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Journal of Victorian Culture

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Social Media
a
James Mussell
a
Editor, Digital Forum

Version of record first published: 11 Jun 2012.

To cite this article: James Mussell (2012): Social Media, Journal of Victorian Culture, 17:3, 347-347

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13555502.2012.689501

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 Journal of Victorian Culture
Vol. 17, No. 3, September 2012, 347

DIGITAL FORUM
Social Media

The bulk of most peoples encounters with the web are through various social media.
For many, the web is synonymous with Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. When the
history of the web over the past twenty years is recounted, it is these platforms and
many like them (MySpace, Bebo even Friends Reunited) that are credited for bringing
people online and, once getting them, keeping them connected. The statistics testify
to the importance of these platforms. Facebook currently claims 800 million active
Downloaded by [58.68.55.180] at 00:48 12 September 2012

users, half of which log on every day; Twitter has over 100 million users, with over a
billion tweets sent a week; and YouTube boasts 3 billion views a day. Facebook, as is
often noted, is the largest archive of photographs in the world. With dedicated apps
ensuring they are well-represented on a range of devices, these resources are rapidly
becoming essential ways in which people stay in touch.
This Digital Forum is dedicated to social media. Given that their use is already
firmly embedded as part of everyday life, they represent an important opportunity to
engage with audiences for academic research. These might be existing audiences, such
as colleagues or students, or new audiences beyond the academy. As the essence of
most social media is interaction, these resources allow audiences to become
collaborators, active participants in ongoing research. These modes of communica-
tion have their own discourses, and social media platforms have been embraced as a
way of breaking down academic hierarchies, or divisions between those within a
particular group and those hitherto excluded. Yet such interactions are sometimes
viewed with suspicion in an academy wedded to strict notions of rank and discipline,
while many (rightly) scrutinize the contract that underpins the ostensibly free use of
social media. As the saying goes: If youre not paying for it, youre the product.
The two essays that follow each focus on a particular form of social media, the
blog. Rohan Maitzen considers the place of blogging in her academic career, both in
terms of teaching and research. Amber K. Regis takes a broader view, looking at how
early-career scholars are using blogging, alongside other forms of social media, to
establish themselves in a crowded job market. Although conferences now often have
their own Twitter hashtags and scholarly societies are on Facebook, social media are
still often considered as supplementary to real scholarly work. These articles,
however, understand social media as a site of academic practice that is redefining the
ways in which scholars relate to one another, their students and those beyond the
academy who might share their interests.
James Mussell
Editor, Digital Forum
j.mussell@bham.ac.uk

ISSN 1355-5502 print/ISSN 1750-0133 online

2012 Leeds Trinity University College
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13555502.2012.689501
http://www.tandfonline.com