From Academia to Social Media

John Hain "Masks, Persona, Duality" July 2015
via pixabay. Public domain dedication 

This blog post is about an author from one of the articles in the Journal of Consumer Research, December 2015 edition. The article this author co-wrote was "On the Psychology of Scarcity: When Reminders of Resource Scarcity Promote Selfish (and Generous) Behavior."

1. What is the name of the author (from the academic journal) that you selected and which social media networks were you able to find her/him on?

The name of the author I selected is Kelly Goldsmith. To be honest, I picked her because she has the same name as me so I'm a little bias. However, getting back on track, I was able to find her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

2. How would you describe the author's social media presence? What kinds of things are they talking about or sharing on social media? Write a brief description of what you learned about them through the listed social media feeds.

I would describe her social media presence as professional. Obviously her LinkedIn is professional because that is a professional site, however her Twitter also has a professional tone because she mainly tweets about research, articles, and things relating to her profession, it seems. I also learned that she is a professor of marketing at Northwestern University (one of the professors I interviewed used to work there as well in the marketing department).

3. Now return to the piece that this author published in the academic journal (from Blog Posts 6.5 & 6.6). How does their persona on social media differ from their persona in the pages of the academic journal?

It is hard to determine how her persona is different between social media and the article because the article was co-written. Therefore it is hard to pick out what part of the writing is hers, rather than the people she wrote it with. However, the article also had a professional tone so I'm going to say that her social media and academic personas are fairly similar.