When participating online, individuals draw on the limited cues they have available to create for themselves an imagined audience (Litt, 2012). Such audiences shape users’ social media practices, and thus the expression of identity online (Marwick & boyd, 2011). In this research we posed the following questions: (1) how do scholars conceptualize their audiences when participating on social media, and (2) how does that conceptualization impact their self-expression online? By answering these questions, we aim to provide a more nuanced picture of scholars’ social media practices and experiences. The audiences imagined by the scholars we interviewed appear to be well defined rather than the nebulous constructions often described in previous studies (e.g. Brake, 2012; Vitak, 2012). While scholar indicated that some audiences were unknown, none noted that their audience was unfamiliar. This study also shows that a misalignment exists between the audiences that scholars imagine encountering online and the audiences that higher education institutions imagine their scholars encountering online.

1. Social Media & Society Conference
July 2016, London, UK
Scholars' Imagined Audiences and their
Impact on Social Media Participation
George Veletsianos, PhD
Canada Research Chair & Associate Professor
Royal Roads University
Victoria, BC
Ash Shaw
Royal Roads University & University of British Columbia
Victoria, BC & Vancouver BC

2. Networked Scholarship, or
Networked Participatory Scholarship:
“scholars’ use of participatory technologies and
online social networks to share, reflect upon,
critique, improve, validate, and further their
scholarship” (Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2012)
• A non-deterministic perspective
A bit of theory:
Networked Scholarship

3. Overview: How do you imagine your
social media audience(s)?

4. How do you imagine your social
media audience(s)?

5. Motivation
Imagined audiences: “mental conceptualization of
the people with whom we are communicating”
(Litt, 2012)
Imagined audiences shape social media practices
(Marwick & boyd, 2011).
This phenomenon is largely unexplored in relation to
scholars’ social media practices

6. Relevant Literature
How do imagined audiences affect social media
users?
• Marwick & boyd (2011): Some consciously tweet
to cultivate a persona. Others reported tweeting
“for themselves.”
• Brake (2012): most considered a specific
audience of friends and family when deciding
what to blog
• Litt (2015): ~1/2 had a specific audience in mind.
For the rest: audience = more indefinite/abstract.

7. Relevance to academics/faculty?
Academics are increasingly using social media and
are frequently encouraged to develop a social
media presence

8. Research Questions
We examined
• how do scholars conceptualize their audiences
when participating on social media?
• how does this conceptualization shape the ways
in which they participate and express themselves
online?

9. Methods
• Interviews
• Invited 5 bloggers, posted invitations on personal
blogs/FB/Twitter channels, snowball sampling
• 42 completed a consent form
• 16 interviewed
• Transcripts analyzed using the constant
comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967)
• Limitations: 1-time interviews, sample
representativeness

10. Participants
Age: 29 - 57 (mean = 41.6; S.D = 8.1; median = 40.5).
12 self-identified as F, 3 as M, & 1 as transgender.
Education or educational technology (10),
humanities (3), social sciences exclusive of
education (2), and nursing (1).
Lived in the United States (8), Canada (3), the
United Kingdom (3), Australia (1), and Egypt (1).

11. Results: How do they conceptualize
their audiences?
Identified 4 specific (at times overlapping) groups:
• academics,
• family and friends,
• groups related to one’s profession,
• individuals who shared commonalities with them.
Incompatibility between certain groups
à When seen as problematic (context collapse).
Solution: attempt to keep audiences separate
à At times, seen as potentially beneficial
Solution: allow contexts to collapse
[“context collusion” – Davis & Jurgenson, 2014]

12. Results: How do they conceptualize
their audiences?
Known vs. Unknown
Known: Individuals known personally and well
(online & offline)
Unknown: Audiences that scholars understood but
knew little about.
Strategies used to gain understanding of audience:
• examining hashtags followers used
• identifying when followers followed them
• (limited use of) social network analysis

13. Results: How does audience
conceptualization impact participation?
Scholars used their understanding of their audience
to guide their decisions around whatto
share & whereto share such information.

14. Results: How does audience
conceptualization impact participation?
Filtering
Motivated by concerns around how posting would
reflect on themselves or others.
Filtering took a number of forms, most frequently:
• Avoiding posting something for fear of offending
or alienating others
• Posting to a particular platform (eg FB pereived
more personal than Twitter) or audience
• Conscious of tone, language, and emotion
• Controversial topics: political views, sexuality,
social justice, and religion.

15. Implications 1/2
Previous research: social media users are not
concerned about their audience’s reaction to posts
This study: all participants concerned & make
conscious decisions about restricting/amending
posts

16. Implications 2/2
Previous research: Identified misalignment between
actual and imagined audiences
This study: identifies misalignment between the
audiences scholars imagine and the audiences
institutions imagine their scholars encountering.

17. Conclusion
Recognizing that scholars participating online are
not merely disembodied personas aiming to amass
citations and followers can enable researchers to
make better sense of the negotiated relationship
between digital audiences and scholars.

18. Thank you!
Research available at:
http://www.veletsianos/
publications
This presentation:
www.slideshare.com/
veletsianos
Contact:
veletsianos@gmail.com
@veletsianos on Twitter

19. Audience https://flic.kr/p/5YxihJ
Audience @ LeWeb 11 Les Docks-9306 https://flic.kr/p/aUh4TP
Audience https://flic.kr/p/8HxA8E
Family https://flic.kr/p/oF8Hd2
Colleagues https://flic.kr/p/7xEgDw
Nightmare - 10 https://flic.kr/p/cLzoCj
146a Diplo and Skrillex at Burning Man 2014 Opulent Temple -
https://flic.kr/p/oZH672
CC-Licensed images