13. Leadership and Social Media: Challenges and Opportunities

Lanclos and Phipps approach the issue of leadership from a different perspective. They have both organised several iterations of Jisc’s Digital Leadership course, which brings together leaders in HE to discuss how the digital impacts on their own personal practice and how they can make effective use of social media. They discuss the usefulness and limitations of visual mapping frameworks such as the Visitors/Residents continuum, as well as summarising their own mapping of digital engagement. Like others in this book they note that engagement in social media is beneficial but it can also mirror and even amplify societal issues of racism, sexism, bullying and other issues related to the abuse of power.