Social media in academia

Starting with the premise that other information enterprises (news, book-selling, music) have seen changes with the rise of social media, and asking what will lies ahead for academic life, a Berkman Center panel brings together four Harvard professors, long-standing users of social media, to describe what social media they use and how (more blogging than tweeting, to be honest). There is a heartwarming, albeit somewhat edited, clip of a three way video seminar between US, Chinese and Japanese students, following the Fukushima disaster, and some interesting reflections on the lack of serious challenge so far to the grip traditional publishers still have on academic libraries. Not enough of the post-panel discussion on the video, though. Could we have the technology to eavesdrop on that, too?

[via John Naughton]