Geographies of media and communication III: Academic communications and the digital communication environment

Abstract

This third report on geographies of media and communication explores the risks associated with scholarly communications in the digital communication environment. It offers a critical interpretation of changes affecting publishing, teaching and professional development. Each of these facets of academic communications is changing in ways that produce and exacerbate risks. While acknowledging that the digital communication environment also presents opportunities for critical pedagogy, creativity, transparency, flexibility and the promotion of scholarly credibility, the report focuses on risks. These include overarching risks such as exploitation and marginalization which are evident regardless of whether one considers publication, teaching or professional development. It also introduces risks that are distinct to particular areas of scholarly activity within the digital communication environment, such as impoverishment in the case of publication, deskilling in the case of teaching, or harassment in the case of professional development.

Keywords

academic publishing digital communications digital media MOOCs online courses open access publishing risk social media Wikipedia

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