"We thought to share with you the good news about the good traction the 'The impact of social media disclosures on veteran hiring' story is getting through UM Today. The story was published earlier this week and has a readership of 3,750,474 so far."
My career has been spent listening to faculty comment that their research didn't matter.
I disagree. My research informs how I teach, how I learn, & the choices that I make.
Yet, I understand the ennui expressed by many academics. Many published papers receive few citations & many do not seem to touch the world directly.
Once in a while, one of our papers takes off & the world pays attention - which makes those papers with fewer citations & oblique connections to the world important - because they have reach across disciplines, topics, time, & space.
This happened to me this week.
This study directs attention to how posting about PTSD on social media affects the job opportunity of veterans, summarized here: https://lnkd.in/geAtn3ZN
For several years, I've told my friends that Wenxi (Vincent) Pu work might be the project with the broadest societal impact of my career.
It's important because it changes how we think about how social media impacts its users' lives & underscores the peril associated with participating in online forums for people who often have difficulty securing work.
It matters bc the world cares about it, as the 3.75 million views suggest.
While proud of our work, I'm equally proud of our team & its foundation.
Our team includes scholars from I/O psychology, Human Resources, & Information Systems - all of different ranks, from a grad student at its inception to endowed chairs. Our collaboration represents a multi-year effort of people who truly believe academic work can change the world.
We built the paper from the ground up - sparked by a phenomenon - veterans posting about #PTSD in response to the 4th of July Fireworks - to build a model explaining that phenomenon & verify that it had real-world implications.
Our team drew on our #interdisciplinary foundations to tap into fundamental, sometimes not well-cited work, in #psychology, #selection, #informationsystems, & #researchmethods to inform studies.
Our approach to the phenomenon, application of theory, & use of multiple methods could not have happened if hundreds of scholars across four disciplines (never forget the methods folks) had not contributed to a shared foundation for understanding the world.
So for once, this post has no prescriptive comments on how to design a study, live your academic life, or navigate the perils of the job market.
Just a simple reminder.
No matter where it is published. No matter the journey to get published. No matter the themes that we study.
Each paper contributes to changing the next study, that could change the world.
Have a great weekend! And know that your research changes the world!
please note: the first version of this post included an image that said "all academic research matters." It was nicely pointed out that this could be interpreted as a spin on "black lives matters" - which was not my intention at all. My point in this post is that everyone's work contributes to a greater understanding of important problems.
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