The document discusses social reporting as a catalyst to promote adoption of social software in research organizations. It begins by providing context on the CSIR's goal to establish a virtual knowledge commons and phases to facilitate adoption. An overview explains social reporting mixes journalism, facilitation and social media to collectively report live from events. The document shifts perspective to viewing social tools as enabling participation and outlines implications like opportunities for social learning. Challenges include organizational readiness and ensuring social reporting doesn't distract from events. It concludes social reporting can foster richer conceptual frameworks and continuous learning experiences to build individual and organizational capacities.

1. Make 2.0 real and relevant:
the potential of
social reporting as a catalyst
to nurture adoption of social software
in a research organisation
Elmi Bester, CSIR
4th
African Conference for Digital Scholarship and Curation
CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa
17 May 2011
www.nedicc.ac.za

2. #digischol I suppose you could say
I’m a SOCIO-cogno-
techno geek

3. Agenda
• Context
• Overview of social reporting
• Perspective shift
• Social reporting in a new light
• Implications
• Challenges
• Conclusions

4. Context (1)
• CSIR Knowledge Commons
– Nurture a culture of knowledge sharing and increase
contactivity
– Physical space AND VIRTUAL SPACE

5. Context (2) – Establishing the Virtual
Knowledge Commons
Phase 1: Infrastructure & capabilities
• Identification and sourcing/setup of the relevant tools
• Build an adequate level of understanding and fluency
• Social reporting as practice framework selected
Phase 2: Adoption & entrenchment (mainstreaming)
• Facilitate adoption as part of knowledge sharing and contactivity
initiatives with a view on the entrenchment of these in the culture
and flow of the organisation
• Measure progress/activity
Phase 3: Value realisation & impact understanding
• Assess and measure the value and impact, as well as the
perceptions of value and impact

6. Context (3)
• Adopted stance as technology steward
– enabling people to discover and appropriate useful
technology
– enable people to find and create content
– express their identity and usefully participate in
communities and networks through these technologies
(From: Digital Habitats: Wenger, White & Smith 2009)

7. Overview of social reporting
“Social reporting is a set of skills and tools mixing
journalism, facilitation and social media to report
collectively and live from an event, capture the moments
of the event and develop interactive conversations.”
http://ictkm.cgiar.org/tutorials/organise-social-reporting-from-events/
• Add a rich multi-modal layer of participation during an event
• (Informal) narrative of event – include more voices and diversity
• Can bring in non-attendees into conversation; reach out
• Place ownership of tools in the hands of community and networks
members. They are allowed to use them in ways that make sense for
them and for their purposes.
• Typical footprints of social reporting include blog posts, video clips,
photos, wikis and microsharing (a familiar list)
References available on http://thinkingknowledge.wikispaces.com

8. Social reporting: Curation (1)

9. Social reporting: Curation (2)

10. Social reporting: Curation (3)

12. Web 2.0 @ ShareFair Cali (May 2010)
• Web 2.0 tools give us the opportunity to allow everyone to be
informed and participate. Here follow some of the channels
that you can use to follow the Feria and engage in:
– Blog, Delicious, Flickr, Facebook Fan page, Twitter
• 200 hundred participants from 18 countries
• 429 Visits for a total of 861 pageviews, by 289 unique visitors,
from 27 countries/territories, reads the blog traffic report for
period May 23-30
• TweetReach, the system to see how far your tweets travel
reported tag #sharefaircali: Reached 31,311 people via 566
tweets, for a total of 280,388 impressions contributed by 57
twitterers

13. Share Fair in Addis (October 2010)
http://youtu.be/fv5oOxAki38

14. #digischol 16 May 2011

15. Extended conversations

16. Shift in our perspectives
Using social media tools
Digital literacies
If we build it, will they
come
Training
……………………….
Adopt social reporting as
practice
Adopting practices ………..
Transliteracy
If we build it, will they
participate
Social learning, learning
about, practicing to do
Lower cost of ‘2.0’ adoption
in other contexts as well
New windows of opportunity
&
&
&
&
&

18. Practising practices
Practise
• perform (an activity) or
exercise (a skill) repeatedly
or regularly in order to
acquire, improve or maintain
proficiency in it
• carry out or perform (a
particular activity, method, or
custom) habitually or
regularly
Practice
• the actual application or
use of an idea, belief, or
method, as opposed to
theories relating to it
• the customary, habitual, or
expected procedure or way
of doing of something
http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0654700#m_en_gb0654700
http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0654670#dws-m_en_gb-m-en_gb-msdict-00002%E2%80%93050935
Social reporting: Documented practice; Regular opportunities; Real experience with
meaningful outputs and results. Opportunity to practise different roles and
practies at different events.
Social reporting: Documented practice; Regular opportunities; Real experience with
meaningful outputs and results. Opportunity to practise different roles and
practies at different events.

19. Social Reporting as an umbrella practice

21. Transliteracy
• Various terms – digital literacies, 21st
century literacies,
new media literacies (imply many literacies)
• Unifying perspective
– It is not about learning text literacy and visual literacy and digital
literacy and social media literacy in isolation from each other, but
about the interaction among these skills and the fluent
switching between multiple modalities
• “the ability to read, write and interact across multiple
platforms, tools and media from signing and orality
through handwriting, print, TV, radio and films, to digital
social networks” (Thomas et al 2007)
Social reporting: Multi-modal; integrate offline & onlineSocial reporting: Multi-modal; integrate offline & online

22. Participatory culture
• Interactivity as an affordance of technology  participation as an
affordance of culture
– Being literate = what it is like to contribute own expertise to a
process that involves many intelligences
• Define participatory culture as one:
– With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and engagement
– With strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others
– With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most
experienced is passed along to novices
– Where members believe that their contributions matter
– Where members feel some degree of social connection with one another
From: Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture , Jenkins et al.
Social reporting: Many-to-many; incentive can be facilitated by active visibility,
encouragement and recognition before, during and after the event; leverage the
energy of event. Opportunity to find ‘natural fit’ – many roles involved.
Social reporting: Many-to-many; incentive can be facilitated by active visibility,
encouragement and recognition before, during and after the event; leverage the
energy of event. Opportunity to find ‘natural fit’ – many roles involved.

23. Social learning, learning about & practicing to do
Researching Your Own Practice: The Discipline of Noticing
John Mason , 2002
Invent&noticeusefulwaysof
usingtools
Invent&noticeusefulwaysof
usingtools
Social reporting: Shared experience affords shared reflection; focused exposure to
possibilities and dynamics.
Social reporting: Shared experience affords shared reflection; focused exposure to
possibilities and dynamics.

24. Lower barriers to adoption
• Skills and setup (perceived)
• Lack of clarity what the benefits might
be (reported)
• Limited normative acceptance
• I just don’t have time to learn all of this
by myself
Why + How + What
Social reporting: Training and coaching available; make benefits from individual and
institutional perspective visible; implicit normative sanctioning; provides re-usable
guidelines, templates and toolkits.
Social reporting: Training and coaching available; make benefits from individual and
institutional perspective visible; implicit normative sanctioning; provides re-usable
guidelines, templates and toolkits.

25. Practical implications
• To plan event & social reporting as one experience
• Be deliberate in creating opportunity for participatory culture
and transliteracy
• Nurture conditions for Social Learning - before, during and
after event
• Replicable infrastructure, guidelines and templates
• Should be able to adopt the tools introduced with minimum
investment (to learn and to buy)
• Many opportunities for social reporting
– Events, courses, field visits
– A group could also opt to do a “social reporting week”

26. Challenges
• Organisational readiness
– ICT infrastructure
– Social media policies & governance
– Culture of experimentation
– Capacity (coaches; coordinators; stewards)
– Volunteerism
• Organisational platforms do not have the same usability
(& analytics) as open platforms
• Can distract focus from the event
• Not yet sure how strong it will be in addressing or
negotiating key institutional barriers & long-standing
normative expectations of scholarly and research
conduct

27. Conclusion
Deeper change than just e-ink
• Richer and multidimensional conceptual
framework
• Coherent, participatory and continuous learning
experience
• Develop individual and organisational capacity

28. Any questions?

29. Elmi Bester
ebester@csir.co.za
elmibester
Elmi Bester
thinkingknowledge.wordpress.com
thinkingknowledge.wikispaces.com
S25 44.717 E028 16.684