Psychology and Academic Web Publishing

One of my colleagues sent me a text message this morning that said, “I was surprised the J-school (Journalism) didn’t have something on their homepage about Lady Bird Johnson this morning. Isn’t that why we have a content management system, so people can make changes like that?”The question caught me off guard; it almost felt accusatory, like I or my team had not properly empowered our users to truly own their own website. But once I gathered my thoughts I replied, “Yes, we have a CMS so that content contributors can update their websites without intervention from our team. However, this isn’t a technology problem. This is a psychological problem.”

Where I work, the web is usually an afterthought, and worse, it is generally considered merely a way to disseminate information about the college: course descriptions, graduation requirements, etc. The college has not yet begun to consider the web as a medium for interacting with the world at large. While content contributors have the ability write and publish thoughtful commentary on public issues that concern the college (such as the death of one of its graduates) they often lack the cognizance. It simply doesn’t occur to them to use the web as a method of general communication.

Changing How We Think

Ultimately, this is an epistemological problem. In academia, things change at a glacial pace. At my university, incorporation of the web into marketing, education, and publication is slow going. People simply haven’t absorbed web technology and the cultural changes that result from the technology into their various job roles or the ways they think about what they do. Few people feel that is truly their job to push the boundaries of what the website can do or be. Their understanding of their job, whatever it may be, simply doesn’t extent to incorporating web technologies.

The challenge that academia faces is psychological and epistemological. We have to teach our content experts, those people who are intimately involved in the goings-on of the college and who can gauge the college’s temperament, to keep the web at the forefront of their minds. In this day and age it isn’t enough for a prominent institution to use the web merely as a way to promote a single viewpoint or a single agenda. Educational institutions should be responding to significant events, even if it is only to acknowledge a death of a first lady alumna with a few desultory sentences. But the “institution” is ultimately comprised of people, people who need to be remolded, to be rewired to think in digital terms.

Psychological Empowerment

Moreover, they need to be empowered to contribute. We have already provided users with a way to create, upload and go-live content. Technologically they are already empowered. But psychologically most of our users are not prepared. They’re afraid of making mistakes. They don’t know if they have permission. They don’t want to be responsible for sending out an off-brand message. All of these concerns are understandable, but I’d rather see my users make these mistakes than do nothing at all. One of the brilliant things about web publishing is that it is (compared to print) immediate and cheap; if I find that I’ve made a typo after I have published something, I have the opportunity to fix my error with relative ease. The only way users are going to overcome their various fears is to get their hands dirty and get involved in web publishing. To some extent, they also have to get more involved in web culture: read a few blogs, a few forums, comment a few times and understand how the new technology works. Web 2.0, I tell my users, is all about involvement. It’s about discussion. It’s about user contribution—and yes, you might make mistakes. Yes, you might get egg on your chin. Yes, you might walk away from a post or a discussion with your tail between your legs. But think about the contributions your voice have made to the creation and delivery of free information! Think of what you’ve learned and what you’ve taught others. Contribution, even when faulty, is meaningful and important. It’s progress.

I hope that our users will be able to overcome their psychological obstacles soon and start developing a more robust, more compelling web presence. But it’s also my job to help them get there, to gently remind them of the importance of the new technology, and to encourage them to speak their minds and publish content items they might never have published before. “Other schools don’t do this” isn’t an excuse. I want my users to get innovative, to feel empowered to create and contribute to the culture of free information. We have the technology—now we need the psychology.