Social Media's Role in Academia
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The document discusses the author's research interests which include using social media tools to enhance academic work. It notes that while social software has existed for over 10 years, many academics do not use these tools. The author is interested in how blogging, microblogging and social networks can benefit research through improved knowledge sharing and dissemination. Examples provided include using Twitter as a backchannel at conferences and collaborating on projects to transcribe documents and connect museum exhibits with online audiences. Concerns around digital identity and information overload when using social media are also addressed.
![Who am I? ,[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],Tweet me: @clairey_ross Blog: claireyross.wordpress.com UCLDH blog:www.ucl.ac.uk/dh-blog Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oskay/472097903/](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
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Social Media's Role in Academia
- 1. Social Media and me Scholars at work Images from: www.maximidiavintageads.com
- 3. Social software for collaborating on the web is at least ten years old
- 5. Image: Time Trust and Authority leaflet, UCL 2010
- 7. DH Now and DH Answers http://digitalhumanitiesnow.org/ http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/
- 10. Scholarly Blogging blogs can't possibly have intellectual value because the posts are too short or written too quickly or aren't peer-reviewed
- 11. Is blogging damaging my Academic Career?
- 12. Microblogging
- 13. Social Media Research in UCLDH
- 14. DH Blog
- 22. Who are we online really? Image: cartoon by Peter Steiner has been reproduced from page 61 of July 5, 1993 issue of The New Yorker, http://www.flickr.com/photos/ben_lawson/155595430/
- 24. Thanks!
Notes de l'éditeur
- Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oskay/472097903/
- Awareness of social media among members of the research community is high, but there is a large gap between awareness and actual use for the majority of tools. There is no single ’right way’ for researchers to use social media. How you use them will depend on you, your discipline, those around you and the research you are doing.
- The major barrier to take-up of web 2.0 tools and services is lack of clarity – even among some frequent users – as to what the benefits might be. perceptions of quality and trust. Both as producers and consumers of information, researchers seek assurances of quality; and many of them are discouraged from making use of new forms of scholarly communications because they do not trust what has not been subject to formal peer review. Trust is also a concern for researchers who are producing, rather than consuming, information; they are cautious about sharing results and findings in a medium which, as yet, has no standardised way to formally attribute authorship. 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. Image: Time Trust and Authority leaflet, UCL 2010
- Social tools have the potential to contribute something to each of these stages. But they also have the potential to challenge the ways in which research is done. We therefore discuss each of these stages in turn and examine how social media can challenge and enhance current ideas and practice. i. Identification of knowledge e.g. undertaking literature reviews using peer reviewed sources ii. Creation of knowledge by professional researchers usually behind closed doors iii. Quality assuance of knowledge e.g. peer review, filtering the best for publication iv. Dissemination of knowledge e.g. publication, presentation at conference Collaboration and social interaction run through all aspects of the academic research cycle.
- Social tools have the potential to contribute something to each of these stages. But they also have the potential to challenge the ways in which research is done. We therefore discuss each of these stages in turn and examine how social media can challenge and enhance current ideas and practice. i. Identification of knowledge e.g. undertaking literature reviews using peer reviewed sources ii. Creation of knowledge by professional researchers usually behind closed doors iii. Quality assuance of knowledge e.g. peer review, filtering the best for publication iv. Dissemination of knowledge e.g. publication, presentation at conference Collaboration and social interaction run through all aspects of the academic research cycle.
- Clay Shirky: tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring Social media is a buzz-word that many researchers feel has nothing to do with them. Studies have shown that few researchers engage with social tools as part of their research practice. However I will argue that social tools offer researchers an opportunity to improve the quality of their work, through enhanced ability to find, use and disseminate information. I think social media made me a better researcher because I find stuff out a lot quicker. I now have a network of individuals 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 possible. Social media can help to enhance your research capacity within the time limits and workload constraints academic researchers usually face. They can help because they enable you to harness your network to help with both discovery and filter. The opportunity to identify and then communicate with other researchers in your area(s) of interest can be highly valuable. This kind of academic correspondence has always happened but it has been energised with the development of the Internet.
- At this early stage in my career my primary method of dissemination is through my blog. It acts as a research log for my PhD, my research interests, my papers, and research context. Sharing Room for creativity Feeling connected
- Microblogging, a variant of blogging which allows users to quickly post short updates to websites such as Twitter.com, has emerged as a dominant form of information interchange and interaction for academic communities. making data easier to share, verify and re-use, or otherwise facilitating more open scientific practices changing discovery techniques or enhancing the accessibility of research information changing researchers publication and dissemination behaviour, (for example, due to the ease of publishing work-in-progress and grey literature), and changing practices around communicating research findings (for example through opportunities for iterative processes of feedback, pre-publishing, or post-publication peer review).
- This research considers the use of Twitter as a digital backchannel by the Digital Humanities community, taking as its focus postings to Twitter during three different international 2009 conferences. This research considers the use of Twitter as a digital backchannel by the Digital Humanities community, taking as its focus postings to Twitter during three different international 2009 conferences. The resulting archive of 4574 “tweets” was analysed using various quantitative and qualitative methods including a qualitative categorization of twitter posts by open coded analysis, a quantitative examination of user conventions, and text analysis tools. Conference hashtagged Twitter activity does not constitute a single distributed conversation but, rather multiple monologues with a few intermittent, discontinuous, loosely joined dialogues between users. The digital backchannel constitutes a multidirectional complex space in which the users make notes, share resources, hold discussions and ask questions as well as establishing a clear individual online presence. The use of Twitter as a platform for conference backchannels enables the community to expand communication and participation of events amongst its members. The analysis revealed the close knit nature of the DH researcher community, which may be somewhat intimidating for those new to the field or conference. A large proportion of Tweet content involved jotting down notes, triggered mostly by the front channel presentation, suggesting that participants are sharing experiences and to a degree co-constructing knowledge. 24% of posts were categorized as discussions or conversations Traditional conference settings encourage conversation which derive order from turn taking, but when utilizing a digital backchannel, the conversation and communications are disrupted across a non-cohesive network in which the recipients are constantly changing. Users are potentially combating this disorientating context by simply providing step by step accounts of events, in an attempt to bring some coherence and order to the backchannel .
- The public to type in their thoughts and interpretation of museum objects and click ‘send’. Their interpretation become part of the objects history and the display itself via the interactive label system to allow the display of comments directly next to the artefacts. Image: Andy Hudson Smith
- Image: Matt Clayton/Grant Museum Zoology
- Image: Transcribe Bentham
- You don’t have to use social media to feel overwhelmed by information. The development of the Internet means that we have all grown accustomed to being able to consult a vast array of scholarly and other resources from the comfort of our desks. information overload being more filter failure (ignore or read or park or discard!), filter bubbles, bad networks, web personalisation and more. Many researchers may feel that the idea of opening up yet another source of information is unappealing. For some people this can be overwhelming and lead to a feeling of information overload. However, people typically use social media in a way which uses their social or professional networks to filter the vast array of information down to something that is manageable. Once you have built a network of people with interests similar to yours, you can use them to identify resources that you are likely to be interested in. Unlike traditional search technologies, which only return results related to the search terms that you input, social tools harness your network to inform you about issues and developments you may not be aware of.