Social Media & Scholars
How Social Media and Online Social Networks are Changing the Ways in Which Scholars Disseminate Knowledge and Information
(Social Media Related Research Initiatives) – Funded by a $161,000 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant – Principal Investigator, 2010-2013.
Social media has become more mainstream in recent years, and the use of social media has skyrocketed. Numerous studies have been conducted on how the general public is using SM; however, very little work has been done on how scholars are using and adapting to these new tools. The goal of the project is to fill this significant void in the literature by conducting a comprehensive study using both quantitative and qualitative methods to discover if, how and why Canadian scholars and their international counterparts are using these new tools for knowledge and information dissemination. This research will help us to better understand changing scholarly communication and publishing practices in the age of social media.
Related Web App Development Project:
- AcademiaMap, an Online(Twitter) Influence Assessment App designed for scholars.
Related publications:
- Gruzd, A., Staves, K., and Wilk, A. (2011). Tenure and Promotion in the Age of Online Social Media. Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Conference, October 9-13, 2011, New Orleans, LA, USA. DOI: 10.1002/meet.2011.14504801154
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Social media for internal communication – we discuss with expert Tracy PlayleWith the first in our series of brand new one-day training courses on Social media for internal comms taking place on 6th April, I caught up with session leader Tracy Playle of Pickle Jar Communications to ask her a couple of questions on the subject. Here’s part one of what she had to say…
I started by asking Tracy what the benefits are of using social media to communicate with internal audiences….
Tracy Playle: Social media can offer a quick and effective way of communicating with internal (and any) audiences, providing that they are online or have internet access on a mobile device. Most importantly, however, social media enables internal audiences to have their own voice and it helps to facilitate collaboration and cross-organisation thinking and sharing of ideas and solutions. In social media spaces you can organize yourself around different themes and groups that transcend internal management structures. This is no longer about top-down, one-way communications, and not even really about two-way communications. Now, it’s about multi-way communications. Importantly, it is also by its very nature ‘conversational’, so it can help to break down the formality of other forms of internal communication and make staff and other internal stakeholders feel more ownership of it and of the subjects discussed.
So what are social media’s failings? Does it have any?
TP: This is a little bit like asking what the failings of a conversation are… it’s a tricky one to answer. In truth, social media itself doesn’t have any failings – but the people using it, and how they choose to use it, may have many. The biggest one that I see over and over again is organisations using social media as just another ‘channel’ to push their messages out. But it’s not a channel. Typically, it’s a community. You wouldn’t walk up to a group of people having a chat in a pub and just start spurting out messages to them, so likewise you shouldn’t do this in social media.
Thanks Tracy!
Find out more and book for Tracy’s social media for internal communication course on 6th April.
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JISC has compiled case studies of best practice for using social media and software such as Second Life. Photograph: REUTERS/Suzanne Miller
Debates about digital technology and its place in academia continue. Last year, a Research Information Network report documented that the use of social media had made only small inroads into academia. And while a JISC study observed that current undergraduates were more engaged than ever, students did not always understand the role of digital technology in relation to their studies. As Eszter Hargittai notes, they are less like digital natives than we might think.
While digital technology may not have been part of my life as an undergraduate back in the 1990s, it is a certainly part of my life now as a professional working in higher education. But rather than suggesting academics learn how to use particular tools or software packages, I'd argue the most important skill to cultivate in relation to digital technology is evaluation.
Understanding the benefits and costs of using digital technology is crucial when deciding what a particular tool, site or package may be used for.
David White makes the distinction between people who choose to integrate online activity into their working life to a high degree (digital residents), and people who choose to use technology for selective, short-term activities and then log off (digital visitors).
If you are going to reap the benefits of becoming a digital resident, you need to invest time, effort and take risks. So why is it worth the investment? In a nutshell, because digital technologies can enhance three core areas of academic practice: accessing, searching and sifting information; communicating with others; and building peer-to-peer networks.
The days of the ivory tower researcher are gone, if they were ever here at all. At last month's digital researcher seminar run by Vitae and the British Library, Tristram Hooley reminded us that research is a social process, and that building a network of peers is nothing new, but significantly increased by the use of social media.
There are resources to help academics consider the advantages of using social media, including the excellent Social Media: A Guide for Researchers, by Alan Cann and his colleagues. The book provides advice on using blogs, social networking sites, social bookmarking, collaboration, presentation and information management tools, and more.
Reading the guide is a great place to start, but like any education process, learning to use social media effectively is an experiential process. As Cann pointed out when I talked to him, it is very difficult to appreciate the benefits of using social media unless you try it out, and use it long enough to see a return on your investment.
Understanding what the technology is good for, and weighing up the benefits against the costs is also important when using e-learning to support students in higher education. The benefits of social media to help them search for information, learn to communicate effectively and work collaboratively are documented across the disciplines. JISC's Study of the effective use of social software in education includes case studies of the use of Facebook to support student induction, use of virtual environments like Second Life, photo sharing applications (Flickr), Google Earth and more.
Examples continue to appear all the time, including Stuart Hepburn's use of Twitter for student feedback in a screenwriting programme, and the University of Leicester's Duckling Project, using podcasts to support distance learning students.
I am generally enthusiastic about using digital technology to enhance our academic practice. But it is no panacea for academic life. There are risks of information overload, sharing our findings before publication (or in a student's case, submitting their assignment), not to mention the time and effort required. When I worked at Birmingham City University, we used blogs to assess students' contributions to a critical theory module. The students learned to write regularly and got frequent feedback on their work. But I spent three times the number of hours marking than I would have done if students had written an essay.
That said, there are costs to not using social media too. The best way to decide what works for you is to try it, be prepared to invest a little, and judge the outcome for yourself.
Dr Ruth Page is a lecturer in the School of English at the University of Leicester and has research interests in the use of stories in social media. She blogs at Digital Narratives.
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The early career researcher is a PhD student or postdoc, who has only been in their field of research for a few years. Early career researchers may be a force for change in research processes and technologies, flexible and willing to experiment with new systems, but this affect may be moderated by the more conservative researchers who work with, and in some cases supervise, them
Castañeda, Linda and Costa, Cristina and Torres-Kompen, Ricardo (2011) The Madhouse of ideas: stories about networking and learning with twitter. pp. 1-13. In: Proceedings of the The PLE Conference 2011, 10th - 12th July 2011, Southampton, UK.
Abstract
This paper aims to analyse the meanings of the stories submitted to the project through the concepts of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) and Personal Learning Networks (PLNs), as both notions seem to be present, and often intertwine, in the collected narratives. This paper will start by providing an overview of the concepts of Personal Learning Environments and Personal Learning Networks as reported in the literature. It will then present the context of the project, and outline the results of the qualitative analysis of the content and data collected. The findings will highlight the critical elements in the creation and development of Personal Learning Environments and Networks and uncover new themes as they emerge from the analytic work done on the Twitter stories. The paper will also critically discuss these themes in detail with regards to the literature, and will finish with the preliminary conclusions of this ongoing research, and its future steps.
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Download This PaperTwittering the News: The Emergence of Ambient Journalism
Alfred Hermida University of British Columbia - School of Journalism July 8, 2010Journalism Practice, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 297-308, July 2010
Abstract:
This paper examines new para-journalism forms such as micro-blogging as "awareness systems" that provide journalists with more complex ways of understanding and reporting on the subtleties of public communication. Traditional journalism defines fact as information and quotes from official sources, which have been identified as forming the vast majority of news and information content. This model of news is in flux, however, as new social media technologies such as Twitter facilitate the instant, online dissemination of short fragments of information from a variety of official and unofficial sources. This paper draws from computer science literature to suggest that these broad, asynchronous, lightweight and always-on systems are enabling citizens to maintain a mental model of news and events around them, giving rise to awareness systems that the paper describes as ambient journalism. The emergence of ambient journalism brought about by the use of these new digital delivery systems and evolving communications protocols raises significant research questions for journalism scholars and professionals. This research offers an initial exploration of the impact of awareness systems on journalism norms and practices. It suggests that one of the future directions for journalism may be to develop approaches and systems that help the public negotiate and regulate the flow of awareness information, facilitating the collection and transmission of news.Number of Pages in PDF File: 13
Keywords: Awareness Systems, Internet, Journalism, Micro-Blogging, Social Media, Twitter
JEL Classification: O30
Accepted Paper SeriesDate posted: December 31, 2010
Suggested Citation
Hermida, Alfred, Twittering the News: The Emergence of Ambient Journalism (July 8, 2010). Journalism Practice, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 297-308, July 2010. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1732598
Seems stupid until you try it: press coverage of Twitter, 2006-9Abstract
While critics of Twitter, the most popular microblogging application, dismiss the service as frivolous, proponents tout a variety of educational, political and commercial uses. Drawing from social construction theories of technology, this research uses the grounded theory approach to analyze press coverage of this emerging technology from 2006 through the first months of 2009. While the specifics of Twitter may be new, this research demonstrates that the public response to this web tool is similar to the public reaction to earlier communication technologies including the telegraph, radio and the internet. Despite vocal skepticism from some, the research shows newspapers, magazines and blogs have promoted and actively encouraged Twitter’s diffusion.
Published online before print May 18, 2010, doi: 10.1177/1461444809360773 New Media & Society December 2010 vol. 12 no. 8 1262-1279
Publication Date: September 2011
Pages: 256
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781849666275
While industries such as music, newspapers, film and publishing have seen radical changes in their business models and practices as a direct result of new technologies, higher education has so far resisted the wholesale changes we have seen elsewhere. However, a gradual and fundamental shift in the practice of academics is taking place. Every aspect of scholarly practice is seeing changes effected by the adoption and possibilities of new technologies. This book will explore these changes, their implications for higher education, the possibilities for new forms of scholarly practice and what lessons can be drawn from other sectors.