Academia is commonly characterized as an "ivory tower"—an insular, elitist institution focused solely on the enlightenment of other academics and students. Such conceptions are not entirely misplaced. Knowledge held by academics is often only accessible to those who can afford the price of books, pay-walled journal articles, or increasingly rising tuition. Public scholarship has emerged as an effort to democratize knowledge production and dissemination [23 ]. It includes an array of activities involving the public, including participatory research [6], engagement with news media, use of social media [12], and even creative projects such as speculative fiction, documentaries, and stand-up comedy. Public scholarship is associated with a wide array of benefits for society, including making knowledge more accessible, expanding the reach and diversity of the audience (particularly when knowledge is shared in formats other than text [43]), and building trust.
Maintaining a virtual presence and making oneself discoverable in digital mediums go beyond the moral obligations of researchers for engaging in scientific communication; it is now part of a contemporary context and is considered "part of the academic job." In recent years, academic prestige has been intertwined in part with public visibility, particularly across news and social media. Academics frequently list media contributions and science communication efforts on their CVs, signaling the value of these activities within the academic labor market. Furthermore, universities now expect researchers to share their work beyond academic institutions; universities often encourage the use of platforms like X (formerly Twitter) to broaden research impact, as these platforms are associated with increased citations, funding and professional influence [13 , 36, 42 ]. Engaging in online scholarly networks also offers social benefits to scholars, such as networking with peers and discovering professional opportunities [33].
While public scholarship has long been gaining prominence, in the United States, mounting pressure from the federal government has heightened the need to raze walls between the public and higher education. It’s also increased the risks for individual researchers. The CSCW community is particularly well-suited to help navigate rapidly shifting political and technical landscapes. On a meta level, the community researches emerging technologies through which people learn [1 ], how to maintain and support equitable public knowledge communities [16, 32 ], and studies threats to public knowledge, from misinformation [ 40] to online harassment [5, 41 ] to AI slop [29 ]. CSCW researchers have also come under attack for their work on the very topics needed to understand and support public scholarship [ 40 ]. This workshop builds on a similar workshop held 5 years ago [17 ], updating it to account for evolving political and technical landscapes. Drawing from our own expertise on sociotechnical systems, this workshop aims to support CSCW scholars interested in unpacking the potential and practicalities of public scholarship.
Political attacks on scholars and higher education did not start in 2025. The House Un-American Activities Committee, which ran as an investigative arm of the House of Representatives from 1938-1975, frequently targeted prominent academics including Robert Oppenheimer and Linus Pauling for alleged subversive activities. Prior to 2025, states have attempted to ban scholarship on structural racism, politicians have attempted to undermine scientific consensus on issues related to the environment and public health, and misinformation researchers have been summoned before Congressional Committees for alleged collusion to censor conservatives (no evidence of such collusion exists) [10]. 2025 marked a continuation of these efforts. For example, grants related to topics studied by CSCW researchers, such as misinformation, and diversity, equity, and inclusion in tech and STEM education were de-funded by the Musk-led Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) [26]. New immigration policies target people working on online safety issues [21]. And communities CSCW members are part of and work with, including trans people [7] and immigrants [2] have come under attack by the federal government, placing their lives and liberty in jeopardy.
Amid this backdrop, technologies are rapidly advancing, yet remain largely opaque to the public. Take, for example Generative AI (GenAI). Research has uncovered a swath ethical issues with GenAI that remain unaddressed, from production to deployment to use, including environmental (un)sustainability [4, 9], intellectual property theft [24], traumatic work conditions [37], risks of violating privacy and undermining democracy [11], and adverse mental health impacts [8, 35, 45 ]. As experts on the sociotechnical impacts of technology, CSCW researchers—through public scholarship—are particularly well-suited help people understand the risks and benefits of opaque yet rapidly adopted technologies like GenAI.
In many sectors (e.g., pharmaceuticals, automotive, energy), the public is protected by laws and regulators tasked with studying systems, assessing risks and offering guidance and/or mandates aimed at protecting consumers. The United States famously lacks a federal commercial privacy law, antitrust laws designed for digital markets, and transparency mandates, let alone a regulator to generate information about the technology industry. In the absence of an expert agency, public scholarship—and CSCW researchers in particular–are essential for educating industry practitioners and policymakers at the local, federal and international levels. Congressional staff in particular face capacity challenges that limit their ability to source and digest the nuance of peer reviewed publications and instead rely on think tanks and white papers, often written by organizations that engage public scholars [25, 27]. Additionally, staff reach out directly to scholars with a strong media presence [28], highlighting the potential for public scholarship to have long-term systemic impacts.
The technology and platforms on which public scholarship is often conducted are also rapidly shifting. In the time between our first workshop on public scholarship, subtitled "Trials and Twitterations" [17], one of the primary platforms for public scholarship—Twitter—came under new ownership and was rebranded as X, leading to migrations away from X to other platforms like Mastodon, BlueSky and LinkedIn. By the time of this workshop, our punny title may also be moot [ 39]. Such rapid changes present a challenge for CSCW researchers who have built audiences on particular platforms, even as we also study platform migration [15, 31].
The are a number of challenges associated with public scholarship. For one, it’s not easy. Interviews with HCI researchers have identified a number of practical obstacles faced by public scholars, such as difficulty assessing the impact of their efforts, reaching the right audiences, properly contextualizing research, and needing to communicate across diverse media environments [42]. Additionally, despite its potential to build public trust and support evidence-based systemic protections, academic institutions create barriers to engaging in public scholarship that are rooted in the neoliberal, gendered, and racial hierarchies that underpin the norms and reward systems of academia [3]. Although academics may include public scholarship achievements on their CVs, it is rarely taken into consideration during hiring, tenure, and promotion, making it professionally riskier for early-career researchers.
Public scholarship may also lead to negative attention. A recent study on discourse around academic articles on Twitter (now X), found that offensive language was common in tweets about academic articles, particularly from the Humanities and Social Sciences [ 44 ]. Negative attention and other forms of heightened public visibility, such as providing commentary for news outlets, can lead to targeted harassment [18, 34]. These risks are particularly acute for groups underrepresented in higher education [14 ]. Empirical studies have highlighted the pernicious effects of such harassment; for instance, a survey of 182 scholars, primarily white women in the U.S., identified significant professional and economic consequences, including lost productivity and a diminished desire to collaborate [18]. As scholars find themselves more and more the target of intimidation and violence, they are in a conundrum that may hurt their careers if they withdraw from engaging on social media, particularly as those experiencing harassment report lacking support from university administration and colleagues [20]. However, HCI scholars also research ways to support public scholarship, such as the development of systems to reduce [ 19 ] and support [5 , 30] people who have experienced harassment, and building tools for researchers to develop video content from their research [38].
The broader geopolitical shifts occurring in the United States and the requirement for in-person participation means that it will not be safe for some groups to attend to attend the workshop. Chilling effects from recent U.S. policies, such as immigration policies targeting researchers who study topics related to online safety, are not only preventing some researchers from speaking about their work, but also from traveling to present it [22]. More concerning though, are policies that prevent travel because of identity—specifically, transgender individuals [7].
Restricting someone’s ability to travel is not merely an attack on an individual; it is an attack on the entire network of communities they could connect with, inspire, and strengthen. We all lose if our trans colleagues are unable to attend our workshop due to travel restrictions. As academics, we must consider how our events either enable or prevent participation, especially amid rapidly shifting geopolitical conditions that target certain bodies’ freedom of movement, speech and privacy.
We also acknowledge that the organizers—while not all United States citizens—are currently researchers at U.S. institutions, and that workshop is framed from a U.S.-perspective. We particularly welcome applicants with interest and expertise in public scholarship beyond the U.S. to apply. However, we acknowledge that travel to the U.S. may not be possible and that as a result, a limitation of the workshop may be U.S.-centricity
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