Social media for researchers

What should you get out of this presentation?
Answers or at least ideas for questions as:
- Why have a communication strategy as a researcher of research group?
- What tools should we use to fulfill this strategy? Are social media an option?
- How should we go about communicating and actually using these tools? When
should we communicate about our research? Who should do the communicating?
Another outcome might be that you feel envigourated and ready to shift your
communication into a higher gear!
Now, doing this for a group of communication scientists is rather scary. And you can
interprete this in two ways.
On the one hand you should be the people telling me what to do – there’s a slight
imposter syndrome sneaking up on me.
On the other hand you should be the people telling me what to do – so why aren’t you?
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Let’s start with context.
There seems to be a new punch line in academia: Publish or Perish has become
Be Visible or Vanish.
From funding to citations to digital footprint and media exposure: research
seems to be about getting noticed and making an impact. And this is more than
having a high H-index – which is an indicator for scholarly impact based on
publications and citations.
But science is of course so much more than this. It pays to consider who are the
real stakeholders of science and how this affects the way you work. Something
we call ‘societal value creation of research’.
So the question is: do you work with your door close or open?
If you are serious about being a researcher in today’s context of science for
society, online academic tools and high impact and visibility, it might be
interesting to pay attention to this talk and get a few pointers on how to
approach this in a strategic way.
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A good way to help you along in this environment of high visibility is investing in
networking – offline and online.
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Goodier and Czerniewicz adapted the functional building blocks of social media
(‘Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of
social media’ by Jan H. Kietzmann, Kristopher Hermkens , Ian P. McCarthy , Bruno
S. Silvestre in Business Horizons, Volume 54, Issue 3, May–June 2011, Pages 241–
251) and applied them to what is called ‘the networked scholar’.
Central to your attitude as a networked scholar is your identity, and in this case
we focus on your online identity - defined as ‘the extent to which others can
identify you online as a scholar’. This is why it is critical to become aware of your
online presence and to shape and maintain this presence.”
And this makes sense when you consider that 7 out of 10 people use online
search tools when they look for information on other people.
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Does this mean that only online communication counts or that you should just
throw everything online?
Of course not!
It means approaching your online identity – whether as an individual or as a
group – strategically.
Have a care about both:
- digital footprint is your active contribution to and interaction with the online
world
- digital shadow is content about you posted and uploaded by others, as well as
automatically generated and collated content
Especially this last one is difficult to control. The best way to drown out content
about yourself that you may not like is to upload content of your choice and
maximize your digital footprint.
If there’s one clear rule, it’s that having an online presence is a time
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commitment. Think about how much time you can commit to keeping your
profile(s) current and then decide if you should have just one profile with links
from other services, or whether you should replicate your profile on a number of
services. In any case, online profiles that are not maintained or updated do not
create a good impression.
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Another element in your strategy should be making your scholarly outputs reach as
many people as possible and making them easily accessible and findable. So invest in
discoverability – not just within scholarly areas but also through public engagement and
more popular output/activities.
So think Open Science. Science Europe identified three essential aspects of Open
science: its relation to digital technology, the idea that it explores changing research
practices and their impact on the research system as a whole, and the fundamental
importance of “a certain vision of science as a community of practice”.
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How I see it, to take you to the next level you need to look for productive interactions.
This concept is important both in research as in communication.
You only have so much time and energy so investing it wisely is key.
In communication, setting up PRODUCTIVE INTERACTIONS means looking for partners
within your university.
- Communication Office
- Unit for Science Communication
- Research Communication (incl. scholarly communication)
- Faculty Communication
- Dedicated person with research group
It also means identifying external stakeholders:
- Of your research: general public and specific target groups
- Of your communication: media
When it comes to social media: FIND YOUR INFLUENCERS (people that can act as your
megaphone)
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Link: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/08/27/academic-
storytelling-risk-reduction/
You must accept that details important to you may not resonate with other people –
even other researchers.
Is there anything in your research which may though?
When considering this question, be honest with yourself, and try to embody someone
else who hasn’t spent years toiling over your niche subject area.
Story telling is essentially about the heads and hearts of your audience, about making a
lasting impression, making an impact.
Resist the temptation of covering too much of your research. Don’t get bogged down
in the details. Find that central image that people can connect with.
Rigorous researching and attention-grabbing storytelling are very different trades.
However, by finding that point of connection in your research you’ll go a long way.
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Although I’m focussing on communication in the context of research and the academic
environment, some rules are universal.
Besides the overarching competences that are fostering interesting networks for your
communication and the art of story telling, using the right tool and content is pivotal.
The academic environment is one where you’re already being asked to write and
present a lot. Why not use this to your advantage?
Re-use this content, adapt it to the specific communication goal and target audience and
choose the right tool.
A note on working with media: TIMING!
Let’s see what online tools are available…
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There are many online tools available for disseminating your research and/or for
interacting about science. The important thing is choosing the right tool for your specific
goal. And then making it your own and giving it a natural place in your work and life so it
does not feel like a chore.
(starting in left-hand corner below)
Website: not just profile page but also group pages with news items, dedicated project
websites etc.
LinkedIn: profile that helps you to connect outside academia
Visual platforms: Flickr, Instagram (second largest socmed platform!)
Pinterest (big in US!) - http://www.researchtoaction.org/2012/07/whats-all-the-interest-
in-pinterest-how-can-it-be-used-for-academic-research-communication/
examples: https://www.pinterest.com/smithsonianscie/ and
http://readwrite.com/2013/09/25/best-instagram-accounts-for-science-geeks
In between visual and blog: Tumblr (E.g. Congrats – you’ve got an all male panel! And
Academic Bird Watching http://errantscience.tumblr.com/post/116460277480/birds-of-
academia-an-often-hard-to-spot-selection)
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Reddit Science and Quora
Online Commenting
Opinion pieces for all kinds of media
SlideShare
Wikipedia: huge audience, use your expertise to improve the world’s largest source of
knowledge
as a means to open up science: https://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2014/10/using-wikipedia-
to-open-up-science/
Data visualisation
Infographics: http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcblog/2014/08/11/the-power-of-
pictures-how-we-can-use-images-to-promote-and-communicate-science/ > the
importance of visuals (academic poster becomes infographic)
Twitter
Facebook: http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/facebook-science-pages/
Online book reviews including popular books based on science:
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/category/disciplines/media-studies/
Blog: separate, group, guest
Ted talk (maybe start locally with TedX) – Scientists Popularizing Science: characteristics
and impact of TED Talk Presenters (PLOSONE April 2013): “Presenters are predominantly
male and non-academics. Although TED popularizes research it may not promote the
work of scientists within the academic community.”
Podcasts
Explanimation: e.g. Crash Course Biology
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3EED4C1D684D3ADF > Choose your audience /
Deliver in style / Stay focused / Get to the point / Be part of the community / Give the
audience an anchor / Be a person not a company
Missing: Mendeley, Figshare, GitHub, and many others
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Timing and complementarity are everything in social media but what about the
actual impact – scientific and otherwise?
For those looking at hard evidence let’s look at the science about science.
1. April 2012: article by Melissa Terras showing increase in downloads after
tweets
2. Reminiscent of article by Eysenbach 2011
3. What about blogs?
4. Which led to age-old discussion ‘association is not correlation, which in turn
is not causation’
Tweets tend to associate with citations but not correlate > but the more people
start tweeting their research the bigger the correlation will get?
In any event, interest was sparked and more people were talking about
‘altmetrics’ as the new saviour of science.
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ALTMETRICS > An umbrella term for spectrum of social media-based metrics:
- often proposed as alternative to citation-based indicators
- And as a tool to measure the impact of science outside academia
But… “most studies show that, although citations and the new metrics are to some
extent positively correlated, these correlations are very weak.” Quote from a recent and
very interesting article by scientometricians concluding that at the most, social media
metrics may function as complements to other types of indicators and metrics.
Some more findings from this same article: (see looking glass and circle)
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Also, questions are raised about a certain bias. A bias in topics: do social media only pay
attention to the sex, drugs and rock and roll of science? A bias in broadcasters: social
sciences and humanities are the most often found on social media platforms.
Or is a matter of shouting the loudest?
“Just like a taller, more powerful radio tower will boost a signal so it can be heard at a
greater distance; it makes sense that more people will read a paper if the writer is active
on social media. Of course, because we wrote it, we think it’s great that our paper has
proved so popular, but we have to ask: in the future, will the highest quality papers be
read most? Or will it be only those papers backed up by the loudest voices?” - Academic
blogging is part of a complex online academic attention economy, leading to
unprecedented readership, I. Mewburn and P. Thomson for LSE Impact blog (Dec 2013)
Let’s wrap this discussion up with the four words scientists love to hear: more research
is needed!
In the meantime things are evolving… (see tweet)
So let us ask that question again: why should we be interested in social media as a tool
for research?
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I’ll mostly be focussing on communication in the context of research and the academic
environment.
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Twitter is a great way of starting at with social media because it not only offers you a
platform to interact with a broader audience, it also doubles as a tool for your work as a
researcher. It also helps you to tone down your big scientific rhetoric and condense
everything to its essence. It’ s a place where you can experiment without doing too
much damage or spending a lot of resources. So try it out!
These are some of the benefits:
- Connect with peers and building a scholarly network. Quote: “It’s allowed me to
open up new communities for discussions and increase the interdisciplinarity of my
research.” (A network boost by M. Baker. Nature, 12 Feb 2015)
- Sharing and finding resources (think ‘open science’)
- Generating and refining ideas
- Honing writing skills: try building up a lucid argument in 140 characters!
- Reputation management (part of larger strategy in managing your digital
footprint/shadow)
- Dissemination of your research. Don’t just tweet your new scientific articles but try to
capture the attention of more people by making the content accessible.
- Public engagement and creating involvement: why not look for participants this way?
- And remember, there’s a lot of journalists and media outlets on there too…
It is a great tool for conferences:
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- Back-channel: capture content & provide feedback, share questions and resources
- Connecting and networking
- Virtual participation
Jobs & prof. development:
- “Following institutions, companies and individuals on Twitter can offer clues about
workplace culture and ongoing projects in a way that static website do not.”
- “Junior researchers are creating identities that don’t have to be routed through the
principal investigator.” (A network boost by M. Baker. Nature, 12 Feb 2015)
There is of course a big social element to it (especially for ECRs):
- Break isolation
- Look over the fence
- Find fellow victims
- Real-life scholar
- Sheer fun of it
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Although it is a big investment and there are some definite challenges, there are great
benefits to integrating social media into your research – not just as a way to
communicate but also as a means to become a better scholar. Social media offers you
the means to interact directly with a broader audience – often without ‘corporate
interference’.
Although it can be great fun and many of the social media look flighty (eg. half-life of a
tweet is 18 minutes) it should not be taken lightly but approached in a strategic and
professional manner.
It’s all about finding the right balance:
- Not overthinking it but using it to your advantage
- Getting into the spirit of sharing and interacting while keeping focus in your own
research and not losing yourself in procrastination
- Giving it a natural place in your time management and approaching it so you feel
comfortable with it
Besides offering you an outlet for public engagement, outreach, and science
communication, it might even offer you some release from the incessant publication and
promotion pressure (although the current academic system
is not yet in tune with outreach and online activities).
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Social media for researchers

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