Hello everyone. I’m Dr Angela Puca and welcome to my Symposium. I’m here at the Open University for the Conference of the British Association for the Study of Religions and I am about to deliver a paper on delivering academic scholarship on YouTube, TikTok and social media, which is quite meta considering that I’m also filming and uploading this talk on YouTube. But anyway the theme of the Conference of the British Association for the Study of Religions this year is Religious Studies and Public Engagement. So I thought, you know, being a scholar on YouTube and on social media, I would just give a paper on that. And maybe you guys are also interested in knowing more about my methodology and what goes on behind the camera.

So hope you enjoy it. Before we crack on with my conference paper I’d like to remind you that this project of delivering free academic scholarship on YouTube and social media is only possible thanks to your support so if you have the means and can help at all I would really appreciate it if you consider supporting my work with the one-off PayPal donation by joining Memberships or my Inner Symposium on Patreon where you will find an amazing, engaged community. We have a book club, lectures and lots of other perks depending on your chosen tier. And also you can Super Thank me to show your support here on YouTube. Hope you enjoyed the talk and stay tuned for all the academic fun.

Hello everyone. Well, I’m Dr Angela Puca and as Suzanne said I will be talking about delivering academic knowledge on social media. So my two main platforms are YouTube and TikTok although I’m present also on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter, and as you may tell, in the past two or three years because I started my YouTube channel first, three years ago and my TikTok a year and a half ago and I have gathered a decent following in these two, three years. My project, I decided to call my project Angela Symposium because my idea was to really bridge the gap between academia and the community of practitioners since my speciality, in terms of you know, my academic research is focused on Witchcraft, Shamanism, and Paganism.

I had a sense that even the community of practitioners, aside from other scholars or PhD students or even Master’s students and Bachelor’s students, might be interested in knowing more about the fact that there is academic scholarship, and academic research being made on these kinds of topics. And I think I was correct in thinking so because I, especially at first, got so many comments from people just being totally amazed by the fact that there is academic interest in such topics. I think that sometimes the public can have the perception that certain subjects are more interesting for scholars as opposed to other subjects. And so that was one of the first things that I really want to… that the first misconception and so to speak, that I really wanted to break with my work. And I called it a Symposium because I was hoping for it not to be really about me and my research only but about other scholars as well. So, usually, what I do is put together a video that is kind of a paper, it’s a video paper where I do research on peer-reviewed material and then I present it to the public. And I will say a bit more about my methodology shortly. And yeah I also interview academics on my YouTube channel and I talk about new books on my YouTube channel and of course, the theme is always Witchcraft, Shamanism, and Paganism because those are my research interests, even as an academic. And I started the project, as I said, on YouTube three years ago and on TikTok a year and a half ago, more or less.

And as for my methodology and I’m using some of the emojis and symbols that I use also use on my project, whether on my YouTube or my other platforms. So my methodology is based on peer-reviewed literature. So there are other academics on YouTube, for instance, that decide to even analyse primary sources and offer them to the public and that is fine. In my case, my methodology is mainly based on peer-reviewed literature. So what I do, as I said, is I do a similar kind of research that you would do for an article for a peer-reviewed article with the exception that I’m not presenting my own thesis because otherwise, you would need to go through peer review so that it would be academic. So I try to apply the same academic methodology as I have learned it from my, you know, early career as a PhD now and I try to apply it to YouTube. And another thing that I do in my videos is that I always put the references with the, you know, the article or the book and the page so that people who are interested in the topic, even if they are, for instance, PhD students or even undergraduates they can go and check the reference and then and then use it for a paper or for something that they are studying.

So I guess that my intent was both to give, to offer other scholars or other students the possibility to have easy access to a format that is easy to access, comprehensible and not comprehensive and not exhaustive, of course, because something I always say is that it should be an appetizer and I always hope that my viewers go on and check the references and then do their own research. But also I offer this kind of knowledge to people that are practitioners because, in the world of those who practice or are interested from either theoretical or a practical or both points of view, in Witchcraft and magick-practising traditions, they seem to be quite interested also in knowing what the scholarship says about it. And unfortunately, academia and academic scholarship are still a bit inaccessible for those that are not from the field. People really, outside of academia really struggle even to understand how to access that kind of material. For us, perhaps, it’s a bit easier because we are within the field and we know exactly what to look for. But people that are outside of our world the so-called ivory tower really struggle, you know, for good reasons to access that kind of information and so I thought it was a worthwhile effort to try and offer that to the public. Also obviously, even though I try to stick to an academic methodology you need to go through a kind of adaptation so that it can be, you know, to adapt to, for instance, YouTube or TikTok or Instagram. I think that I still consider perhaps YouTube my main platform because it allows for longer format videos and allows the references and everything that I want to add and I find that it is better suited for the kind of project that I want. But I’m also trying to experiment with TikTok so that I can reach out to a wider audience and perhaps even a younger audience.

So you need to be adaptive in my case I needed to be adaptive to short and different formats without losing accuracy. And obviously, the different kinds of formats will offer different degrees of
content that you are able to deliver. But yeah there is an adaptation that needs to go there so that you can actually be entertaining and engaging. Performance is also one aspect that
needs to be curated when you deliver scholarship on social media because the expectation is very different from what you may have in a, you know, conference or in a classroom. The expectation is in terms of entertainment, in terms of performance is much higher people – get bored quite easily and click out of the video and will not watch it up until the end and then the algorithm will punish you for it. So performance is also an aspect that is important. So I try to deliver peer-reviewed content but also to make it entertaining and it doesn’t take much effort in a way because I think that I tend to be quite colourful in terms of my own personality. But yeah, I say that that is something that needs to be taken into account when delivering content on social media to the wider public and not just to academics or to other scholars or university students.

Also, I try to leave my audience with a takeaway. So something that they can take away from the video, providing the content and the means to expand further. So as I said I usually put the references in the info box to my YouTube videos, for instance, so that people can reach out to the source of the content and what I always say is that they shouldn’t really trust me as a person or indeed a scholar but go and check the sources, check the references. Because the whole point is to be able to distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources and also what classifies as an academic source as opposed to a non-academic source.

Also, another aspect that I really appreciate about being on social media is the community and as I wrote here on my slide, it starts with the content and continues with the community. And I think that one of the things that I really learned from my experience being an academic on social media is that it’s not really just about the content and even the content in a way enhances when it is shared by a community. Because people have different ideas, they contribute in different ways, maybe they highlight flaws in specific research or something that needs to be studied further. And even the discussions that happen, I think that they enhance the significance, the impact and the worth of the content so much more. And there are different forms of communities that I noticed were created as a result of my project. For instance, the community of the followers, so those that follow me on different platforms, start communicating among themselves and they start to have a discussion, a debate about every video that I upload or the content that I post.

Then you have the community of the followers plus the creator. So when they interact with me and the kind of discussions that emerge. The community of the Patrons because I’m also on Patreon, which I find quite fascinating because it feels like we went kind of, back to the Renaissance and the time when you would have private Patrons to support intellectuals, artists and so on. So I do have a community of Patrons that support my work on a monthly basis and I’m really proud of that community because every time that… we also have monthly lectures, for instance, on primary sources and we try to analyse, for instance, even primary sources on Magick, Witchcraft, and so on with an academic perspective. And we try to look at those materials both as a practitioner would and as an academic would and that allows us to see the difference between the kind of outlooks that you can have on the same text. And I’m really proud of this community, particularly on Patreon because it’s full of very academically inclined people and they are always so engaged when we have conversations. And I always wish my students were engaged all the time, you know because they are really invested and that’s fulfilling when you have a community like that. So I think maybe the community is one, if not the most rewarding aspect of that.

And also I forgot to add here the community of other creators. Because there are other religious studies scholars that are, for instance, on YouTube and we started to do collaborations and do things together. And so there’s also that other community that gets created. We exchange ideas, how do you do things? What kind of methodology do you use? And then we talk about academia as well and how being on social media is affecting or has affected our perception of academia, our positioning in academia and all these kind of things. So I think the communities that the project has created, I find them to be extremely valuable. And yeah because we’re learning from each other, we learn from each other as well as learning from the educational materials, it’s not just about the educational material. It kind of starts with that but then it expands much further than the educational material.

So I think that it is important to deliver scholarship. I’m not saying that every academic should do that, of course, because everybody does whatever they want and I think that there are many ways of contributing as an academic but as an academic, as a public academic or however you want to call it, public scholar. I think that what I find valuable in doing that is that there is a significant research outreach so for instance, you have the ability to reach a wider audience as opposed to… I think it’s also important to reach the audience of academics at conferences and so on but thanks to social media you’re able to reach further than that. And for instance, one of the things that I find very inspiring is that sometimes I get emails from young people that decided to go on and do a PhD on, you know, those kinds of subjects because they watch one of my videos and in some cases, they didn’t even know like it was my case – when I was in Italy I had no idea that contemporary Witchcraft practices were studied from an academic point of view.

So, in a way, in my case, I discovered that it was possible thanks to a YouTube video. And it was Dr Jenny Butler who was delivering a talk on her PhD research on Paganism in Ireland and there was kind of an epiphany moment because I realized that it was possible to study these things from an academic point of view. So not in all countries and even within countries that have these kinds of religious studies, these kinds of topics are studied in Religious Studies. You may still have people that really don’t know, they have had no exposure whatsoever to this kind of study from an academic point of view. So having that kind of outreach via social media is really important. Just to even let people know these things are studied by academics and that benefits both the community of people that get access to our information and the academics themselves because you know, we start to become known, you know, not just me but for instance, even the authors of the books that I cite or the articles that I base my videos on and I think that kind of information even the more academic content start to circulate more. And so I think that it allows for a wider outreach.

Also, it makes academic knowledge more digestible. Some people have told me in the comments and so on that, I make academic material, that would otherwise be difficult to understand, more digestible and in a way, I translate them for the public. And I think that’s also important, of course, it shouldn’t end there because you may incur the risk of oversimplifying something that is complex and complicated and I do my best not to do that. But obviously, what I say is that I always say to my audience as well, is that it is important to then go on and check the sources and read the material because it’s important and it’s, in a way, a gateway to the material to have a short digestible format that is easy to understand but at the same time it’s equally essential to realise that things are complex and academic research is complex for a reason, it’s not just complex for the sake of complexity. It is complex because the things that we study have a lot of nuance to them and that’s one of the, I think, the strengths of academia that we, you know, go really in-depth into every single topic and when people ask questions that they would want a yes or no answer to we usually say “it depends” and then we go on for hours and hours. And that’s very really frustrating, perhaps, for non-academics but yeah it’s kind of how it works, perhaps in our field, trying to dive deeper and to understand all the nuances and not just stop at the yes and no.

Also making scholarship entertaining, in a way. So it’s not like academia has to be boring we can be engaging and entertaining and that can also draw people in. You know, sometimes it can be a gateway, you have something that is easy to digest, it’s entertaining, you say, oh that’s quite interesting and then you got into the book and you got into the academic material and you start to get into it because you already have that kind of gateway. It’s like people that start to read a book because they have seen a movie or a TV show that inspired them to. So I think it can also be a gateway in that way, in that sense, being entertaining and then drawing people into the actual research and yeah.

Also, having a wider impact on lay people, people that are outside of academia whether they are practitioners or whether they are just interested and there are people that will only be interested in having a superficial or just a bit of knowledge on the topic, then they don’t want to be academics and that’s fine as well. At least you expose them to information that is based on research instead of, you know, opinions or anecdotal information.

So how can religious studies benefit from social media education, from a presence on social media? I think that it would benefit us because it allows us to learn how to tailor the content to a different audience. I think that sometimes when we write articles or when we are at conferences we tend to, you know, gauge the content and write having in mind the, as a public, as an audience, other academics. So we think about the reviewers that are going to pick up and pick apart and shred to pieces our article. But we don’t think, for instance, that our audience could be, you know, the lay people, the wider public. And that makes sense because obviously if you’re publishing, depending on where you’re publishing, your audience will be different. But when you also try and deliver that kind of academic knowledge on social media then you learn to tailor to a different audience and that gives you more flexibility as a speaker. So I’m not saying that we shouldn’t tailor to other academics when we write peer-reviewed research but having that perspective when we write articles and the perspective of tailoring to a wider audience when, for instance, we are on social media and the perspective and yeah and to deliver, for instance, to a classroom of undergraduate students, all these ways of delivering knowledge and tailoring it to a different kind of public, I think that it makes us more nuanced academics, more nuanced scholars because we’re able to, sort of, communicate in different ways. And yeah, I think that’s important anyway, maybe it also makes me understand my research a bit better because when you have to explain it, you know, to your grandma and to your student and to other academics and to a wider public, you have these all these different ways of communicating. And that I think enriches also your understanding and your skills as a communicator.

Also to adapt to different media and content delivery. And I think this kind of links to the first point, I think that tailoring the content to different audiences and to different content and to different kinds of media, are all things that can improve religious studies scholars in their communication skills and also the way we present our research and we offer it to different kinds of audience.

Also, I think that it can benefit Religious Studies because it makes research more accessible to non-academics and a lot of people tend to, even on my channel when they leave comments, complain about the fact that you know, the ivory tower and how inaccessible papers are. And I think in that sense, maybe, we can be a bit more open in terms of making research more available to the public and that’s perhaps a little bit our responsibility. Not every single one of us but I think that having a presence on the internet and social media really helps to achieve that kind of goal.

Also to enter into a conversation with the lay audience and practitioners. So it’s not just a matter of making it accessible to people outside of the academic world and outside of the ivory tower but also entering into a conversation with them because they may have perspectives that we haven’t thought about. Because I think that as academics we also are trained in a certain way to look at a specific religious phenomenon in a certain way and not in others. And other people whether they are practitioners or whether they are just viewers or people interested in religions in their life – they can really provide a different perspective and different points that also, that even as an academic, you can, of course, you would, utilise it according to the academic methodology but it still offers you a different perspective that sheds the light on something that perhaps you had never thought about, or you had never thought about it in that specific way or with that, through that perspective, through that lens. So I think that also entering into a conversation not just with other academics and with students but also with the wider audience can also benefit our research because of that and in my case for instance it gave me lots of ideas for my academic research.

So I really, really believe that because that’s my experience, of course, and that’s what I’m offering to you today. And speaking of that, for instance, I talked about my community of Patrons and I want to acknowledge the help of Andrew and Dave. two Patrons of mine that, kind of gave, me lots of ideas for this talk and even we talked about the survey that I was about to conduct for this paper. And I just find that you know, having a community and people that are genuinely interested in, not only your work but in that kind, I wouldn’t call it mission but that was the word that was coming to my… that kind of project and idea of making academia more accessible to the public. It really, really fuels your passion and fuels your work and your research and the kind of work that you conduct for a project like this.

So yeah, speaking of the survey, I conducted a survey. I just kept it open for two or three days and I collected about 60 responses. Yeah, and it was called Religious Studies on Social Media and I didn’t have many questions; just, do you find it helpful to find academic content on social media? And 100% of respondents said yes. So that was interesting. And then what’s the best thing/aspect about scholarship on social media, Instagram? I just put a few responses here, the ones that I thought were particularly representative because some responses would just repeat themselves, especially in terms of the themes that were mentioned and I will also mention the recurring themes that came up as a result of the survey. So for instance these respondents say academia is often very inaccessible and as someone who would prefer academic and peer-reviewed information on topics, especially obscure topics, academics having a social media presence creates an easy connection, easy to find, easy to come back to, that I can utilize over and over and share with others. It’s also much more comprehensible than trying to muddle my way through an academic paper where I might be missing another context. And also yeah, this is another element that was highlighted by quite a few respondents the idea of the algorithm and the fact that when you are on social media you are, in a way, dependent on the algorithm and so that, in a way, will affect the way you deliver content and perhaps, the kind of content you may create. Well, it can or cannot because I take the algorithm into consideration but I don’t allow it to dictate what I do with my channel.

But, for instance, one of the things that the algorithm on my social media does is that the more people watch your video up until the end, the more it gets recommended to new viewers. So in that sense, I think it just prompts you to make it more entertaining and more engaging. And perhaps to choose a way of delivering the information that, you know, keeps people’s attention up until the end. So I don’t think that that is necessarily a downside unless you as a creator or as a public scholar become too fixated on having the algorithm, sort of, bless your content and spread it around.

Then also, how can academia improve the outreach of research outputs via the Internet? So subscription-only databases for peer-reviewed work are a major hurdle. I don’t know how much scholars can do about the infrastructure. Yeah, this is a complaint about the fact that academic scholarship is hard to reach and also says putting one-on-one content. And also a few respondents talked about having departments that have their own YouTube platforms or social media presence so that they can deliver content in that way. And I think that some departments do that which is a good thing.

So the common themes that I found that emerged from the survey and also from other conversations and comments and so the source of these data is actually wider than just a survey, is the matter of accessibility and how important it is to people, for people to have more, to have easier access to academic content. The algorithm was often mentioned as a downside of being a public scholar because you may be influenced by the algorithm too much and care too much about, you know, getting more followers as opposed to delivering educational content. The social media dynamics can also be a downside because you have many different dynamics. There are also parasocial relationships that get created when you are a creator online, especially when you get a medium to large following. The ads, a lot of people complained about the ads on videos and other social media. Also the importance of academic rigour and academic credentials for public scholars. I think that was often mentioned as well as something that was important to viewers. The need for more academics delivering content. So a lot of respondents also talked about the fact that they would really like to see more academics doing this kind of thing and also the institutional funding and support for this kind of public outreach of research, which I would agree on.

So, yeah, this is everything that I wanted to say thank you so much for your attention and I look forward to your questions.

First uploaded 3 Sept 2022