This poster summarizes a study analyzing tweets from the #agu10 hashtag during the 2010 American Geophysical Union meeting to determine if Twitter constitutes scholarly communication. The most prolific Twitter accounts were from institutional accounts like NASA and AGU. Common tweet types included live tweeting of sessions, coordinating meetings, and hallway conversations. While tweets showed information sharing and relationship maintenance, they likely don't replace all functions of in-person conferences. The study aims to better understand scientific communication on Twitter and compare findings to other conferences and blogs.

1. Twitter at scientific meetings:
Scholarly communication?
Christina K. Pikas
Common types of tweets:
Introduction Results •Live tweeting/commentary on sessions
Many scientists use Twitter including at and around The most prolific accounts by far were those from institutional “Holdren on #climate: "We have not reduced our
professional conferences and meetings (Letierce, Passant, accounts including NASA and the organizing society, AGU commitment or our determination to get that problem
Decker, & Breslin, 2010; Weller, Dröge, & Puschmann, (Figure 1). solved." #AGU10”
2011). Is this scholarly communication? Does this replace or “There is some weird magnitude-focal mechanism thing
supplement any of the traditional conference going on in this talk that I don't quite get. #AGU10”
communications (Garvey, Tomita, Lin, & Nelson, 1972) or •Coordinating meetings/providing schedules
is this new? Which of the typical features of scholarly “@eruptionsblog What time is your talk? #AGU10”
communication in science are found in Twitter exchanges?
•Hallway meta-conversations
“@skepticscience If funding an issue perhaps some
This poster reports on work in progress to answer these #scicomm group or @theagu itself could sponsor you to do
questions. In my dissertation I develop a framework to a workshop next year? #agu10”
describe information and communication in science. I am
testing this framework by studying the cases of geoscientists
using twitter at a scientific meeting and using blogs year
round.
Conclusions
Figure 1: #agu10 mentions/replies network, main component, sized by •One reason scientists attend conferences to catch up in their
degree. NASA and AGU are the two most prominent nodes. field. The twitter stream does show pointer information, but
Methods unlike attendees, remote participants will have to read to get
•TwapperKeeper (http://twapperkeeper.com, now defunct) 257 of the 264 tweets @NASA were re-tweets of their press the content.
was used to collect tweets with the official meeting hashtag, release tweets. 566 of the twitterers only tweeted once, and of
#agu10 •A second reason is to meet potential collaborators in person
those, 199 were @NASA
•twitteR (Gentry, 2013) was used to collect additional tweets to establish or maintain relationships. The tweets did show
from the time of the conference some relationship maintenance, but likely direct messages
or e-mails would be used for more sensitive negotiations.
•Some summary statistics were provided by TwapperKeeper
and others were calculated using Excel
•Tweets were imported into Excel and analyzed using the Next Steps
framework elements developed through an analysis of •Complete qualitative coding and analysis
scholarly communication. Emergent codes were added.
•Repeat the analysis for other conferences
Figure 2: Number of tweets per twitterer. •Interview participants on their experiences
Further information
Please contact cpikas@umd.edu . The poster will be
available on SlideShare at http://www.slideshare.net/cpikas
Updates to the study will be posted to my blog at:
http://scientopia.org/blogs/christinaslisrant