So, just a little commentary from me this morning on how archaeologists are doomed to not have our voices heard, no matter how much public outreach we do, because that is what we are invariably guilt tripped with after a public kerfuffle over a well known pseudoscientist who has massive readership and publicity.
Do more public engagement.
Sure we can do outreach, big fan of it myself, in fact you are reading some right now, but there are a few problems associated with that fantasy:
1) Public engagement makes you a target for endless bile. It is not for the faint hearted in this age of online abuse. Not everybody in academia has that sort of intestinal fortitude. Universities on the other hand tend to emphasise to their staff that they represent the university and must behave accordingly - basically they are firmly advised to "play nice" in public fora. Pseudos are not constrained by the same expectations. I don't blame any of my academic friends for treading cautiously, it is barbaric out there.
2) Who is funding it? The answer often is - nobody - many archaeologists are doing outreach, or debunking pseudo, like my blog, in their spare time, entirely for free, unless they have monetised themselves on Youtube, FB or Blogger, but if you are not a marketing concept like Ancient Origins, and pay a shitton to a website for exposure, your writing is not going to have a great deal of audience reach.
3) Who is reading/watching it? - very few people - unless you monetise your product or have a celebrity promote your site.
Case in point, which started me thinking about this: 2 weeks ago my partner posted one of my blog posts on a music celebrity's page, and the post went viral, off the chart busy with views and is still mildly active today. The same post shared on a group or page devoted to history, art or archaeology is lucky to get a few views at the time of posting, no matter if the site has a million followers.
Say what you like about the quality of my writing, the outcome is dependant on the message vehicle, not the message quality.
Therefore, the only way to get widespread mainstream exposure for academic research is to produce a palatable product that is attractively packaged for the public, preferably sexed up, sensationalist and a bit mythico-magical. Then it has to be monetised and picked up by celebrities and influencers, because naturally then the media would gleefully follow in their trail with drool running from their lips, squabbling over who could write the stupider headline.
This is why archaeologists are fucked.
Andrea Sinclair
Dec. 2022
Further reading on the issues of social media for scholars:
Tiller, N. 2022, 'From Debunking to Prebunking', Sceptical Inquirer -https://skepticalinquirer.org/2022/08/from-debunking-to-prebunking-how-skeptical-activism-must-evolve-to-meet-the-growing-anti-science-threat/
Trecek-King, M. 2022, 'How to Sell Pseudoscience', Sceptical Inquirer - https://skepticalinquirer.org/2022/08/how-to-sell-pseudoscience/?fbclid=IwAR3PLkXJUamTNMe3vMOobM8GxSp_LJCwBsaDqHMsmJsovjTyfD1Fi6DLSRY
