Making researchers famous with social media

UTS Research Week 2012: Make me famous with social mediaAll images taken by Mal Booth unless otherwise speciﬁed. Most are available using CC licensing on http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/malbooth/

WHAT WE’LL BE COVERING1. Why? The background2. What? The basics: setting it up3. How? Some tips4. What else? Things we’ve no time for

1. WHY? A quick review of some reasons forresearchers to use social media

“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.jpgTV 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.” Clay Shirky Cognitive SurplusFor those who don’t know it this photo is of Millennium Bridge. It is a pedestrian only bridge that connectsSouthbank (near the Tate Modern) to the north of the Thames near St Paul’s Cathedral, seen here in thebackground. 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. Prettyimpressive statistics. There are any number of ways to present imposing social media statistics, but I guess whatreally matters is what is being done.See also:http://wallblog.co.uk/ﬁles/2011/01/facbook_vs_twitter_infographic.jpghttp://mashable.com/2011/01/24/the-history-of-social-media-infographichttp://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/growingknowledgehttp://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2wpAsg/s.hbr.org/dPg4wJ

Benefits Connections Participation Interactivity Communications Instantaneous Extends reach Learning Sharing wisdomThis is just my own quick & dirty list. I’ve highlighted those that I think are the most important benefits with themost 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 marketingbenefits 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 agood thing, whether they be for those you work closely with, other colleagues in your institution, or your globalpeers. Participation in narrative, discussions and in the exchange of expertise is a major benefit facilitated byrelatively 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 tomany-to-many and from a one-way to a two-way process. So Communications have been broadened and nowalmost everyone has an endless list of possibilities for communicating. Social media can offer you anInstantaneous outlet and sometimes an instantaneous response to questions, observations, invitations, etc. Theextension of reach is a huge benefit. It works that way for both organisations and individuals through the sheerglobal scale of the web. The web doesn’t really care when you are online or where you are - you can connectregardless of those factors. This facilitates access to the wisdom of crowds too. Social media offers major benefitsin terms of your learning in many different areas and on many different subjects, simply through writing andcreating content on the read & write web.For researchers, perhaps the most important way that you can benefit from the use of social technologies isthrough the sharing of wisdom. Social media can help you start this through some simple tools that facilitate thesharing of tags, bookmarks and references. Of course you still need to sort the cheese from the chalk, but youprobably do that already in traditional media anyway, so all it takes is a bit of time getting familiar with thenetworks you select and it also helps to have list of trusted advisers you can run to when confused or in need oradvice. It can all lead to a deeper collaboration through tools like wikis and the active participation in onlinecommunities.See also:http://www.slideshare.net/ignatia/social-media-benefits-for-researchers-def

2. WHAT? The basics: getting startedThe basic building blogs we think will prove useful to researchers.

twitter.com Connect Ask News feed Test voice Share SearchHashtags to try & follow: #phdchat #shutupwrite #<yourFOR> e.g. #roboticsUse a Twitter client or application like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to track and follow streams of hashtags.

Like FB, but no ads or games Find & follow peers Share papers, presentations Keep a CV there Job hunting? Ask questionsAcademia.edu can serve as a very effective and academically credible proﬁle for you on the web.The more you use it, the more effective it becomes.

Blogs Promote your research Tap into communities museum geek Home on the web Explorations of Style Martyn Pedler Learn by writing The Three Month Thesis Trial & test The Thesis Whisperer Share Research Blogging Research@UTSLibrary LearnA blog can serve as your home on the web that keeps everything together, gives you a test bed, helps you learn about theread & write web and allows potential collaborators to see more about you than a simple CV/resume. Simply by sharingposts on your blog you can tap into communities that may be able to apply some or all of your research, thus allowing youto recruit participants for your research.On the left above are a few blogs of academic research interest as examples to get you started.

Social Profile bookmarks Citations Share h-index Cloud access i10-index Search/find Promote OrganiseSetting up a Google Scholar profile is a simple and useful exercise in seeing just how famous you are on the (open)web, academically. Try it because it is easy & quick. Here’s how: http://scholar.google.ca/intl/en/scholar/citations.htmlUsing a social bookmarking tool like Diigo allows you to keep all of the things you find on the web in one place soyou can both access them anywhere later and share them (if you want). You can also keep notes about thosebookmarks.Join or subscribe to our Diigo group that shares content especially relevant to academic researchers:http://groups.diigo.com/group/research-utslibrary

3. HOW? Some tipsAn image from BikeTank at u.lab. See BikeTank.orgThis was an amazing 16 week Design Thinking process that welcomed people from all over Sydney to work with UTSacademics and staff on socially innovative ways to improve inner city living.

Start with your own tribeIt is probably best to start within your own “tribe” as Seth Godin would say. Then branch out when you feel morecomfortable. 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 tryanother platform that seems appropriate.

Perspective Scale from the tool colour group by Robert MacPhersonKeep 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 expectinstant responses al the time.

Listen hello mate by Stephen KingListen to what is said online and try to understand why. You don’t need to react to everything. Sometimes peopleare just letting off steam.

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

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

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

Be real Audrey Hepburn by Douglas KirklandSome people say that anonymity is OK, but I don’t agree. I think that you need to be as real as possible to haveany real impact. You don’t need to give everything away, but the social web can be really generous with you if youmake genuine contributions.

Be careful how sitting hen by Tae-Geun Yang much you revealThere are many ways to make sure you do not give everything away. Just read the guidelines and learn how toadjust the settings of the applications or tools you are using to suit your own interests.

Don’t feed the trolls jolly giants by Steve CroquettYou can read what the trolls are doing on the blog posts of any major newspaper or media enterprise. They enjoybeing abusive and hurling insults in ongoing arguments, usually from the safety of their own anonymity. Don’tencourage them with a response.

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

Readings Everything is The Wealth of Miscellaneous, David Networks, Weinberger Yochai Benkler The Wisdom of Tribes, Crowds, Seth Godin James Surowiecki Cognitive Surplus & Here The Long Tail, Comes Chris Anderson Everybody, Clay Shirky

4. WHAT ELSE? Things we’ve no time to coverThese links, for the scholarly explorer, might also help you to increase your fame simply by participating or joining in, or bysaving you time through free web tools.

Networks http://www.researchgate.net/ http://www.researcherid.com/ http://network.nature.com/ http://www.epernicus.com/ http://www.postgraduatetoolbox.net// http://sciencestage.com/Links:http://www.researcherid.com/http://sciencestage.com/http://www.epernicus.com/http://www.researchgate.net/http://www.postgraduatetoolbox.net/http://network.nature.com/

Reference & Citation http://www.citeulike.org http://www.connotea.org http://www.zotero.orghttp://www.mendeley.com/

Collaboration http://www.myexperiment.orghttps://docs.google.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-webhttp://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Pagehttp://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-starthttp://radar.oreilly.com/2011/01/esri-australia-ushahidi.htmlhttp://www.scientiﬁcamerican.com/article.cfm?id=question-time

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Making researchers famous with social media

by Mal Booth on Feb 08, 2012

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