Distinguishing online academic bullying at sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584402100431X#!

News via the OAB’s ResearchGate channel

There is a paucity of research into how dissenting IRMCIH scientists and clinicians have used digital platforms for working around scientific suppression and censorship. In response, The Noakes Foundation supports the research theme ‘Academic Free Speech and Digital Voices’, which the OAB research project falls under. This theme largely aims to flag the importance of digital voice for IRMCIH scholars in Higher Education. By contrast, TNF’s theme ‘From clinical practice to published research’ seeks to leverage the freedom that clinicians’ enjoy in prescribing low-carb interventions. It links them to research and supporting clinicians with doing research and preparing manuscripts that can help address gaps in the IRMCIH academic literature.

SECTION 2

SLIDE 12

There is a huge opportunity for IR clinicians to translate the veracity of their LCHF interventions into scholarship. If more health experts take up this responsibility, it will improve the visibility of the IRMCIH model in academic literature whilst also building legitimacy for funders to increase financial support for projects tackling IR. Connecting the outcomes of practices’ LCHF interventions to research should result in more written manuscripts and scholarly publications, whilst growing the number and visibility of IR scholars. A strong body of IRMCIH academic publications working in tandem with highly visible, positive reports on popular social media platforms can achieve a powerful synergy whose social impact the CMCDD orthodoxy would greatly struggle to contain.

SLIDES 13 & 14

By contrast to IR scholars, who may lose their livelihoods for teaching, researching and promoting the IRMCIH model, many clinicians enjoy the professional freedom to share LCHF science and prescribe low-carb interventions. Clinicians need support with contributing to both the online and academic IR issue arenas. It starts with participating in networks, such as the Nutrition Network’s, where clinicians learn not only what works… but what is not known. This connection may motivate clinicians to help protect their peers by becoming ‘upstanders’ against cyber harassment. Upstanders are former bystanders who have recognised patterns of bullying behaviour and choose to intervene in a bid to stop bullying (Padgett & Notar, 2013).

Clinicians may also be able share the latest research with their clients. For those who are not English-speaking, clinicians have a huge opportunity to spotlight academic literature for those whose first language is not English, or clients who prefer to follow users in their home languages. The OAB research project has seen examples of this with Spanish interlocutors of an IRMCIH scientific editorial on YouTube. With the right support, health experts with the time and interest to contribute to scholarship, may be able to help close IRMCIH research gaps by researching their patients’ outcomes.

SLIDE 15

In sharing their work online, health professionals must choose how they present themselves: genuine identities are a norm for health professionals, but a pseudonymous identity is appropriate where dangers exist from public visibility. Likewise, there are trade-offs in choosing to portray a strictly professional role online, versus one with a blend of interests that could be more relatable to general public. Creators must also consider their preference in mode of communication: the academic default is verbal, social media is multi-media. However, digital content creators may choose to foreground productions with spoken-word, imagery, slides, or even video and coding projects.

With such a broad range of possibilities, it is important that health professionals define their main aim (such as producing a unique portfolio of content). They may have the luxury of time to develop a well-planned strategy for achieving that aim that draws on the examples of Nutrition Network influencers… or content creators might focus on learning-by-doing, gonzo approach where the plan is to continually experiment for finding what works. For example, the research literature does not address which academic social media sites’ audiences will best-respond to manuscripts, so developing presences on the most popular ones, then sharing a manuscript draft via all, would seem the best way to learn firsthand. Over time, health professionals will develop an understanding of who they want to speak to and how to move content across platforms for reaching witnesses and interlocutors.

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There are many different levels of media engagement that online creators might pursue… producing quality content and driving engagement with audiences does necessitate a big time investment! Even the most private of us will have shadow profiles that popular social network platforms create for their not-as-yet-members, who may be identified in photos or email addresses that members share. Most people take control of their digital personas by putting themselves on the ‘Google Map’ so to speak through joining social media to network, share resources and give feedback on what they like. Few people produce original online content under their own names and this has emerged as a contemporary form of distinction. There are many roles that digital content producers can choose from to support the LCHF and IRMCIH connective movements. Likewise, for becoming their own personal channel across different platforms.

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For example, if a health professional is interested in pursuing civil debate, there are interesting options, such as: Reddit’s ‘change my view’, Debate.org and Letter Wiki. A particularly IRMCIH/LCHF-friendly space is subreddit/ketoscience, which has 175k members. These platforms are designed specifically for civil discussion, so are arguably better venues for agonistic exchange than social media networks. These have much greater reach, but are marred by underwhelming moderation and safety policies/procedures.

SLIDE 18

Media studies researchers who focus on participatory culture and Connected Learning have shown the importance of an opportunity-mindset in education for teenagers’ practices with digital affinity networks. The same likely applies for leaders in the LCHF and IRMCIH connective movements. If clinicians develop a positive mindset to the opportunities that online content development and sharing afford, they will be in a better position than those who have not developed or shared content, perhaps owing to a pessimistic focus on the potential harms of technology.

SECTION 3

SLIDE 19

For health professionals on Twitter, Professor Murphy’s chapter Twitter and Health flags this platform’s influence on opening-up discussions on health: patients are using Twitter in a form of ‘update culture’ to share intimate information about their health (similar to a public diary of their health, but now as one’s personal Twitter domain on one’s IR scores for followers’ support). Such patients can potentially become a source of expertise whilst contributing to a support community for patients’ confronting the same condition(s). Health professionals can use Twitter to understand their patients’ behaviours better and to pursue research that might otherwise be difficult to arrange patients’ feedback on successful alternative treatments from. Notably, Johns Hopkins university has used the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Untangled project with researchers to capture 40 reviews of alternative and off-label treatments. Its participants and other ALS patients are encouraged to ask questions on the state-of-the-art science (for example, by engaging with the ALS Twitter account). This is similar to IRMCIH experts being contacted around LCHF lifestyle queries. Such shifts for patients, clinicians and researchers reveal how Twitter facilitates the circumvention of traditional controls in healthcare and life-sciences industries. This facilitates a poly-vocal approach in healthcare and the life-sciences versus the traditional uni-directional prescriptions from "The Anointed" experts in the Cathedral combining HE and media.

SLIDE 20

‘Scientific Twitter’ has emerged a popular choice for IRMCIH scholars to update each other, reach out of to sympathetic digital publics in the broader LCHF space. It also provides a platform for public disagreements with CMCDD supporters. For LCHF proponents' examples, please view a Twitter list featuring updates from The Noakes Foundation and other #LCHF advocates at https://twitter.com/i/lists/974554836850032640.

As Professor Noakes describes, by following LCHF proponents on Twitter, he can more easily stay current with their research than via journal notifications. Twitter provides him with as much scholarly information each day as he ever received in the years of his career as a researcher and teacher. He also describes how it supports the sharing of a message with a large number of people beyond one’s own immediate social circle.

SLIDE 21

As a highly influential and accessible platform for news and networking, Twitter provides an interesting example concerning how different forms of capital can be developed via microblogging as social media. Firstly, Twitter is free and easy-to-use, meaning there is no direct cost in ECONOMIC capital to its users. Twitter users own the copyright of the CULTURAL capital (or tweet content) posted via its service. Highly engaged Twitter users can develop SOCIAL CAPITAL via high numbers of followers. Interestingly, the number of Twitter users with more than a million followers is rarer than the number of dollar billionaires! This spotlights what an exclusive achievement cultivating a large Twitter audience is.

Twitter handles with large followings place their producers in a very exclusive category of high influence microblogger. Twitter itself is an influential news platform which does shape traditional media and the public debates it features. While rare, scientific research articles that break on Twitter can become widely shared. Not only does this contribute to an article’s ALTmetrics but, quite likely, a research publication’s citation rate.

SLIDE 22

twitter.com/DrAseemMalhotra/status/598175147611262976 is a rare example of a civil Twitter discussion concerning a BJSM podcast featuring Professor Malhotra and the editorial he focused on.

SLIDE 23

Sadly, this is far from the norm, as Twitter was not designed to facilitate scholarly debate… Rather, Twitter facilitates status updates via concise tweets, rather than the lengthy interchange of in-depth content that a scholarly debate might cover. So, it is unsurprising that the multiple pitfalls shown here can stifle anyone’s attempts at engaging with a ‘public debate’ on Twitter:

1. As an asynchronous platform, micro-bloggers can argue at times and in threads that are hard to respond to
2. The attribution of user’s re-embedded tweets can be challenging
3. A stalker can use the open network to call on hypercritical users to respond to tweets
4. Since it is hard to vet responders, a lot of time can be wasted responding to trolls,
5. such as sealions, who want to waste one’s time by posing questions, but not learning from responses.
6. Twitter users can also abuse its reporting, muting and blocking features for hampering their opponents digital voices.

SLIDE 24

Outside the Twitter platform, there are many other influences that undermine legitimate online debate

These include:

• A gap in guidelines for how debaters might best conduct themselves on particular platforms;
• Legitimate online debate examples seem to be missing in the research literature;
• Online profiles can give a poor indication of who is a genuine debater… for example, the profiles of cyber harassers are not flagged. By contrast, accounts of legitimate, but dissenting scholars, may not be verified with Twitter’s blue tick for expressing "controversial" opinions;
• It may also be hard to distinguish upstanders from the cyberbullies they strongly chastise;
• Online debaters may not know how to use the full range of online modes well;
• For debaters, it can be unclear what the personal rewards and social impact of lengthy online debate is.

SLIDE 25

Overall, a polarized Twitter discussion may create great stats for its usage… and raise the visibility of its most frequent interlocutors… but Twitter’s limitations mean that high-quality debate is an unlikely outcome for participants!

SLIDE 26

Twitter’s algorithms reward controversy and highly emotive engagement with attention. So, if one wants to attract users to discussions, one must foreground what one is AGAINST. This is an effective strategy as it depositions one's opponents (who probably don’t want to be described as representing Fiat Science™!). It also serves as a lightning rod for witnesses and the critical interlocutors they might refer. Focusing on what one is FOR on the left is “nice”, but largely ineffective in terms of visibility. Speaking up in strong terms about what one is against will stoke more intense reactions and attention. Instead of hating the algorithm, savvy Twitter users must stoke IR and CMCDD controversies for lighting Twitter’s dumpster fires!

It’s also useful to be mindful of the limitations of what stats implicitly suggest that one focuses on. For example for scholars, ALTmetrics does not distinguish between sentiment in publications, which may all be negative as shown in the blue text. So, as a responsible online content contributor, one must be mindful of BOTH how one’s aims link to a preferred platform’s stats… and differs from them. For example, one may serve a niche LCHF interest that is unlikely to attract a high number of followers… nevertheless, its social impact in creating a support network for an under-served group of patients, whose examples come to be featured in the IRMCIH research literature, might be the best metric of success for one’s digital content contribution!

SLIDE 27

Thank you for reading this post. I’d also like to thank the OAB Research team for their contribution to the research insights shared here.

SLIDE 28

And thanks to Create With for providing the Shushmoji graphics, which were designed as end-of-conversation points for cyberbullies. Check out Create With's work on Pinterest, Instagram or Facebook.

RELATED RESOURCES

February 2021's OAB research project update is on ResearchGate under News on https://www.researchgate.net/project/Online-academic-bullying. 

There’s more background on the OAB project in my introductory talk at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI_pGqxcrmc.

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