Michelle Stack – University of British Columbia, Canada
Keywords
mediatization, university rankings, media engagement, higher education
Abstract
Which academic identities are discredited and celebrated by media, and governments require nuanced analysis. Many academics around the world are under increasing threats to their security and freedom (Pils & Svensson, 2019); however, others are made media celebrities and used as an important form of capital by the universities for which they work. Through social network analysis and critical discourse analysis, I argue that top-ranked universities, media-generated university rankings and Nobel prize winners form a network of brands that reinforce an echo chamber that reinforces the illusion of meritocracy. Conversely, academics who challenge this echo chamber and offer alternatives to this network are often discredited. The second part of the presentation will be an analysis of two academics who have gained a large audience through social media and challenged dominant frames of who is a top knowledge producer and what is a world-class institution.Conceptual Framework Mediatization refers to the process by universities and other institutions come to rely on “on resources that media control and they will have to submit to some of the rules the media operate to gain access to other resources” (Hjarvard, 2008, p. 117). News requires a story to appear new, which is produced continually through university rankings that highlight famous universities and their famous inhabitants or visitors. University branding has become central in the context of education as a trade product in a highly competitive environment for students and funding. Within this dynamic, academics are increasingly instructed on how their webpages must look and how to embody their institutions brand. The celebrity academic that engages with brand is an asset whereas an academic that does not script themselves to brand can become a liability (Lingard & Rawolle, 2004). Visibility can mean more students, more donors, and a higher ranking. As Moran (1998) argues, the academic stardom comes to make sense if seen within the context of the entrepreneurial university, and professors are measured by the capital they bring to the business. Rankings and Nobels are relatively new players in an old echo chamber of predominately white men who were educated in the USA and UK (Stack, 2019). The network described in this presentation—the Big Three Rankings (the QS, ARWU, and THES), the Nobel Prizes, and top-ranked institutions—reinforces one another’s brands. Thirty percent of the ARWU Rankings are weighted based on the number of prize winners on faculty or alumni. Nobel Prize winners have received increasing attention with the growing mediatization of higher education, they are one of many media-based metrics that have conflated the worthiness of an institution with wealth and fame. The convergence of celebrity capital is evident in the accumulation of capital that can be transferred from one area to another—as in, for example the Koch brothers in the USA provide economic and cultural capital to a number of top-ranked universities on condition that they have influence in the hiring of professors with a free-market ideology (Levinthal, 2015). Media generated rankings, top-ranked institutions and Nobels are a product of inequitable systems and serve to amplify these inequities. Dominance in rankings occurs through networks of power that cross the boundaries of business, government, and academic fields. These same institutions – media and universities provide space – or perhaps cracks – to expand public conversations; however, doing so requires different strategies than those used by academics who fit with dominant understandings of how society is and would be.
Methodology: A social network analysis was conducted to ascertain relationship across and within top-ranked universities, Nobel adjudication committees and the advisory committees of what is often called the “Big Three” rankers (the ARWU, THES, and QS). A discourse analysis was conducted focusing on the twitter accounts of Eve Ewing and Sara Ahmed.
Findings: This study points to universities being highly engaged with media and increasingly operating on media logics. However, who engages with media and how they do so is central to whether they will be valorised or demonized by university leadership, governments and media. The analysis points to differing responses of media and academic leadership to academics that maintain narratives of meritocracy and justice and compares and contrasts these with two academics who speak openly about colonialism, occupation, white supremacy and patriarchy. Despite the threats, there are academics who have expanded conversations through media engagement and critiquing inequity. The presentation will conclude by examining what we can learn from discursive strategies used by Ahmed and Ewing to facilitate broad-based conversations aimed at living together in more social, environmentally, cognitively just ways.
Bibliography
Stack, M. (2019). Academic stars and university rankings in higher educational: Impacts on policy and practice. Policy Reviews in Higher Education, 1-21. doi:10.1080/23322969.2019.1667859
Stack, M. (2016). Global University Rankings and the Mediatization of Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137475954
Stack, M., (2018, October 5). Why I’m not surprised Nobel Laureate Donna Strickland isn’t a full professor. The Canadian Press; Toronto. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/canadiannews/docview/2116777146/citation/12A46231EA674316PQ/32