During high school, our teachers were telling us to be aware of the sources we used online when we were searching for information. In university, this gets a step further, not only by citing sources in assignments, but also by using only scientific ones, such as journals and articles. When in our academic life we learned to be so careful and selective with the information we take, what has happened, and in our everyday life, we depend on social media for expert advice by questionable creators?
Before the emergence of social media, encyclopedias and libraries contained the knowledge. Authority was linked with academic institutions, and to a great degree, people were confident about the quality of information they were exposed to. A system like this, on one hand, was promoting reliability, but on the other hand, it was available to a limited number of people who had the capacity to get into libraries or get their hands on encyclopedias.
Nowadays, the Internet provides access to information to people all around the world in an easier and less costly way, even though discrimination still exists, as not everyone has access to a laptop and an internet connection. However, having access to unlimited sources of information raises the question of the quality and authority of these sources. Especially in an age where we are searching not only for accurate, but also fast, engaging, and entertaining ways to get knowledge.
Younger users shift towards relatability rather than expertise. Everyone can publish informational content online, but while we are consuming it, we rarely evaluate the credibility of the creator. Charismatic presenters get us engaged in informational content in a way that we tend to overlook experts with less slick visuals.
But shouldn’t experts and academics also step up their game in order to stay relevant?
We should evaluate the ways we can remain critical about the information we encounter online, but it would also be nice if academics and experts in their field got more engaged with social media and made an extra effort to be appealing to younger generations.
Your post made me think of this one time when in quarantine I was introducing TikTok to my father. Back then it was full of people dancing the same moves to a particular trendy music, and the first thing he said was something in the lines of “no professor will ever get as many likes as some girl dancing” (referring to Charli D’Amelio who was very popular at the time). And back then I thought that he just didn’t “get it”, but now it makes me feel disappointed to see how the authority of academic knowledge and people with degrees that they dedicated lives to is dissolving in the sea full of influencers or self-proclaimed experts. Of course, as the times have changed it would definitely help the academics to adapt to short form content, but wouldn’t they then also disappear because of high competition or undermine their own status?
Your father’s comment was on point, as it captures the contrast of traditional authority and our attention-driven culture.
I agree with you that academics entering short-form content risk their authority or might get lost in the competition. At the same time, maybe it’s less about competing directly with influencers and more about finding creative ways to translate knowledge into formats people already use.
It’s a tricky balance, but maybe the challenge is exactly this: how do we make academic knowledge visible and appealing without undermining its value?