Should universities leave X?

As UK HE technology body exits Musk’s X, experts weigh up whether institutions could follow

Earlier this month, the UK’s higher education technology body, Jisc, posted on its X accounts that it would be stopping all activity on the site, citing the “direction in which X has been taken”, leaving its profiles as a digital graveyard. That might be seen as a potentially powerful signal to the sector, coming from its technology organisation.

It begs the question as to whether universities might follow in Jisc’s footsteps—and whether some researchers who have already taken the leap might apply pressure on their institutions to do so.

“It’s firstly a matter of principles… it’s become very clear it’s a toxic place to be," Santiago Sanchez-Pages, a professor of economics at King’s College London, told Research Professional News after leaving the site on 19 August.

There has been widespread criticism of X, formerly Twitter, in recent weeks after disinformation on the Southport attacks spread over the network was seen as playing a part in far-right riots in British cities.

And X owner Elon Musk has been accused of “stirring the pot” on the riots by engaging with a post about the violence by far-right activist and convicted criminal Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, and claiming in a separate post that “civil war” in the UK was “inevitable”.

Nathan Monk, co-founder of SMILE, a digital marketing agency for universities, said, “The change in ownership [to Musk] had a trickle-down effect. It’s not the online community it used to be.” 

While a “small number” of users began to leave after Musk bought the platform, numbers have “accelerated massively” following the UK riots, said Ross McCulloch, founder and director at Third Sector Lab, a digital agency for charities.

“The bigger impact recently is not the fact that he [Musk] owns it, but it’s the way he’s been acting,” McCulloch added.

Greener pastures for researchers?

The question around X was also “about asking what we’re getting out of X by staying there [as academics]”, Sanchez-Pages said. Like many others to exit X, he has opted to join BlueSky—a quiet (for now) alternative, alongside other options such as Mastodon and Threads.

“It’s also a question of whether your audience is even still on X,” said McCulloch.

“You might be a researcher in a specific field, for example, and you want to connect with other people bringing about change, but [many of] those people have left the platform,” he added.

Will universities leave?

At some point, Sanchez-Pages said, universities will have to consider whether they want to be on the platform.

“From the point of view of public image, it’s going to be detrimental… even if X favours verified users, which a lot of university accounts are, and obviously they have a large public image there.

“But having their open day announcements next to racist posts? I’m not sure that’s something universities will want,” he suggested.

Monk said universities are actually already starting to have such conversations. “We’ve already, I think, witnessed the scaling back of activity on the platform, so it’s probably a natural next step [for universities],” he added.

Whether universities will listen to academics, though, is another matter. Sanchez-Pages suggested they would be much more responsive to students.

“It students don’t like to see their universities [or prospective universities] in the mix of these problematic posts, it’s another reason they should consider it,” he said. 

A YouGov poll released on 9 August said 66 per cent of the UK public want social media sites held responsible for posts inciting criminal behaviour.

“I think that says a lot,” said McCulloch. The question for universities, he added, was, “Is your audience there? And, if you continue to be on a platform which could upset a big chunk of your audience, what is the trade-off?”

Reputation, Monk agreed, is on the line: “The big question is, do you want to be associated with that space more than anything else?”