Thread by @AcademicChatter

A thread about @AcademicChatter and how it works (1/14)

This account exists to facilitate communication, friendship, & support for those working in academia (particularly PhD students and ECR's). Most retweets are automated, though an increasing amount of activity is me @waterlego (Jonathan) (2/14)

The account searches for tweets containing certain academic hashtags and if it finds one, it shares it. After each search the app goes to sleep for approx 10 mins (no activity). When it wakes up it searches again. It does this non-stop (3/14)

After a sleep period the app will retweet the most recent tweet it finds, this means that inevitably some tweets tweeted during the sleep period will not be retweeted by us. If your tweet is missed, DM me a copy and (if appropriate) I'll share it! (4/14)

The app searches Twitter using a set of pre-defined keywords. It prioritizes direct tags (@AcademicChatter). See the search preference priority list below for further details of search order. If no tweets are found, nothing is shared and the app sleeps (5/14)

Most nights I login and manually share the tweets using the academic chatter hashtag, which the app missed that day. Again, I'm happy for anyone to DM with a copy of their tweet if it has been missed (be patient!) (6/14)

I originally created this account for myself as way to gather several academic hashtags into one place and keep up with ongoing conversations (7/14)

I also created it just for fun! I enjoy coding and wanted to code something using the Twitter API (using #Python and the #Tweepy Python library) (8/14)

The code that runs the app is very simple. It's only 113 lines and could easily be reduced (if I wasn't so lazy). The code is hosted on a server that runs day and night.

github.com/JonathanReardo… (9/14)

The benefit of automation is that the account is active when I am not here. This allows people from across the world to connect irrespective of time zones (10/14)

The downside is I can't always control what is being shared! I login daily to check that nothing inappropriate has slipped through and I also rely on community members to notify me (thank you for your help!) 🙏 (11/14)

I maintain a private "never share" list (in the code itself), and I add abusive/troll/exploitative accounts to this list when necessary. I'm quite strict with this list because I want this account to be as warm and welcoming as possible for *everyone* (12/14)

Maintaining this account is an ongoing process. Since opening the account I have slightly reduced the amount of daily tweets and started #twittertakeovers and the "Anonymous Question" in response to community feedback (13/14)

If you have any further comments/criticisms/questions, please do get in touch. I'm continually looking to improve and I welcome feedback from the community (14/14)