisive comments at conferences, seminars or workshops and as such a non-degrading way of getting yourself noticed. It also useful to have an personal website or an Academia or Philpapers page on which you post your stuff, which can include published papers but also thoughts and musings. This is what Nichole Smith is doing already. For what it’s worth I just visited her website and was immediately rewarded with an excellent little essay on Free Speech (which did not involve ostentatiously parading her political preferences or ‘calling out ‘wrongdoers). Sadly, I am not all that influential, but if I were Nichole would have just attracted my attention in the right kind of way. (Though she also needs to check out my work on conspiracy theories.)

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