Presentation by Jane Secker at York St John University, 11 March 2016

1. USING SOCIAL MEDIA
IN RESEARCH
Dr Jane Secker, LSE
York St John’s University: 11th March 2016

2. What is social media?

3. It’s all about apps…...
Social media apps by Jamie Howie licensed under CC-BY

4. Group discussion
 What social media do you use already?
 Personally?
 Professionally ?
 For research? For teaching?
 Share any advantages / reservations?

5. Biography
Research
Teaching
Conferences

6. Social media and research
Finding
information /
keeping up to
date
To undertake
research
• Crowdsourcing
knowledge
• Data mining social media
Communication
and networking
Collaboration /
collaborative
working
Building your
online identity /
showcase your
research
Creativity /
Evaluation

7. Discussion
How do you currently…
• Find information / get alerts for new research
• Manage or organise the information you find
• Store or archive your own research papers
• Cite information, create your bibliographies
• Share your research findings
• Collaborate with colleagues
• Build your academic network

8. How I do it?

9. Social media can help with…..
Finding
information /
keep up to
date
Planning and
managing
projects
Making and
sharing notes
Storing files /
work
collaboratively

10. Finding information / keeping up
to date
 Using social media tools the information comes to you
 You can set up alerts on all types of websites, scholarly
databases, Google etc.
 Technology underlying this is RSS
 Feed readers easy to set up and add feeds (Feedly,
Newsblur)
 Flipboard designed for use on tablets and phones - app
available
 Good for reading on the go – can download some stories
and then read them wherever (e.g. on the tube)

11. Planning and managing
research: Wunderlist
 Great for list makers – Trello another similar tool
 Create and organise tasks in lists – home, work,
different projects
 Ability to share lists with others – good if working
collaboratively
 Can assign tasks to others, set deadlines.
 Make notes about each tasks and chat function
 Attach files about a task – works with Dropbox

12. Wunderlist

13. Making & sharing notes
 Evernote allows you to incorporate images, audio, video and URLs to
your notes to give notes more context.
 You can create checklists to sort out your activities and priorities,
making Evernote useful for personal and academic use.
 Archives your notes and has a search function, making it easier to
search through your notes for key concepts than having to look through
notebooks.
 Share notes via email, Twitter, messaging and even send important
emails to your Evernote account, so that you can search for them
through Evernote
 Share notes and notebooks with colleagues for collaborative working –
chat function
 Access across platforms – computer, smartphones and tablets, and
access notes you’ve made on any by syncing your notes to your
Evernote account

14. Evernote

15. Storing files and working
collaboratively
 Dropbox and Google Drive let you store and access your
files anywhere and whenever, from your computers,
phones, or tablets.
 They’re easy to set up and use.
 You can change a file on the web, on your computer, or
on your mobile device and it updates on every device
where you’ve installed Google Drive. In Dropbox you
can also edit documents, automatically add photos and
show videos.
 You can share, collaborate, or work alone.
 You can store the first 15 GBs for free across Google
Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos. Dropbox offers 2
GBs of free space with the potential to earn more.

16. Social media can help with…..
Storing
managing
sharing &
resources
Promoting
and sharing
your
research
Academic
networking
Creativity
and using
digital
media

17. Storing and managing readings
Mendeley & Zotero
 Easy to set up and start using
 Access anywhere + desktop version on multiple
PCs/laptops and syncing simple
 Easy to add references + documents: pdfs /
journal resources/ form the web as you research
 Sharing readings between colleagues
 Inserting citations as you write
 Finding new research / academic networking

18. Storing, sharing, curating resources
 Tools such as delicious and diigo mean you can
access your bookmarks from any computer –
stored online
 You can organise your bookmarks using tags
(searchable)
 More visual tools such as Pinterest, Scoop.it,
Paper.li
 You can see popular resources other people are
bookmarking

19. Delicious and Diigo

20. Academic networking sites
 Increasing number of academic networking
sites: Academia.edu, Research Gate, Piirus,
LinkedIn
 Find and connect with colleagues with similar
research interests using LinkedIn groups
 Find a research partner / funding on Piirus
 Can add your publications to these sites to
showcase your research and find research
papers in your field

21. Scholarly Twitter
 Build a professional network to keep up to
date and promote your own research
 Follow conferences and events remotely
#digifest16
 Engage in discussions with colleagues #infolit
#openaccess #historyjobs #edchat
 LSE Guide to Twitter for academics
 Watch Bonnie Stewart’s recent talk on
Scholarly Twitter
 Using Twitter as a data source

22. Disseminating & sharing
research
 Blogging good for reflecting, analysing &
articulating and allow progress &
development of a research project to be
tracked over time
 Or use blogging software to build a website
 Enable engagement with a academic
'network’ through comments
 Free hosted blogs: WordPress.com or
Blogger.com
 Making a greater impact with your research
 LSE Blogs (http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/)

23. Using digital media: creativity
 Find and share video and images
 YouTube
 Flickr http://search.creativecommons.org
 Find and share presentations
 Slideshare
 Create videos, cartoons, images using tools
such as Animoto, Jing, PowToon, Gliffy,
Coggle or Poplet

24. Desks Teaching Room University of Strathclyde
by jisc_infonet
Teaching Math or Something by foundphotoslj
All photos licensed under
Creative Commons licence
Teaching the youngster to feed by foxypar4
teach.NSW Tuesday 3rd June 2008 by Joriel "Joz"...

25. Time to play
 Pick 2 tools you’ve not used before / or don’t
use to its full potential
 Experiment in your group
 Consider if these are something you might use
to support your research

26. Social media data for research
 Possibilities of collecting / harvesting huge
datasets due to the numbers who use social
media
 Powerful data visualisation tools
 Ethical and legal issues to consider
 Some examples of LSE Research
 Reading the riots
 Crowdsourcing the UK Constitution
 Social media and public opinion in the 2010
general election

27. The Researcher’s toolkit:
Jane’s top ten
1. Wunderlist
2. Twitter
3. Evernote
4. WordPress
5. Dropbox
6. Google Drive
7. Mendeley
8. SlideShare
9. Flickr
10. LinkedIn

28. Issues to consider
 Measuring the impact of social media:
Altmetrics – measuring more than just
traditional citations will become increasingly
important in the REF
 Sharing and collaborating becomes easier but
you need to consider ethical and legal issues
carefully
 Informed consent when using data from social
media
 Privacy / data protection
 Your online identity

29. Final discussion and
actions
 What other social
media would you like
to use now?
 Identify possible uses
for social media in
your own research
 Share your ideas…...

30. Further reading
 Social media for research: http://libguides.ncl.ac.uk/socialmedia
 LSE Impact Blog: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/
 Using social media in research: Jamie Bartlett:
http://www.ncrm.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/view.php/using-social-
media-in-research
 Social media is more than simply a marketing tool. The Guardian.
July 2012: http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-
network/blog/2012/jul/24/social-media-academic-research-tool
 UCISA (2015) Social Media Toolkit. Available at:
http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/groups/exec/socialmedia.aspx [accessed 11
December 2015]
 Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR): http://aoir.org/

31. Thank You
Dr Jane Secker
j.secker@lse.ac.uk
http://janesecker.wordpress.com
@jsecker