Thread by @Leelum

This is a great example of a YouTuber taking a bunch of academic concepts on social media, and regurgitating/plagiarising them into a utter bumblefuck. @veritasium.



So for anyone who is interested in the facts, and not the rants here's a thread:

For starters, there's a good reason why you should be annoyed about this video if you've ever studied the social sciences.

Look at any of @veritasium's other videos. For example his most popular video that looks at the Magnus Effect. You'll see citations.

Anything to do with "pure" science, he credits academics & institutes. When he talks about issues & theories included with the social sciences, zilch citations.

It's an important unspoken statement he makes about who (& why) he thinks is worthy of mentioning.

So this thread is to praise the hard working academics whose work Muller pretty much butchered in the video. Here's the citation you deserve. There's sadly not enough tweets in the world to recognise them all, so here is a selection of citations on the issues Muller talks about.

Firstly, Impression management (IM) was first introduced as an idea by Erving Goffman in 1959. It's about how people try to influence the perceptions about themselves (or the impression they give). Naturally the study of IM is well covered on social media.

Impression management and social media isn't a new idea. Nor is it some weird meta issue. And nor is it very *different* to other peoples criticism from social media.

Actually to call some of these instances a "meta issue" is just bizarre.

So here is some actual research on impression management & social media:
Krämer & Winter(2008): doi.org/10.1027/1864-1…
Rosenberg & Egbert (2011): doi.org/10.1111/j.1083…
Jackson & Lillker (2011): doi.org/10.1080/135723… [UK MPs on social media]

For this first one I really want to show the wealth of knowledge out there about this *different* meta issue that Muller infers is original.
Hogan (2010): doi.org/10.1177/027046…

There's even a book on it by Cunningham (2013) called 'Social Networking and Impression Management'.

In short, who could of guessed a well researched area in communications dating back from the 50's would have been applied to social media. NEXT.

The second issue Muller talks about is narcissism on social media. The concept here is pretty self-explanatory, it deals with the impact social media has in increasing (or decreasing) the levels of interest in peoples own self or appearance, in an excessive of grandiose way.

Again, there's plenty of research here too:
Davenport et al, (2014): doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.…
Andreassen et al, (2017): doi.org/10.1016/j.addb…
Bergman et al, (2011): doi.org/10.1016/j.paid…
Buffardi & Campbell, (2008): doi.org/10.1177/014616…

There's even a cross-over paper that looks at both impression management & narcissism, in one paper? Who'd of thought?!
Siiback (2009): cyberpsychology.eu/article/view/4…

Just a quick intermission, there is literally a book titled ' Anti-Social Media' published in 2018 by Siva Vaidhyanthan. Covers many of the issues Muller talks about in the video in the context of democracy.

The third area Muller talks about is the authenticity and social media.
Henderson & Bowley (2010) is just one example of a paper he could have chosen to cite -doi.org/10.1108/136325…

Another good one is Enli (2017) who argued that one reason Trump won the US 2016 election is due to his more authentic use of Twitter. doi.org/10.1177/026732…

I may, or may not have used that example as an excuse to use this gif.

There's people on Twitter who could easily drown this thread with criticisms of social media that are actually original or with areas of social media that probably should have been mentioned in the video such as the link with mental health issues.

My own personal criticism of the video (other than the whole butchering concepts & lack of citation) would be that he does that terrible deed of lumping all social media websites together (in a video posted on a social media website). But I digress.

When @veritasium says that "the reason I'm anti-social media is different from most peoples reasons..", rather than a certificate of originality, it's an indictment that he hasn't read the fucking course material.

Or worse, that he's read the material, but decided to plagiarise it.

Don't get me wrong, I like what Muller is trying to do with his videos. But he's showing the symptoms of Neil deGrasse Tyson syndrome.

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