On boosting - a thread. With thanks to @kjmcinnis1 for promoting and @MaggieCaroline1 for raising some of these points in conversation. (1/19)

First point - every time we cite someone else, we boost them. Every time we don’t, we are choosing not to boost them. (2/19)

There are amazing entities out there like @fpinterrupted @WIIS_Global @wfpg @womenalsoknow etc who advocate for and support emerging scholarship and work. (3/19)

The question is what responsibility do the rest of us have, particularly those with access to resources like publication relationships or classes we teach? (4/19)

We’ve discussed this WRT the #manel phenomenon but I think we haven’t really discussed citations and syllabus design as much. (5/19)

Why do they matter? Citation counts drive everything from tenure proposals to search results. Who you link or cite “boosts” their visibility by accessing your audience. (6/19)

Syllabi are the entry point for students - esp. undergrads - to consider a topic. By picking specific voices you are privileging some perspectives over others. (7/19)

What I’d propose is a model where we think about being more explicit about our boosting preferences. What communities we seek to support and why. (8/19)

Let me give an example from #GOVT264 - I seek to promote policy relevant readable work, work from @GUGovt and @georgetownsfs colleagues, and work from women and underrepresented communities. (9/19)

Being explicit about this lets me look at my syllabus every time I revise (which I do at least every semester) and wonder whether I’m taking these factors into account. (10/19)

Do I bias my selections toward certain sources? Yes. @ForeignAffairs and @TXNatSecReview get a lot more love from me than formal model heavy journals or Continentally-informed theory works. (11/19)

I teach US foreign policy and it’s an overview with a lot of reading every class. And it’s a class designed to show people how to succeed so knowing establishment sources is important. (12/19)

I’m not teaching a seminar on emancipatory politics. That would be awesome but it’s not my gig. (13/19)

But if I see a work in one of those journals - or something adjacent - by a @GUGovt/ @georgetownsfs person or by a woman/underrepresented community, I *should,* based on my heuristic, weight it in syllabus design. (14/19)

That keeps me honest. That’s valuable. What would happen if we were all a little more explicit about this? Maybe when we’re writing or designing, we’d take a moment to ask, are there voices I could boost here, based on my framework? If so, how should I? (15/19)

Because we already do this, subconsciously. Every syllabus is a tacit political statement. So is every article, because we legitimize by flagging those with whom we engage. (16/19)

Great example of this is the interplay between Ann Tickner and Bob Keohane discussed in the most recent episode of @whiskeyIRT https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whiskey-international-relations-theory/id1497916380?i=1000508491913 (17/19)

Consider this a call for reflection. The more we make our assumptions and preferences explicit, the more we can be open to whether they’re the right ones... or not. (18/19)

Otherwise we’re just perpetuating the old boys network by unconsciously reinforcing existing power relations. Is that what we want? (19/19 fin)