Editors’ Choice: Academic Outreach as Click Bait

How should academics communicate their research to the general public? Maybe through memes, quizzes and click bait?

If you’ve read Chris Rodley’s two part Buzzfeed posts on Post-Structuralism Explained With Hipster Beards you might actually nod and think that might not be such a bad idea. And here is an example of post-publication peer review for that particular piece, snatched from a comment in the Buzzademia Facebook group:

“The post-structuralist via hipster beards list was a powerful piece that was both funny/engaging and helped me better understand post-structuralism. It’s the perfect example for what Buzzademia can and should do!” — Dr. Cheryl E. Ball, Kairos Editor.

Anne Cong-Huyen, Wendy Hsu, Kim Knight, Mark C Marino, Amanda Phillips, Chris Rodley have decided to go for this academic click bait and launch Buzzademia, which is “a peer-reviewed journal 4 Buzzfeed-style scholarship”.  Here is the Facebook group, where scholars are discussing how to make quizzes about which feminist theorist you are (here are instructions for creating a quiz on Buzzfeed – and here are other tools for creating Buzzfeed content, which anyone can do) and using Pokemon to understand Deleuze (A thousand Pikachus: Capitalism and Transmedia) And here is the manifesto, published on Buzzfeed as a listicle, of course: 10 Reasons Professors Should Start Writing Buzzfeed Articles.

Read the full post here.

This content was selected for Digital Humanities Now by Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Schneider based on nominations by Editors-at-Large: Cinzia Pusceddu-Gangarosa, Stephanie Hedge, Amy Buckland, Emmanuelle Chaze, Anu Paul, Patrick Wingrove, Becky Halat, Annie Johnson, Amy Williams, Carl Cornell, and Kwinn H Doran