Tyler Cowen started an interesting discussion on the potential utility of Twitter. I am sceptical enough about it's utility for people involved in academic research, but I am going to give it a try again particularly following Cowen's eloquent defence.
My twitter page is now below and I will be using it almost exclusively for communicating on research and related issues. I will post on it if/when I give up and decide it doesn't have much value. Some potential benefits it may have include:
- keeping people uptodate with events that I am involved with or that I hear about that might be useful
- circulating some interesting documents for discussion
- tapping into very current debate on policy issues
- informing lectures with online discussions
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It's a glorified satiation tool for 21st century e-voyeurism: those interested in the everyday, mundane tasks of, well, everyone else. I really do not see the *point* of Twitter beyond that. It's a strange by-product of this celebrity-driven era.
ReplyDeleteThat said, good luck with the new venture. I can just imagine its use for Behavioural Econ: "Told joke. Lots o' laughs. Great victory!"
not thinking about tweeting about actual classes. More talking about using it as a tool for staying current with things being discussed as examples. I am, as said in the post, sceptical about whether someone with my role as lecturer and researcher will find it useful for these functions. but given that I do spend a good bit of time trying to get people outside of academia interested in some of the academic ideas it might be useful for that. one way to find out...
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