This entry may appear very far from the general aim of this website. But everything we do is a political act, even our silence. A short reflection on why I left Facebook and Twitter.
I opened my Facebook account as soon as I arrived at university (so 17 years ago…), in the first few years I used it a lot, then less and less, until I posted a few scattered photos every three-four month, ending in an absolute silence on 25 April 2024. In 2015, for an event I was attending that involved live tweeting, I opened a twitter page, long forgotten but then used frequently over the last two years, only to become a spectator lately. No instagram, no tik tok.
I am a researcher. I am currently on my second research contract: I was in Spain for three years and now I am an happy postdoctoral fellow at the University of Malta. Both these contracts are within a major European university research funding scheme. This means that my salary comes from the taxes of European citizens, and that my work must go back to them, through a continuous work of dissemination of results on various levels. Europe demands this widespread dissemination from us, just as it demands adherence to the inviolable pillars of transparency in work, in practices, in the dissemination of results.
In general, the relationship between academics and social media is definitely interesting. It is undeniable that for many years, ever since the need to democratise the impact of our research became bigger, social platforms have been at the heart of all the projects funded at academic level for the dissemination of results, perceived as the main vehicle for wider reaching.
I have never shied away from this practice, even though it has been very difficult for me: not only have I always struggled to maintain a continuous online presence (which is the key to success, they say), even for this website, but it has undoubtedly been precious time taken away from research work, time spent on activities with no results in terms of quality and visibility. Those few moments of feeble visibility, which happened quite accidentally when I was working in Madrid, were in any case tremendously ephemeral from a quantitative point of view, and totally null for disseminating results, or obtaining feedback of any kind.
However, if I look at my colleagues (those who are on similar career levels) and their social presence, it seems to me that from the academic perspective it is a full illusion to find visibility through social media. The posts we embark on are all the same, according to standards of self-promotion that can also be slightly pathetic: lots of ‘I am thrilled to announce’ for new articles/works/projects published, achieved, funded, etc. that don’t really interest anyone, receive a few dozen interactions and fall at great speed into the oblivion (in fact, it is well known that the life of posts on the main social networks is only a few minutes).
Moreover, the majority of academics on social media actually live between self-promotion and complaining about the funding and recruitment dynamics of our ivory tower. They end up being a group that ultimately becomes self-referential, whose posts do not leave the insiders’ circle (thanks in part to the algorithm), and whose members seek approval more than scientific confrontation or information.
This was what I felt I was trapped into, and also had a hard time staying afloat. And this, then, was the cause of a gradual shift from fatigue to social awareness.
A somewhat clearer view of what social platforms are today was offered to me by Alex Grech’s Young People and Information manifesto, the main source of what appears in the following sections. [Incidentally, it was his very interesting seminar at the University of Malta on Social Media and Academics that gave me the final push to deactivate all accounts]. Grech reminds us how the speed and urgency to publish according to the expectation of the public can compromise the truth by making social media fertile for extremism, discrimination, disturbing content always accessible without control. Technology is no longer that miraculous asset for collective freedom that was imagined years ago, but is increasingly a tool at the economic and political service of those who own, create, can buy and control it. The Internet is no longer the place for widespread democracy, but that of constant surveillance and commercialisation, under the hegemonic control of those who run the platforms. Everything is monetised, the individual user is a source of information to resell, no longer a citizen with ideas in a community, but an individual who feeds a machine in which interactions and likes are the only indicators of personal success and human value.
Under this control, the algorithm is the main weapon of a political and propaganda technology that manipulates choices, tastes, behaviour, and purchases. The algorithm shapes what we consume and allows the platform to control the flow of information, collecting data opaquely and pushing engagement at the expense of integrity. There is no room for integrity in the parallel post-truth world of these platforms; truth, that is at the very basis of academic research, is no longer needed and outdated. Disinformation and misinformation are therefore not limited problems that can be solved, but symptoms of a broader social condition.
The last straw in this bleak panorama was for me how the big tech stars flocked to salute the new US president, which exacerbated the moral issue arose with deepening the problems mentioned so far. The reflexive relationship between technology (read: billionaire giants that own the platforms) and society in its political expression makes these issues now public and necessary, and not limited to the sphere of what happens online: fake news, control and the dissemination of propaganda for hegemonic purposes have now entered our society, our homes, from the screen we all carry in our pockets.
An example of this is Musk’s new habit of commenting European politics; a billionaire who uses his voice to spread opinions favourable to the far-right and thus against the truest core of the institutions to which I belong (i.e. the EU). And he speaks using a very powerful platform, which contributes to the political polarisation of ideas, the amplification of propaganda and disinformation at the expense of user privacy and truth.
Here, then, is what we feed with every single post. And as if that were not enough, user-generated content (and thus generated by researchers too) plays a key role not only in enriching these plutocrats with fascist sympathies, but in feeding to those AI content generators of which we are only now beginning to understand the danger to university teaching and research.
This is against my innermost being as a person, as a citizen, as a mother and as a researcher. Indeed, to leave social media and give up even my mere presence as a spectator is for me a political act that I do precisely from my being a researcher. Research can and today must transcend this slavery, in the name of freedom of thought, of speech, and of choice of where and how to communicate. By maintaining our online presence only on our websites, perhaps the future of communication and the dissemination of the results of European projects can be precisely that of going back to the people, without a screen: a conference, a meeting, a guided tour, a fair, the often manage to gather a larger number of people than a single self-promotional post, adding the human factor, the physical involvement, the creation of direct links.
Catacombs rediscovery 