The Benefits and Barriers for Social Media for Scientists
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Social media provides both benefits and challenges for scientists. It allows for quick connection and collaboration with other researchers, but does not directly correlate with increased citations. While it can help with outreach, communicating science to the public remains challenging. Many scientists see communication as filling knowledge deficits in the public, but this "deficit model" may not be effective. Effective social media use for outreach requires understanding audience and goals.
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The Benefits and Barriers for Social Media for Scientists
- 1. The Benefits and Barriers of Social Media for Scientists Craig R. McClain @DrCraigMc
- 2. Deep Sea News D Deep Sea News SN deepseanews.com @deepseanews #deepsn
- 3. Why Should I Even Give A Flying Flip?
- 4. If I Google You If IWhat Would I Find? Google You, What Would I Find? t to be or not. . n ether you wa one else is online wh 1.You’re on identity some curating your t t. 2.If you’re no your conten re you create 3.Make su
- 6. er the age of 30, human race is und re than half of the Mo t the internet. known life withou they've never Guess how they fee l about social media ?
- 7. 3 out of 4 Americans use social technology -Forrester, The Growth of Social Technology Adoption, 2008
- 8. All media is now social media om wer away fr e po he s shifting th blishment, t nology i esta Tech lishers, the pub editors, the l. media elite. re in contro ho a he people w Now it's t ert Murdoch -Rup
- 9. If Facebook were a country it would be the third most populated in the world ahead of the United States In Billions ! China 1.35 India 1.21 Facebook 1.06 U.S. 0.31 ! http://news.yahoo.com/number-active-users-facebookover-230449748.html
- 10. 5 billion pieces* of content a week on Facebook in 2010 * web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc. http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/02/15/new-facebook-statistics-show-big-increase-in-content-sharing-local-business-pages/
- 11. 1/3 of women aged 18-34 check Facebook when they first wake up ! ...even before going to the bathroom http://www.dailyillini.com/features/health_and_living/article_323b7fd8-966a-11e2-b435-001a4bcf6878.html
- 12. As of April, 500 million total users and more than 200 million active users on Twitter http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/resource-how-many-people-use-the-top-social-media/
- 14. So What Do I Do Online?
- 15. Social media is a tool like a microscope. It can be used well and badly. It can be used to do a lot of different things. ! -Jon Eisen
- 16. social media is like water. on its own, water does some cool things, but when combined with other compounds it enabled the evolution of all forms of life. ! social media on its own is nice, but when combined with other tools, it is enabling everything to evolve, from communications to business to politics to marketing ! Mike Volpe VP Marketing HubSpot
- 17. What is your online mission? Personal? Outreach? Science? Consume, Share, Filter, Generate?
- 18. * Inreach versus Outreach *James Brown has nothing to do with this. I simply have always wanted to put a photo of James Brown dancing in a presentation. I also want to make sure you are still awake.
- 20. In terms of inreach, social media has become an important tool in quickly connecting with other researchers (Priem and Costello 2010). ! “This is the dilemma faced by researchers in the electronic age. How can we be expected to produce both quality and quantity and to yield influential research? We simply cannot—at least not on our own. Instead, we must rely on networking and collaborations to build our research programs and to remain influential in our fields in order to advance scientific knowledge. With this collaborative view in mind, scientific influence involves the body of work of both individual researchers and of research groups as a whole.”
- 26. Conferences
- 27. Blogs written by scientists for scientists are becoming common and important places for the exchange of ideas
- 28. One way that the social media appears does not to impact a scientific career is a direct link of social media mentions and citations on a scientific article. ! In an analysis of 1.4 million documents in PubMed and Web of Science published from 2010 to 2012, Haustein et al. (2013) found no correlation between a paper or a journals citation count and Twitter mentions.
- 29. As argued by the authors of the study (Haustein et al. 2013), this suggests that Twitter mentions do not reflect traditional research impact. Indeed, social media mentions may capture a previously unquantified impact of a scientist’s career (Priem et al. 2012). crea ill In dia W l Me ocia S sure xpo se E
- 33. Most of Social Media Outreach is a Mystery ! We often don’t know the goal or the path.
- 34. Science: A Public Relations Nightmare? this public rela.ons nightmare” is been the pla4orm in which scien.sts have been encourage to “take responsibility for science communica.on in a digital age” (Wilcox 2012). may not simply be an issue of the public percep.on on the credibility or worth of scien.sts but rather the strategies we use to communicate the public.
- 35. Are Scientists Poor Communicators? Nearly 30% of scien.sts in one study stated that “scien.sts are poor interpersonal communicators or that nonscien.sts perceive them to be uniformly inept at communica.on, regardless of their actual abili.es” (Ecklund and Lincoln, 2012). ! In the same study 37% of scien.sts placed the blame poor outreach efforts on scien.sts themselves (Ecklund and Lincoln, 2012). writer/journalist25%- Open Lab 2013 anthology of the best science writing online graduate/medical-student17%- teacher3%scienceprofessional8%- research-scien6st45%- medical-doctor2%-
- 36. Are Scientists Not Engaging the Public? • Scien.sts do not believe that their colleagues actually engage in outreach (Ecklund and Lincoln, 2012) ! • Nearly half of all academic scien.sts ere engaged in some type of outreach (Ecklund and Lincoln, 2012) • Scien.sts have a posi.ve aOtude toward par.cipa.ng in public engagement (Ecklund and Lincoln, 2012). ! • 20% of respondents engaged online personally (Allgaier et al. 2013) • 44% of German and 65% of United States scien.sts thought that these channels “can strongly influence how the public thinks about science” (Allgaier et al. 2013)
- 37. Are Scientists Not Engaging the Public? • Over 62% of respondents give media interviews • 59% provide assistance to government agencies • 59% give talks or presenta.ons to the general public. ! • 39% do not, and never will, use TwiZer for academic/professional work; • 35% say the same for Facebook (though 58% use TwiZer and Facebook for personal use).
- 38. Are Scientists Not Engaging the Public? • Wilkinson and Weitkamp (2013) survey of researchers whose work had been highlighted in policy-‐relevant newsleZers ! ! • “For the majority of researchers, there has been liZle change in the use of media to communicate with non-‐academic audiences over the past five years. ! • As Table 3 indicates social media are rarely used as a means for communica.ng with non-‐ academics, • 73% (n=97) never used TwiZer, • 64% (n=84) never used blogs and • 51% (n=67) never use online news forums.
- 39. Are Scientists Not Engaging the Public?
- 40. Is the Deficit Model Effective? • 70% of scien.sts express a percep.on of public ignorance • 30% blame a disinterest in science • “widespread lack of scien.fic knowledge among the general public is a difficulty in communica.ng advanced scien.fic discoveries beyond the borders of the academic science community”. • “Scien.sts view their role in outreach as mainly to fill a void • in knowledge among members of the general public“ ! Scholars have examined dynamics such as ! • how real-‐world exposure to science stories • • influences science beliefs (Hwang & Southwell, 2009), how narra.ve structure may affect interpreta.on (Dahlstrom, 2010; Yaros, 2006), and how various mediums may differen.ally affect public percep.ons (Nisbet et al., 2002)
- 41. Is the Deficit Model Effective? Vaccine Risk Percep.ons and Ad Hoc Risk Communica.on: An Empirical Assessment-‐Dan M. Kahan ! ! • Based on survey and experimental methods (N = 2,316), the Report presents two principal findings: 1. that vaccine risks are neither a maZer of concern for the vast majority of the public nor an issue of conten.on among recognizable demographic, poli.cal, or cultural subgroups; 2. that ad hoc forms of risk communica.on that assert there is moun.ng resistance to childhood immuniza.ons themselves pose a risk of crea.ng misimpressions and arousing sensibili.es that could culturally polarize the public and diminish mo.va.on to cooperate with universal vaccina.on programs.
- 42. Is Social Media Engaging the Public? • Most will not have direct contact with most of the public via social media • Tradi.onal media is s.ll the gateway for informa.on (SuZon et al.) • “The majority of our ques.onnaire respondents indicated that they sought informa.on using • mobile phones to contact friends or family (54%); • through informa.on portals and websites adver.sed in tradi.onal media (76%); • by accessing alterna.ve news sources and individual blogs (38%); • through discussions on various web forums (15%); • from photo-‐ sharing sites such as Flickr or Picasa (10%). • Just less than 10% of our respondents used TwiZer, in spite of the ac.ve media coverage on the topic. “
- 43. Is Social Media Engaging the Public? Deep Sea News ! D SN •At www.deepseanews.com the average length spent on the website in 2013 was 54 seconds •87.8% of visitors only read a single post. •Only 12% of page views were by returning visitors. •More than 50% of readers never commented and near 25% only commented one or twice Deep Sea •When surveyed readers were asked why they did not comment, “the reader did not feel qualified News (28.6%), the reader had nothing to add (25.7%), or the reader did not generally comment on blogs (17.1%).” •This suggests that social media engagement through blogs may be short, superficial, and single serving.
- 44. rd Ne st ru fT o
- 47. Is All Information Being Consumed? • One assump.on is that if you broadcast any informa.on via social media it will be consumed by the public. • This is based on the idea that all social media pla4orms have massive usage. • In a given month, one billion people visit YouTube to watch 6 billion of hours of video. Yet, many videos receive few views and less than 10% account for the majority of views (Cheng et al. 2008). • • Posts published at Deep-‐Sea News Deep Sea News for 2013 (N=299), garnered 1,666,119 page views. Of these views, 82.6% were received on the top 20 posts. The lowest ranking 200 posts accounted for just 5% of total 2013 views. • •
- 48. Is Social Media Capital Offline Capital? • In a study with 49 par.cipants, 588 requests to help with a class project of labeling photos online nearly 80% of the requests were unanswered (Stefanone et al. 2012). • Ten par.cipants received no response and nine only one response. Stefanonone et al. (2012) • Another study on 2,000 Norwegian revealed that those who engaged in social media had significantly higher face-‐to-‐face interac.ons, number of acquaintances, and friends with differing views than themselves (Brandtzaeg 2012) • Thaler et al (2012) suggest that social media may be crea.ng a public only superficially involved with the environmental movement, i.e. slack.vism • “Facebook allow people to “like” a topic without requiring any addi.onal commitment. While that person may feel they are lending support to the topic, this can ar.ficially increase the number of people who appear to be involved in an issue (Golden 1998; Furlong 2004).”
- 49. Will Social Media Outreach Benefit A Scientist’s Career? ?
- 50. How and when do things go viral? Berger and Milkman (2012) • The results indicate that posi.ve content is more viral than nega.ve content • Virality is par.ally driven by physiological arousal. • Content that evokes high-‐arousal posi.ve • Debunking (awe) or nega.ve (anger or anxiety) emo.ons is more viral. Content that evokes low-‐arousal, or deac.va.ng, emo.ons (e.g., sadness) is less viral.
- 51. How and when do things go viral?
- 52. D Deep Sea News SN Deep Sea News
- 53. Is Engagement Always Positive? "Your article are such crap and very unscientific. The 3 explanations in your blog, on echinoderms wasting away had no real basis. The claim the because it happened on the East Coast, also happening a decade ago, but you left out that there are plenty of leaks on the East too (Love Canal). Then to make a claim that no other life in the pacific has been showing odd symptoms is an opinion, please be more clear in your work, all you are doing is feeding into misinfo and likely are involved with Koch or some other pro industry. Like reading all the Forbes, op eds. Next you will be citing them about how radiation is just like a banana." "I've been seeing your LYING disinformation news on Fukushima on MY Facebook page. My writers and I tell the truth about Fukushima radiation and we will not allow you to lie and therefore be guilty of crimes against humanity. You'll be exposed on my website as I'll have one of my writers investigate this disinfo source and then do a write up. My website gets over a million views/month and FB pagecurrently hosts over 231,000 subscribers. You can either tell the truth, and we won't tell the truth about your lies, or continue lying and read what I said would be done above." "The JEWS did Fukushima Sabotage and False Flag with HAARP. The JEWS did 9-11 Sabotage and False Flag with HAARP. JAPAN TSUNAMI QUAKE C AUSED PURPOSELY WITH HAARP. Fukushima Sabotage was done with HAARP. The Stuxnet Computer Virus was made in Dimona Israel. HAARP, Fukushima, Sabotage, Benjamin Fulford, Stuxnet Computer Virus, Dimona Israel, Siemens Computers, False Flag,” The Stuxnet computer worm is perhaps the most complicated piece of malicious software ever built; DESIGNED BY JEWS TO SABOTAGE NUCLEAR POWER STATIONS. When are they going to PROSECUTE the JEW OWNERS of HAARP?" "This article is ridiculous.You are no better than all the fear mongers out there, only instead of actually being concerned about this environmental crisis, you're completely trying to deter everyone from the reality that fukushima is serious and something that needs to be watched closely, as it WILL have dire effects on the entire planet. If you honestly think that fukushima is nothing to be concerned about, you should just kill yourself, you're doing this world absolutely no good."
- 54. The anonymity of the internet makes bullies. How do we deal with them?
- 55. Now Go Out There And Get Social!
- 56. social media is like water. on its own, water does some cool things, but when combined with other compounds it enabled the evolution of all forms of life. ! social media on its own is nice, but when combined with other tools, it is enabling everything to evolve, from communications to business to politics to marketing ! Mike Volpe VP Marketing HubSpot
- 57. Recognize Social Media Outreach is still an experiment. One that you can shape and take part in. That’s exciting
- 58. Deep Sea News http://deepseanews.com Deep Sea News D SN @DrCraigMc http://craigmcclain.com most images courtesy of ShutterStock