“Academia is down at the moment; please try later” (Lisa Blackman)

This paper will consider how digital communication, social media, and the digital transformation of the publishing industry are transforming academic work practices. In light of increasing “impact” agendas, and pressures on academics to increase the reach, traction and appropriation of their published work using social media, the paper will consider the tensions, contradictions, attachments, hidden and not so hidden injuries that this is creating. This context, and the production of new forms of affective relationality, will be located within the rise of PPPR (post-publication-peer-review) where the published journal article no longer exists as a static un-modifiable entity. The paper will debate these issues, taking an affective and hauntological approach, by exploring two recent science controversies, which took shape across social media and within digital forms of communication (blogs, twitter, facebook, comments on websites etc). The paper will draw on empirical material taken from my forthcoming book, “Haunted Data: Social Media, Affect, Weird Science and Archives of the Future.