Workshop shared with colleagues at School of Education Summer School, 27 June 2015. A digital research profile is what a researcher wants to share about herself and her work online, including some work which may be created online, and research which may be conducted online.

1. www.le.ac.uk
Building and maintaining your digital
research profile
Terese Bird, Educational Designer and SCORE Research
Fellow, Leicester Medical School
School of Education Summer School, 27 June 2015

2. What shall we talk about and do today?
• Introduction
• Map ourselves
• Research cycle/profile
• Social tools
– What they do
– Real life examples
– Ethics
• Change, add, or begin
one thing
Photo by Emma Taylor on Flickr

6. University of Leicester advice

8. Charities making use of images & video

9. Draw your online profile
5 min

10. Academic Digital Profile:
Cristina Costa on Flickr

11. A researcher’s digital profile – what I say
and what I show about myself & my work
• What I say about myself – website, blog
• My work –
– Papers: Academia.edu, ResearchGate
– Presentations & Posters: Slideshare
– Video: YouTube, Vimeo
– Photos & images: Flickr, Instagram, Pinterest
• My reflections – blog
• My search & curation – Scoop.it, Twitter
• Facebook & Twitter notify about all of the above

12. University
staff 2014 :
various
nations,
various
career stages
N=711
(Lupton, 2014)

13. The academic research cycle
(Cann et al., 2011, p. 15)

14. Historical
research tasks
ON THE INTERNET
•Community
•Digital materials
•Discover
•Disseminate
Sengaw.wordpress.com

15. (Swatman, n.d.)

16. • The study initially aimed to explore pre-service teachers’
perceptions and use of social media on their school
placements by setting up groups on Facebook and Twitter.
However, several problems occurred in relation to the
recruitment of participants. It became increasingly clear that
there was significance in the positionality of the researcher as
an “outsider” to the research context and the potential role
for gatekeepers in understanding remote research sites.

17. Reilly (2013): YouTube, sousveillance and the
‘anti-Tesco’ riot in Stokes Croft
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpPM2NXLK-c
17

18. Overview of study:
• N=1018 comments left under four most commented-upon
videos showing eyewitness perspectives on policing of
disturbances
• Study examines whether commentators perceived this
footage as a form of hierarchical sousveillance (inverse
surveillance)
• Little rational debate about the broader issues e.g.
legitimacy of No Tesco campaign and media narratives
often reproduced by commenters
• Only a very small number of users perceived this footage
as hierarchical sousveillance

19. Reilly (2014) Ethical stance for the study
of the ‘Battle of Stokes Croft’
• There did not appear to be a public benefit in exposing these unaware
participants to potential harm through the use of their ‘semi-published’
comments as published artefacts
• Maximum level of disguise possible provided to participants via the
removal of usernames and direct quotes from academic publications.
• “This doesn’t mean that the default position should be to please
participants through the redaction of potentially harmful content from
datasets. [……] This paper has shown the importance of empowering
researchers to make informed ethical decisions that protect the right to
privacy for unaware participants when it is appropriate to do so” Reilly,
2014:13)

20. Caveats: burnout, private/professional mix
• Social media use by researchers:
“The justification for it is bigger than it ever was, but
the problems are bigger than they ever were.”
- Social media in research early adopter

21. Facebook page

22. Facebook
group

23. Blogs – open research notebook

24. Blog for research and teaching
http://pauljreillydot.com
http://pauljreillydot.com

25. Twitter – short messages call
attention to other platforms

26. Storify: curate tweets from conferences
• https://storify.com/PaulJReilly/media-for-social-change-
unconference-birmingham-ci

27. Professional social networking sites:
Linkedin Academia.edu

28. Scoop.it: Research, Curate, and Draw
readers to your project website

29. YouTube – power of video

30. Vimeo – YouTube alternative

31. Flickr & Pinterest– visual research

32. Pinterest – bookmarking (visual)

33. SoundCloud & AudioBoo - audio

34. Slideshare – elevate your presentations

35. Google Docs
– project collaboration

36. Kwiksurveys & SurveyMonkey

37. Tip to make a change, add, or begin:
Try one or two for 10 minutes a day
Task Tool
Show yourself as a presenter YouTube, Vimeo, AudioBoo,
SoundCloud, Slideshare
Show yourself as a writer Blog
Share your findings All (match the format!)
Keep up on hot news in your field Twitter, Facebook, Scoop.it
Collaborate with other
researchers
Google Docs, Google Hangouts,
Twitter, Facebook
Organise Storify, Pinterest, Scoop.it
Your online CV LinkedIn, Academia.edu

38. References
• AberfieldCommunications (2013) Charities in Social Media: The Power of Images, Leeds, [online] Available from:
http://www.aberfield.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Charities-in-Social-Media-The-Power-of-Images1.pdf (Accessed 25
June 2015).
• Barnes, N., Lescault, A. and Augusto, K. (2014) ‘2015 Fortune 500 and Social Media - UMass Dartmouth’, UMass Dartmouth Center for
Marketing Research, [online] Available from: http://www.umassd.edu/cmr/socialmediaresearch/2015fortune500andsocialmedia/
(Accessed 25 June 2015).
• Cann, A. J., Dimitriou, K. and Hooley, T. (2011) Social media: A guide for researchers | Research Information Network, [online] Available
from: http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/communicating-and-disseminating-research/social-media-guide-researchers (Accessed 6
September 2013).
• Costa, C. (2009) ‘My digital academic profile’, Flickr.
• Kontopoulou, K. and Fox, A. (2015) ‘Designing a consequentially based study into the online support of pre-service teachers in the UK’,
Educational Research and Evaluation, Routledge, 21(2), pp. 122–138, [online] Available from:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13803611.2015.1024422?journalCode=nere20& (Accessed 26 June 2015).
• Lenhart, A. (2015) Teens, Social Media and Technology Overview 2015, [online] Available from:
http://www.pewinternet.org/files/2015/04/PI_TeensandTech_Update2015_0409151.pdf.
• Lupton, D. (2014) ‘Feeling Better Connected’: Academics’ Use of Social Media, [online] Available from:
http://www.canberra.edu.au/about-uc/faculties/arts-design/attachments2/pdf/n-and-mrc/Feeling-Better-Connected-report-final.pdf
(Accessed 27 June 2015).
• Ofcom (2014) Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes Report 2014 | Ofcom, [online] Available from:
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/other/research-publications/adults/adults-media-lit-14/ (Accessed 25 June
2015).
• Russell, V. (2014) ‘Using Twitter for Research Projects — University of Leicester’, University of Leicester website, [online] Available from:
http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/cap/marcomms/communications/social/handbook/twitter/using-twitter-for-research-projects (Accessed
25 June 2015).
• Swatman, P. (n.d.) Microsoft PowerPoint - Swatman Ethics & Social Media Research.pptx - Swatman-Ethics-and-Social-Media-