DThe relevance of X/Twitter is nothing like what it used to be, and hasn’t been for a while. Photo Shutterstock The @WUR account on X (formerly Twitter) has been silent since last Monday. The WUR social media team has decided to stop using the platform for a trial period of three weeks.
Once upon a time, Twitter was the place to be for the worldwide exchange of knowledge and insights among academics. But more and more scientists and academic institutions are abandoning the platform due to the poor moderation and increasingly hostile atmosphere. As a result, Twitter (aka X, the name it got after Elon Musk bought the company) is no longer nearly as relevant as it used to be.
X is getting more and more toxic.
Jan Willem Bol, WUR spokesperson
The reduced relevance of X is the main reason why WUR has decided on this trial stop, says spokesperson Jan Willem Bol. ‘Of all the social media WUR uses, X is the channel where we post the most messages. At the same time, it has become the channel with the poorest reach and the least interaction. So cost-benefit ratio is getting out of proportion.’ The change in the culture in which discussions take place was also a factor, he admits. ‘X is becoming increasingly toxic. It is no longer really possible to have a normal, reasonable conversation.’
WUR is not the only university reassessing its use of X. Some have stopped using X altogether, including Utrecht University, VU University Amsterdam and the University of Twente. Others use it for specific purposes only. Radboud University, for example, only uses it now to share job vacancies. @WUR hasn’t explicitly told its 47,000 plus followers it is stopping temporarily (for now).
Silent
Bol expects WUR will be able to take a final decision on X within a month. ‘Staying silent for three weeks or so should be enough to show what happens — or doesn’t happen — once WUR stops tweeting. That should also make clear whether we could be missing information or interactions that are important for our day-to-day work. A trial stop of this length is also what professor of Digital Media & Society Sanne Kruikemeier recommended when we consulted her about this.’
The trial stop only applies to the corporate @WUR account. The owners of other Wageningen X accounts, including @ResourceWUR, can decide for themselves whether their account is worth continuing, and for how long. Some groups have already abandoned X, such as the Animal Sciences Group, or stopped actively tweeting some time ago. The situation is similar for individual WUR scientists. For example, Jeroen Candel, who previously used Twitter a lot to engage in the public debate, deliberately closed his X account to focus on LinkedIn instead. President of the Executive Board Sjoukje Heimovaara is active on both platforms.
