Social media for academic researchers

Social Media, Social
Technologies &
Academic Research

@malbooth

I am not a social media guru.

“We want to be connected to
one another, a desire that the
social surrogate of television
deﬂects, but one that social media
actually engages.”
Clay Shirky Cognitive Surplus
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Internet_map_1024.jpg

TV was one to many, social media provides us with a facility to establish many to many connections.

“. . . media is the connective tissue of society.”
“. . . things used to be separated into public media . . . and
personal media . . . Now those two modes have fused.”
For those who don’t know it this photo is of Millennium Bridge. It is a pedestrian only bridge that connects
Southbank (near the Tate Modern) to the north of the Thames near St Paul’s Cathedral, seen here in the
background. It isn’t so far removed from the quote above.

This is a screen shot of Gary Hayes’ Social Media Count for just 31 seconds in early-February 2011. Pretty
impressive statistics. There are any number of ways to present imposing social media statistics, but I guess what
really matters is what is being done.
See also:
http://wallblog.co.uk/ﬁles/2011/01/facbook_vs_twitter_infographic.jpg
http://mashable.com/2011/01/24/the-history-of-social-media-infographic
http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/growingknowledge
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2wpAsg/s.hbr.org/dPg4wJ

What can you do with Social
Media?
Rather than look at some well used social media platforms and technologies, I thought we’d have a quick look at
what is done with them and through that feature some of the more well known tools.

Work

Here are two examples of social media being used for work: Twitter (people sharing information about live web
conferences) and LinkedIn (a large professional network).

Play

People do use social media to play, even for work or more serious purposes. Its playfulness is one of the main
attractions. Most tools are not 100% serious all the time. And they are more interesting than some of the older
methods they are replacing (like email lists and landline calls). Play is something of an expectation in social media.

Game

I’m not an expert on gaming and I don’t use games online, but I think they do offer us an alternate method to
learn new things. Online games are extremely popular, especially so on Facebook. Personally I ﬁnd those FB
games like Farmville very annoying and I hate being updated about them or invited to join in by my friends.
Water Worx is an iPad game created by Digital Eskimo for the Powerhouse Museum to teach children about water
management in Sydney. See also:
http://digitaleskimo.net/portfolio/water-worx
Kongregate is another large online games portal. People are not playing in isolation. The experience is shared with
others and that is part of the attraction.

Learn

There are many, many ways to learn by using social media. You’d be surprised by what you can learn just from
your friends and community if you ask them.
iTunes University manages, creates, distributes and controls access to educational audio and video content and
PDF (text) ﬁles for students and the broader internet. Various universities have their own iTunes U site like those
shown above. It provides regulated access to curriculum material via a platform that most students are very
familiar with because of their music collections. More content is being shared openly in such ways.
iTunes U reﬂects the understanding that some universities have about student familiarity with certain popular
platforms. Even if it is a bit clunky, such platforms are probably more widely used than dull poorly organised
websites or even clunkier out-dated e-learning platforms. IMHO!

“The simple act of creating something
with others in mind and then
sharing it with them represents,
at the very least, an echo of that older
culture, now in technological raiment.”

The social web has a genuine culture of altruism. I believe that altruism is the pulse that keeps it alive and it is
also what distinguishes it from other media.
By diving in and sharing you might be surprised (pleasantly) by what comes back at you in return.

So we share our photos. And Creative Commons helps us to do so while easily managing our intellectual
property.

And Creative Commons helps us to do so while easily managing our intellectual property. The licences are made
for all purposes and they are very easily understood.

We share our music tastes and habits. This is last.fm which is a very clever tool that “scrobbles” what you have
played recently on an MP3 player and shares that online in your proﬁle. (I’d like to provide such a facility on our
library website.)

There are an amazing amount of bloggers around and some a pure gems like 52 Suburbs. In this blog we are
treated to some beautiful images of ordinary Sydney suburbs that really make you appreciate the beauty we take
for granted every day in our lives. It is being converted into a book due to public demand. We will look at blogs for
researchers a bit later in this presentation.

We share our library connections and this social media catalogue has a lot of libraries thinking long and hard
about how to match its ability to be social - as it includes tags or folksonomies (tags), recommendations,
personalisation, ratings, networking, reviews and commenting. It draws on the wisdom of the crowd really well.
A friend of mine has catalogued his whole collection of over 10,000 books and journals.

Discover

Diigo is a social bookmarking service that allows you and your friends to keep track of discoveries made on the
web. You can easily select what you share and with whom you share it and it lets you have access to all your
bookmarks or favourites anywhere you have web access: at home, at work, when travelling, etc.
We will also look at Diigo and a list I created for Research Week later on.

Create

This is UTS Library’s YouTube channel. Basically it gives us a very cheap TV channel on which we can share the
short videos that we produce ourselves or commission (mostly from UTS students). More great content to be
released soon!

Complain

So I’ve heard You’e Beautiful a few too many times. Who hasn’t? And let’s face it, the days of authors talking about
their writing in dull make-believe TV sets with even duller interviewers is hopefully drawing to a close because
there is a lot of much better content to view online.
Short outbursts like these from my Twitter friends keep me amused online while watching certain shows. A friend
from Melbourne and I even offered a reasonably popular alt.commentary for the winter Olympics ice dancing and
for the recent federal election count.

Celebrate!

I just could not think of an image more appropriate to illustrate social media celebration. I guess this has now
become a party political broadcast!

Mourn

In this post I shared the eulogy I delivered at my brother’s funeral. Many people heard it at his service, but there
were many who knew him, but could not come to the service. It has attracted over 450 views and many have
shared their thoughts with me.

Inﬂuence

There are many more politicians who use social networks to extend their inﬂuence and to connect with their
communities. Some employ full-time social media staff to ensure their presence is kept up to date and is
responsive.
Recently we’ve seen demonstrations of the use of social media for disaffected people to express their opposition
to governments (e.g. Egypt and Iran). The genie is now out of the bottle and although some governments are busy
trying to put it back in, that exercise will eventually prove fruitless.

Advertise
Craigslist was founded as a local events listing for San Francisco in the mid-1990s by Craig Newmark. Althought it
has expanded well beyond the US now it has changed little ever since and the founder says that it works because it gives
people a voice, a sense of community trust and even intimacy (through personals). Craigslist has signiﬁcantly eroded the
classiﬁeds income of many newspapers.

Connect, socially

Facebook is probably the best known of the social networks, but others like Twitter and Foursquare are now
growing strongly. They allow for social connections and networks to ﬂourish and connect you with people of like
interests.
Foursquare is indicative of a move connected with the rise of smart phones like iPhones that encourages the use
of geo-location software (like GPS) that lets your contacts know where you are or where you have been (when you
want them to know). Thus, the hardware of mobile computing has extended the reach of social networks and
others like Facebook have followed suit. At the Google offices in 2010 I heard a developer quoting a senior Google
executive who believes that 80% of all data can be mapped in some way. This gives us a start in organising it
without imposing artiﬁcial and out-of-date ontologies like Dewey.

Evaluate

These are reviews on the Expedia travel booking site from other people who have stayed at the venues or used the
services you are researching. I believe they give you a much richer source of ratings than any hotel industry star
rating.

Curate
I’ve said for a number of years now that Brooklyn Museum are the leaders in terms of online community
engagement and the intelligent use of social media in the cultural sector. We used them as a model and exemplar
when I was the the Australian War Memorial.

Participate

Participation is the go with social technologies. Here we see a wiki featured that effectively allowed the people of
Melbourne to contribute to and build their own future strategic plan. Pretty amazing stuff really.
See a blog post I did about this here:
http://frommelbin.blogspot.com/2010/12/more-notes-from-pdc-2010-composing.html

Benefits
Connections
Engagement
Participation
Interactivity
Communications
Instantaneous
Extends reach
Learning
Sharing wisdom
This is just my own quick & dirty list. I’ve highlighted those that I think are the most important benefits with the
most potential for researchers with an imagination.
The benefits vary from an individual perspective, so I’ve tried to be generic here. I’ve also avoided the marketing
benefits because if social media turns into marketing media, people will flock away from it in droves.
Connections means that social media encourages and facilitates connections online and I think that can only be a
good thing, whether they be for work, family, social or even intimate personal purposes. Engagement refers to
the chance to engage with others whether they be individuals or organisations in communities of mutual interest.
It is possible that such engagement simply was not possible or feasible before social media - well at least not as
broadly and easily. Participation is a major benefit facilitated by relatively simple and free social technologies
giving everyone the opportunity to have their say should they wish. Interactivity refers to the fact that social
media has changed communications in the media from one-to-many to many-to-many and from a one-way to a
two-way process. So Communications have been broadened and now almost everyone has an endless list of
possibilities for communicating. Social media can offer you an Instantaneous outlet and sometimes an
instantaneous response to questions, observations, invitations, etc. The extension of reach is a huge benefit. It
works that way for both organisations and individuals through the sheer global scale of the web. The web doesn’t
really care when you are online or where you are - you can connect regardless of those factors. Social media has
offered me major benefits in terms of my own learning in many different areas and on many different subjects.
For researchers, perhaps the most important way that you can benefit from the use of social technologies is
through the sharing of wisdom. Of course you still need to sort the cheese from the chalk, but you probably do
that already in traditional media anyway, so all it takes is a bit of time getting familiar with the networks you select
and it also helps to have list of trusted advisers you can run to when confused or in need or advice.
See also:
http://www.slideshare.net/ignatia/social-media-benefits-for-researchers-def

oh my god by Lucy Vader

My suggestions
For using social media. This is the how-to bit. It’ll be brief.

Start with
your own
tribe
It is probably best to start within your own “tribe” as Seth Godin would say. Then branch out when you feel more
comfortable. Networks can be funny things and a bit tribal to begin with so it is easier to stay on familiar ground.
Don’t just be happy with family members and close friends on Facebook. You know your interests, so maybe try
another platform that seems appropriate.

Perspective

Scale from the tool colour group by Robert MacPherson
Keep what you do in social media in perspective with the rest of your life. It isn’t everything.
Try to remember that not everyone is going to be hanging on everything you do or say, so you cannot expect
instant responses al the time.

Listen

hello mate by Stephen King

Listen to what is said online and try to understand why. You don’t need to react to everything. Sometimes people
are just letting off steam.

Engage

Engaging in social media is probably one of the main things: just be involved. Do more than just lurk.

Play, fail,
learn
It really is OK to try some different new things and make mistakes. You won’t be punished or kicked out. Listen to
feedback and if in doubt ask someone what the form is, but experiment and play.

Respect
Respect for others is key. The social web is multi-cultural and it generally isn’t popular to be intolerant, ignorant
or abusive.

Be real

Audrey Hepburn by Douglas
Kirkland

Some people say that anonymity is OK, but I don’t agree. I think that you need to be as real as possible to have
any real impact. You don’t need to give everything away, but the social web can be really generous with you if you
make genuine contributions.

Be careful how
sitting hen by Tae-Geun Yang
much you reveal

There are many ways to make sure you do not give everything away. Just read the guidelines and learn how to
adjust the settings of the applications or tools you are using to suit your own interests.

Don’t feed the trolls
jolly giants by Steve Croquett

You can read what the trolls are doing on the blog posts of any major newspaper or media enterprise. They enjoy
being abusive and hurling insults in ongoing arguments, usually from the safety of their own anonymity. Don’t
encourage them with a response.

Be patient

It isn’t always going to happen instantly, although sometimes it does. Wait for people on the other side of the
world to wake up and then catch-up on their networks.

Readings
The Wealth of
Everything is Miscellaneous,
Networks,
David Weinberger
Yochai Benkler

The Wisdom of
Tribes, Crowds,
Seth Godin James Surowiecki

Cognitive Surplus &
The Long Tail, Here Comes
Chris Anderson Everybody,
Clay Shirky

Suggestions
for
Academic
Researchers

There is also:
http://webgear.pbworks.com/w/page/27624828/Welcome!
http://libguides.mit.edu/content.php?pid=174869&sid=1481857

http://www.diigo.com/list/malbooth/uts-library-research-week
You can just look through this list yourself. All the useful sites I found have been tagged and brieﬂy described. If
you have any feedback or more to add to the list, just let me know by messaging me on Diigo or send email to
mal.booth[at]uts.edu.au

Networks

http://www.academia.edu/

Links:
http://www.academia.edu/ We will look at this one in detail because I think it has a lot of potential for all academic
researchers.
http://www.researcherid.com/
http://www.labmeeting.com/
http://sciencestage.com/
http://www.epernicus.com/
http://www.researchgate.net/
http://www.graduatejunction.net/
http://network.nature.com/

Blogs & Twitter

Digital Researcher Blog 2011

Twitter Search : #phdchat
http://www.researchblogging.org/

Other Links:
http://www.vitae.ac.uk/researchers/1218/Postgraduate-researchers.html
http://rrresearch.blogspot.com/2010/12/arsenic-associated-bacteria-nasas.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/nov/19/alan-rusbridger-twitter
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110119/full/469286a.html
http://thewikiman.org/blog/?p=1328

Reference & Citation

http://www.citeulike.org
http://www.connotea.org

http://www.zotero.org

http://www.mendeley.com/

Collaboration

http://www.myexperiment.org
http://www.2collab.com

http://www.ofﬁsync.com/ http://wiggio.com

Mindmapping & Data
Presentation

http://www.mind42.com http://ﬂare.prefuse.org

http://www.bubbl.us/ http://www.degrafa.org/

http://popplet.com/

You may also be interested in:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/01/07/creating-and-distributing-presentations-on-the-web
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mrtu4MmthE (short video on Game Storming)

Utilities & Crowd Sourcing

http://www.backupify.com

http://www.quora.com

https://www.dropbox.com/
http://ideascale.com/

Some related articles:
http://www.techi.com/2011/01/quora-has-social-trumped-the-semantic-web/
http://www.quora.com/Drew-Benvie/Quora/What-are-your-top-tips-for-using-Quora-10-from-me-to-start
http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/01/esri-australia-ushahidi.html
http://www.scientiﬁcamerican.com/article.cfm?id=question-time

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