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Social Media
1. Social Media
Sam Aston
sam.aston@manchester.ac.uk
jrul.researchers@wordpress.com
@jrulresearchers
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kexino
2. The challenge:
Start Timer
• Introduce yourself to the person sitting next
to you 60 Seconds
• Together come up with a keyword to 60
describe social media
45
• Write it on a post-it
30
(in less than 1 minute)
15
0
6. Social media in many respects have made my
work-life balance worse and I have to be careful.
But my work and non-work interests overlap to
such an extent the work-life balance thing is hard
to disaggregate. Terry Wassell, Lecturer
Social media have impacted on my personal life in a
very bad way. It just takes a lot of time and you get
addicted to it so I find myself now spending more
time on Twitter, LinkedIn etc instead of doing more
research or spending time with people in real life.
Elena Golovuskina, PhD
I feel that the major problems in the adoption of
social media tools are the perception of the need for
them, prejudice of the potential user and
occasionally the type of people already using social
media. It can be difficult to sieve through the rubbish
that gets put out there. Ruth Fillery Travis PhD
7. I think social media made me a better researcher because I find
stuff out a lot quicker. I now have a network of individuals who I
respect and am confident in their work. The network discovers
and filters and discusses. I have connected my research to the
real world in a way that would not have been so easy before and
maybe not have been possible. Terry Wassell, Lecturer
In general, I think social media is a good thing, if you balance it all
up. It’s a great resource for researchers in terms of public
engagement, getting new contacts and employability. It is also
very important to establish a digital profile nowadays so that
people can find out easily about you and your research. Elena
Golovuskina, PhD
The one thing which is more important my professional life is my
blog, because it is the most constructive and it gets good traffic
because of the resources I post. I feel it is good because it gives
enquirers a good idea of who I am, allows me to publicise myself
in a way I control, and I enjoy being able to help others. Rose
Fillery Travis PhD
8. What Social Media Tools are
there?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10557450@N
04/6632470867/
9.
10. Join in the conversation
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nostri
-imago/2866399803/
Aim: To give a better understanding of how social media can enhance research Objectives: By the end of this session you will Have a better understanding of how social media is useful to researchers Have some practical examples of how social media can enhance research Will have the knowledge to set up the tools I don’t want you to think of this session as being dictatorial. I am not saying this is what you must do just what you could do. Here are the bad things and here are the good things and here is a way for you to get started.
First things first I am hoping that you all know what I mean by social media. But just to check can you talk with the person sat next to you and think about one keyword that describes social media. You have one minute OK I am very quickly going to go around the room. Can we start here please if one from each pair can stand up and say the word then sit back down again a bit like a mexican wave. Great now does anyone want to ask why another pair chose that word? Here are my words
Are they the same? Definition of social media Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein 2010 define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 , and that allow the creation and exchange of user-g enerated content . Social media is media for social interaction as a super-set beyond social communication. Enabled by ubiquitously accessible and scalable communication techniques, social media has substantially changed the way organizations, communities, and individuals communicate. [2] Business horizons
Who uses social media for their personal life? Who uses social media for their research? Just spend a minute looking at this. Some of you may have seen it before. It is from Eric Qualman who is becoming a bit of social media guru. More details and info graphics are available from his web site What do you think, what is your opinion? Some of it is being created by researchers not all of it but some of it. I want you to talk with the person next to you and discuss why you aren’t using social media in relation to your research and agree on 1 reason write down on the post it note in front of you then stick it on this chart here. I am going to very quickly type a couple of these up so we can all see your reasons anonymously
Okay here are 3of them Just read these through. Do you agree/disagree want to comment? It is only reasonable to have these concerns
Here are some criticisms of Social media from the researchers that contributed to the Research Information Network Guide for researchers and are using Social Media and some more general criticisms The Growth of technology – some people feel that the encroachment of technology into every aspect of life has potentially damaging implications. • Privacy – social media are built on a culture of active personal and professional disclosure. There are concerns about how this is changing the interface between public and private spaces, and about misuse of our data. For researchers, putting your professional life online can feel exposing, particularly if you express opinions and ideas that have not been subject to the normal process of peer review. • Banality – many social media tools are based on the exchange of many small bits of information such as status updates or the sharing of links. These short-form individual contributions have led to the charge that social media are trivial in nature and suitable only for entertainment rather than professional research. • Peripherality – many researchers stress that social media are still peripheral in research, and this leads some to argue that it is therefore not worth engaging. • Loss of an authoritative perspective – traditional publishing aims to provide a filter for quality whereas social media allow everyone to publish anything that they have to say. This inevitably means that it is more difficult to identify which contributions are valuable or authoritative. • Information overload – social media have dramatically increased the amount of publicly-available information: 24 hours of video are added to YouTube each minute. • Work/life balance – social media has the potential to extend your working day and blur the distinction between work and other aspects of your life. Researchers may need to think carefully about boundaries, particularly if they are using mobile devices.ere have been some criticisms made of social media and it is important to consider these So it is not perfect. But what is??? There are valid concerns that you should have over these aspects of using social media that you should engage with. Issues over privacy and ownership of content. There will be time constraints but how you deal with that can only be guided by you. I am sure that you all had to consider a lot of different things before you enrolled on this course at Manchester for instance.
Here are the same people that we saw on the previous slide now saying good things about social media. So they have weighed up the pros and cons Handout Nichol Graph on the use of social media by researchers
What social media tools are there out there? Write on flip chart Networking Blogs Wikis RSS Microblogging Collaboartive tools Bookmarking
You can become an observer or what is known as a lurker in social media circles. You may have an account say with Twitter. But just to see what is going on, just to get a feel for it. Does anybody here behave in this way currently? What you need to do is travel a bit more widely Across the sea You need to find where the conversations are in your area.
And join in the conversation Clay Shirky said in 2010 Write on flip chart “ Participant’s are different. To participate is to act as if your presence matters, as if, when you hear something or see something your response is part of the event” When you do research you have to play a part in how that research is disseminated and contextualised and this is a way to do it. You can bring it to a different audience. Research itself does not speak for itself. I was reading something on the LSE impact blog and Huw Davies said that “research needs to be brought to life. By itself it is just research inanimate data: in conversation and contextualised it has the power to animate inform and infuriate.” He also said that “knowledge creation is a deeply social and contextual process happening through interaction and dialogue”
So to get to be this what do we have to do all these things to get to become a networked academic/researcher What are the benefits of doing this? How will doing this help you? Can you see any benefit to this? There are benefits to be had but it is a balance Can offer more effective collaboration Offer the possibility of new collaborations and the benefit of adding the experience of others You can receive on your thoughts as you progress Raise the profile of your work more rapidly then conventional publishing allows Raises you own personal profile Offers public engagement opportunities…..blogs Open your research to different audiences Practice writing: recently an academic to talk about strategy suggesting writing everyday. With something like a blog it is an opportunity to write differently less formally Dan Schawbel wrote for Forbes business magazine that in 10 years time in the next ten years, resumes will be less common, and your online presence will become what your resume is today, at all types and sizes of companies. So lets do a quick catch up We have thought about what social media is, the keywords exercise that we did gave us an idea of the properties We have thought about what others describe as being problems with social media and thought about what we see as being the barriers to using social media and what the possible benefits could be. What I am going to do now is to give you an idea of how you could move forward with this. This is my interpretation of how I have handled social with a little bit of what I have read and heard from others.
Strategy The masterplan I listened to a professor from the OU talk about Digital Scholarship last week and a researcher asked a question afterwards what should she do first to become a digital scholar. He suggested go out and write a blog. Become the lurker on Twitter and begin to follow organisations in your field. Begin with Research Councils, Publishers, Thesis Whisperer and PhD Whisperer JRUL researchers guardian higher ed, follow some academics in your field. Read the Twitter guide to twitter for academics and researchers. Handout to look at. Make enquiries with colleagues and find out what they are up to in the web 2 world this is finding where the conversations are. When you go to conferences and read papers look for peoples online identities. Their twitter name or their blog address. Do a google blog search for key word in your field and see what people are writing about and when you find a blog that fits in with your interests follow them, get email updates for when new posts are made. Not only that read how they write and what they are writing about. Blogs can reflective and or informational.
Twitter is huge we all know about Lady gaga demi Moore Stephen fry It isn’t just about celebrity gossip there are conversations to be had. There are publishers on there potential employers research councils businesses governments conferences the list is endless The LSE have a good guide to twitter for researchers and academics that may be useful. They have also compiled lists of academics that are active in some discipline areas I think that this is good place to begin to travel across the map that I showed you.
Blogs can be used for a wide variety of purposes. At their most basic they can provide you with an easy way to make some of your data or writing available on the web. Most blogs also offer a comment feature and they frequently become temporary forums for discussions prompted by an original post. Blogs can be useful to build your profile as a researcher, provide a vehicle for collaboration and to get Ideas. Jeff Bullas considers blogging to be biggest revolution in publishing since the Gutenberg press. July 2011 164 million blogs Do you find information on blogs when you Google search? As a researcher you are advised to be cautious when it comes to giving too much away regarding your research. You must be wary of early disclosure of research outcomes especially if you want to publish your research as original at a later date. But there is scope for making use of SM to gauge opinion or draw in expertise.
Networking All of social media allows you to network and build communities Facebook is of course the most popular of these and isn’t necessarily best for your research especially if you are using it for your social life too. If does become a distraction This is not the only tool available to you for this though it is the most common. Linked in Academia.edu http://manchester.academia.edu/Departments/Manchester_Business_School John Pal Google search Allow you to link with others working in your own institution and around the globe.
Social media can help you harness your network and filter information so that it applies to you. So all the people and organisations that you are connected to can help you identify knowledge and to assist you to better place your research. You can use RSS feeds to personalise information that comes to you. If you begin to use social bookmarking you can begin to see who is working in the same area as you and what they are reading. Products like Mendeley, Zotero, CiteUlike all allow you to bookmark documents and web pages and assign them tags. They then allow you to share your links with other who may be working in an overlapping area. These tools also have reference mgmt applications too. These are freely available and web based so are easy to access even when not at your own PC a bit like you’re my favourites in your browser. It is useful to share with other researchers because you are likely to identify more relevant literature as a group than as a single individual. Furthermore, you are likely to connect to people whose interests are similar to but different from yours. You can’t be a specialist in all aspects of your discipline, but you can follow someone else whose interests overlap with yours. Twitter; LSE guide for academics and researchers Building your following and managing your profile Using Twitter to maximise the impact of your research project Making the most of Twitter alongside your own blog Using course accounts with students A step by step guide to adding a Twitter feed to Moodle Extra resources and links to blog posts and articles on academic blogging and impact
Collaboration tools like dropbox Google docs and evernote are great when working in a research group or writing a paper togther. I use Evernote and Google docs and they are very stable & reliable. Evernote is superb for using across a number of devices I use it with my smart phone, an ipad and a desktop. The app is free and it allows me to store my work, notes etc in the cloud and access them where ever I am. I can save audio and photos and share them with whomever I like. Google docs has a good interafce and is very much like Microsoft office with the advantage of being able to share a document to work on with colleagues. I have only encountered one issue with it during sharing but it was easily overcome by simply creating a new Gmail account. There are also wikis which can be used similarly but allow a bit more flexibility. It becomes a shared web space where you can upload and share documents. Edit text within the wiki so for instance I know that some people have used wikis to write shared online books Dropbox works similarly.
There is a handout here produced by the Research Information Network that lists the links and resources that can be used for all the different parts of the research lifecycle. Go and explore and lurk and then take control of you and your research’s profile. Social media for research will only succeed the more people that use it. If you have any questions please do get in touch