1.
The role of social media in
research and career building
Alberto Alemanno ✪ HEC Paris ✪ www.albertoalemanno.eu

2.
What?
How?
Why?

3.
Premiss
• personal viewpoint
• beyond anectodal evidence
• (modest) attempt at theorising

4.
Disclosure
• believer
• not always as successful
• yet persistent and experimentalist

5.
social media as an essential
part of daily work
communication in the
research field

6.
What?

7.
Social media?

8.
use of social media by scholars
Gruzd, A., Staves, K., & Wilk, A. (2012). Connected scholars: Examining the role of social media in research practices
of faculty using the UTAUT model Computers in Human Behavior, 28 (6), 2340-2350

9.
http://youtu.be/eW3gMGqcZQc

10.
A definition
social media employ mobile and web-based
technologies to create highly interactive
platforms via which individuals and
communities share, co-create, discuss and
modify user-generated content
7 functional blocks:
identity conversations sharing presence
relationships reputation groups

11.
Why?

12.
basic functions
- information channel
- sharing
- dissemination
- propagation
- networking tool
- pedagogical tool
- research tool
- validation (eg. surveys)
- update results of previous scholarship

13.
Social media information cycle
in research

14.
advantages in using social media in research

15.
what I like
• Fast: key enabler for creating, updating and
sharing knowledge
• Immediate feedback
• Bridge the gap between academia & ‘real’ world
• Boost the quality of research motivation

16.
downsides in social media research

17.
what I dislike
• Ownership:
• Great idea wasted in a post blog?
• Working paper on SSRN before acceptance?
• Privacy:
• Personal vs professional life
• Reliability of info:
• Wikipedia entry or blog post
• Overflow/Spamming
• Distraction

18.
How?

19.
How to do it
choose & use the right tool!

20.
How to do it (2)
Not only about tools but…

21.
need to embrace a new
state of mind

22.
teaching setting

23.
How to do it (3)
Need to increase circumstances
in which teaching, research and
‘real world’ meet

24.
Easy solution
Write a blog

25.
Why a blog?
• Easy way to sensitise
students/public with your
research
• Easy way to make it relevant to
them
• Get them hooked by distilling
information useful for…

26.
final exams
forthcoming legislation
pending judgments
and other policy-
related experiences

27.
Too lazy?
Set up a webpage
(yet too static)

28.
Other tools

29.
A few illustrations
• Impact on EU legislative-making
• Impact on EU institutional machinery:
• Behavioural sciences & policymaking
• Transparency Register
• Impact on EU judiciary

30.
1
Impact on EU
policymaking

31.
Plain Packaging

32.
Proposal for TPD
19.12.2012

33.
2
Impact on EU institutional
machinery:

34.
Blog post

35.
3
Impact on EU institutional
machinery:

36.
no job landing

37.
but
• To popularise your research (findings)
• To interact with your two worlds:
• inner (students / research)
• outer (the ‘real world’)

38.
a final
TIP

39.
social media in research

40.
conclusions
• Be realistic:
don’t replace research with social media
• Be a user:
don’t be afraid to experiment

41.
My social media presence