Academic staff and students are more likely than ever to encounter each other on social media. There are a number of reasons for this:

- Through use of platforms in teaching
- Stumbling across staff on social media through shared connections

- Following profiles listed on website and email signatures
- Through following staff at other institutions
- Universities encouraging students to follow staff on social media

This is hugely significant for the network structure of university life. However it’s rarely recognised

This leaves students seeing academics complaint about workload, talking about their lives outside of work, reflecting on their students and taking positions about current issues.

On balance this feels like an immensely positive thing to me.

However it’s unlikely university management will feel the same way. The ad hoc ways in which this has been addressed thus far might give way to something darker and more intrusive in future. This will be a battleground for academic freedom in the 2020s.