Book-iversary!

It is officially the one year anniversary of Just Here For the Comments! The book has been nominated for a bunch of academic book awards and where the chances of being short-listed or winning these very competitive awards are slim, it's exciting to be in a place where it is even possible.

As I am reminded in the last week or so as I slog through the end of my next book proposal, writing is hard, very isolating, and emotionally exhaustive work. And unlike other professional endeavors, it's not one motivated solely by financial returns. It's a sort of manic desire to work out a complex idea. This is why its important to celebrate all the wins, no matter how small. There are far more losses and disappointments, so I've learned to revel in all the small moments. I look back on the past year with great pride in the opportunities I have had to speak on podcasts, present my work, and even pitch a new book. And I thank you for opening this newsletter every month to share in the journey.

To be perfectly honest, one of the greatest struggles has been to commit to writing a monthly newsletter. It's a new genre for me and one that I am learning how to navigate. I had only one goal for this past year: write once a month and post on LinkedIn once a week. Where I plan to put more time into narrowing the scope and content of this newsletter over the next year, I'm proud to have about 100 dedicated readers across the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia with 80% of subscribers opening every issue. Considering that most successful newsletters only have an open rate of 25%, I'll take this as a win. However, as a social media scholar, I admit that the open-rate data is a bit misleading. I have sometimes received a message from someone about the content in my newsletter and although they are a subscriber, their reading is not measured in the open rate. Through some informal data collection and sleuthing, this seems to be because they viewed the content within their mail program, rather than opening a new browser window. Similarly, I'm sure that there are folks who open the newsletter, are registered on the backend as having opened, and then only read a sentence and move on to something else. As I write in Just Here For the Comments, measuring reading and measuring engagement are two separate metrics and ones that should not be conflated.

Embracing the Lurkers

There have been some majors shifts from X and Meta in regard to lurking policy.

(Re)evaluating Media Literacy

One of my goals for my work has been to broaden media literacy efforts beyond the K-12 classroom and the fifth chapter of my book outlines the global deficit in media literacy education beyond the primary and secondary levels. Moreover most media literacy in schools tends to focus on how to use new tools rather than ethical questions of why, how, and when to use these tools. I had the opportunity to give a lecture at Molloy University in their Institute of Lifelong Learning to discuss lurking. It was an energized group and now that the second book proposal is almost complete, I look forward to more opportunities to bring my work to community spaces.

Thanks for walking beside me this year,

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