Abstract
In this paper, we argue that digital platforms play an important role within higher education, not least of all when Covid-19 has made remote working the norm. An increasingly rich field of theoretical and empirical work has helped us understand platforms as socio-technical infrastructures which shape the activity of their users. Their insertion into higher education raises urgent institutional questions which necessitate dispensing with the individualised mode of analysis and instrumentalised conception of technology which often accompany these topics. We outline an alternative approach through a case study of social media in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, exploring the incorporation of platforms into research evaluation. Our findings suggest social media is invoked differently across disciplinary groupings, as well as platform metrics being cited in a naive and problematic matter. We offer a neo-institutionalist analysis which identifies a tendency towards isomorphism, with perceived ‘best practice’ being seized upon in response to uncertainty. We suggest such an approach is urgently needed given the role which digital platforms will play in building the post-Pandemic university.
Highlights
The term ‘platform’ has become commonplace in recent years
We suggest it is helpful to consider the role social media played in this round of case studies with a view to understanding how it is likely to be seen by universities, directly as a consequence of its clear linkage with altmetrics and indirectly given the obvious, if hard to pin down, link between academics communicating with extra-academic audiences and their research impact
If we approach them through the conceptual framework of the platform offered earlier in the paper, we can identify a number of institutional issues emerging from the characteristics of the platforms: 1. Data-generating: the data generated by social media platforms is being incorporated into the evaluative infrastructures of higher education through its inclusion in impact case studies, as well as the allocation of resources which follows from their evaluation
Summary
The term ‘platform’ has become commonplace in recent years. It usually refers to digital infrastructures which enable multiple parties to interact with each other at a distance. Data-generating: the data generated by social media platforms is being incorporated into the evaluative infrastructures of higher education through its inclusion in impact case studies, as well as the allocation of resources which follows from their evaluation It is one of many forms of evidence entering into this process, but it is unusual in that this data is integral to the platform’s business model in three senses: it is treated as an asset by the firm, it is used to operate their advertising business and it is used to regulate the platform in order to maximise user engagement (van Dijck 2013; Zuboff 2019). Following Pickering (2010), we could say the metrics ‘ontologically veil’ the platform, preventing it from being represented in a way that could feed into practice or analysis
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