Has Academic Twitter found its voice again?

“X is pretty rough sometimes but within that ‘toxic debate’ are some critics who are telling you things that you need to listen to,” reflected Tanya De Grunwald on why she thinks the departure of many organisations from the world’s biggest social media site is looking increasingly misguided.

“[By] removing yourself to sit on BlueSky or LinkedIn you’re going to miss out on some criticism that frankly you need to be hearing,” explained De Grunwald, host of the influential HR-related podcast This Isn’t Working in an episode reflecting on the issues raised by the Jason Arday plagiarism row this summer.

Universities and academics are among those who joined a mass exodus of users from X since Elon Musk bought the site in October 2022. His free speech evangelism and algorithmic changes have unfairly boosted right-wing or paid-for posts, many believe, making it impossible for academics to engage.

In many cases, leaving X was often framed as a “values-led” decision by universities, implying that “nice people should not be on X,” argued De Grunwald. Yet this retreat by left-leaning academics and HR professionals – among whom she counts herself – simply added “more sound-proofing to our echo chamber”, she said.

The migration to Bluesky, LinkedIn and Mastodon, which accelerated with the re-election of Donald Trump in November 2024, was assumed by many to be the end of the community known as Academic Twitter.

Yet the issues raised by the Arday case has reignited debates on the platform in a way not seen for several years. Although some of the posts have been called a “pile-on”, there has also been discussion of the rigour of PhD examinations, whether hiring in UK academia is really meritocratic and whether black scholars face more scrutiny than their white colleagues.

Andy Tattersall, an independent research communications consultant who previously worked at the University of Sheffield, said the enormous traffic numbers for X this summer posed a challenge to academics and UK universities who have deserted the platform but it still made little sense for many of them to rejoin.

“I was a keen advocate for the academic community to remain on the platform and fight misinformation using evidence, especially after Covid,” said Tattersall, whose research has found that more than half of UK universities are no longer active users of X despite some having more than 100,000 followers.

“That changed a couple of years ago when it became apparent that the algorithms were choking content in favour of bad actors and misinformation,” he added.

With many universities having to pay to enhance their social media presence, “the cost-benefit of remaining on X was no longer worthwhile”, Tattersall continued, noting that the “research community faced a prolonged attack, not only from other users and bots but also led by the platform’s owner”.

With universities also operating across other established alternative platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, retreating from X was a logical move, said Tattersall.

“A smaller organisation can only effectively engage with so many platforms, which I think drives the decision for some less-resourced universities,” he said.

“Returning to the platform to argue their cause in light of recent news stories would have just been a waste of time and resources. We also have to remember that people are behind these organisational accounts, we must consider the impact on their own mental well-being,” he added, arguing that pushing back on certain narratives would have been akin to “trying to keep their finger in a dam to hold back a torrent of abuse and misinformation”.

Josh Shepperd, associate professor in the Department of Media Studies at University of Colorado Boulder, said the renewed academic interest in X this summer had highlighted how academic social media has “fragmented” rather than indicating the return of Academic Twitter.

“X has become more like the skyscraper built over a cemetery that was Twitter. It’s no longer a new kind of public forum, in which academics could continuously share perspective or engage with a broader public,” said Shepperd, adding that “some ghosts from Academic Twitter remain at the site but it’s unrecognisable from the previous site”.

“One of the great attributes of Twitter was that a post might be made and responded to with immediacy,” continued Shepard, who contrasted this to X’s “subscription tiers [that] adjust feed posting speeds, which means that one is paying several hundred dollars to X for the right to be seen”.

“Additionally, a number of anti-public education grievance-based accounts are paying subscriptions for exposure while most academics demur,” he explained, arguing that this means “the tone of X’s discourse has moved into far reactionary territory, almost to the point where no imaginable equity of visibility of perspective is imaginable”.

Bluesky and X held different roles within academic discourse,” continued Shepard. “Bluesky has not replaced X as the Academic Twitter forum. In many ways, the culture at Bluesky is more supportive and cordial than Academic Twitter...Bluesky feels very much like an information bubble in which academics can communicate with each other in specific ways without external scrutiny,” he said.

“Bluesky is preferable for...about 60 to 70 per cent of scholars but the interface takes the role of a professional forum more than a medium for public engagement,” he said, noting how “X retains a greater readership”.

“Quite a few academics chose neither site, and have moved to LinkedIn to seek their fortunes posting about their work to obtain promotions or new job opportunities,” said Shepperd, adding that “academic social media...still serves a significant if less central role in reputation-building and networking”.

Aine Mahon, associate professor in education at University College Dublin, who has also written about academics’ evolving use of social media, said it was difficult to determine whether X would remain the go-to place to debate academic issues of public interest as seen this summer, noting that it was the “first time I had seen Academic Twitter fired up in two years or so”.

“Some of the debate, as far as I could tell, had genuine substance (questions of institutional accountability and credentialism to the fore). But I’d be cautious about calling X a marketplace of ideas in this instance,” said Mahon. “A marketplace implies exchange among people who share enough context to actually hear each other. What X specialises in is what danah boyd calls ‘context collapse’ (colleagues, journalists, trolls and institutions all colliding in the same feed) which tends to produce defensiveness and reputation management dressed up as debate, rather than the kind of reflective or revisable thinking that scholarship depends on.”

“That a story this summer had enough real substance to survive that format doesn’t mean the format itself is a healthy home for scholarly judgement,” she said.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com