presentation from the International Symposium on public health and social work

1. Online professional networks:
Expanding your knowledge resources
Dragos Nechita
Center for Health Policy and Public Health,
Institute for Social Research
Faculty of Political, Administrative and Communication
Sciences,
Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca

2. Content:
 Computer Mediated Communication
 Social Networking Services
 Facebook
 LinkedIn
 Researchgate

3. Main themes:
 Why is computer mediated communication advantageous for developing a research
network or promoting a programme?
 Why are social network services more than what they appear at first glance and how
to use that in our advantage?
 Facebook – popularity matters!
 LinkedIn – how proffesional networks help you create a network of research
proffesionals
 Researchgate – the benefits of a research-based web community
 The more, the merrier!
PS: Online social networks have a lot more in common with research than one might
think…

4. Computer Mediated Communication
 Communication has always been an important aspect
in research.

5. Computer Mediated Communication
 ARPAnet

6. CMC – Cost, Speed
 No matter the number of instances
 No matter the destination
 No matter the size
 No matter the shape
 No matter the number of recipients

7. CMC – recordability, mass communication and medium
 No need to send the message over and over again
 Mailing lists
 Mail archive
 IM log
 Pictures, audio and video files

8. Social Networks

9. Social Networking Services
 Asynchronous communication
 Mass communication
 Connecting people with similar interests
 Lets you create your own avatar
 Keep track of your network!
 Makes social relations rather uniform

21.  The largest SNS, with over 850 million users
worldwide.
 Entertainment Weekly: “How on earth did we stalk our
exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our
friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before
Facebook?”
 In April 2010 an estimated 41.6% of the U.S.
population had a Facebook account
 Search engine indexation

22.  Created by a Harvard student

33.  Focuses on the professional aspect
 More importance to similar interests
 More than 135 million registered users in more
than 200 countries and territories

41.  over 1.4 million researchers from 192 countries
 search for other researchers using topics
 connect with researchers with similar interests

44. Integrated approach

45. Thank You!
 nechitadragos@gmail.com