Power to the People: Measuring Social Media and Mass Media Impact for Promotion and Tenure in Social and Applied Sciences

Promotion and tenure (P&T) is the process by which academic faculty are evaluated on the trajectory and impact of their scholarly career. Faculty are typically assessed on their grants, publications, teaching, and service. Ethnically minoritized faculty face disparities in P&T, perhaps due to the lack of standards for quantifying their efforts in the community and scholarship that is relevant to issues of social justice and public concern. Efforts in social and mass media to translate research findings and to disseminate evidence-based prevention and intervention efforts, however, are not often considered in P&T despite their direct impact on the community and contribution to the field. This paper discusses how the academy can quantify and qualify the impact of social media and mass media work in existing P&T considerations, particularly for departments with faculty in social and applied sciences. We discuss how social media and mass media work can be evaluated within existing P&T review criteria, and we provide suggestions for committees to quantify the impact of online and media efforts. Last, we conclude with suggestions for departments, colleges, academic medical centers, and universities in higher education to support early career faculty who are engaging in this extremely important, often under-rewarded work.