Social media: introduction to useful tools for academics

Friday 28th November 2014Tanya Williamson

Overview

1. About social media

2. Discussion: The potential benefits

3. Introduction to useful social media tools

4. Practical: Exploration of tools

5. Feedback to group

6. Discussion: The potential pitfalls

7. Engagement and impact

About social media

Social media

Digital services, websites,

apps, cloud-based

Sharing and

creating content

Create user

profiles

Networking and communicating

Generates usage data

• Connect and share with others

• Reduce isolation of solo researchers

• Keep up to date

• Improve traffic to your other web content

• Continue to use if/when you leave this Institution

• Break down hierarchies

• From broadcasting to engagement

What are the potential benefits?

One which stands out is Twitter

Communication(All social media are about communication!)

• Follow interesting accounts @lancasterunilib

• Keep up to date• Search tweets and save

searches• Aggregate tweets or take

part in ‘tweetchats’ using hashtags #acrwri

• Make lists of accounts• Share, converse, ask, link

to other web content

Has anyone heard of YouTube?!

Video sharing

• Subscribe to and create channels

• Upload and share videos• Very popular information

source for ANY topic• Search for and share useful

videos• Share your own knowledge

and comments

Aimed at academics and researchers:

Academia.edu ResearchGate Piirus

Profiles and networks

• Find others with similar interests• Share outputs, expertise, posts, questions and answers• Build social networks based on affiliation, discipline,

methodology• Increase opportunity for collaboration• Analytics

SlideShare

Presentation sharing

• Easily upload your presentation to share with others

• Search for other interesting presentations

• Use alongside other social media tools

Creating, storing and sharing presentationsPrezi, Emaze

Gather, store, share and cite your reading. Both require additional download of software.

Mendeley Zotero

Reading and referencing

Figshare

Data and code sharing

• Easily upload your datasets, figures, images etc

• Each will be assigned a DOI and will be easy to share and cite

• Search for data (including negative data) and figures

Github Collaborate and share code

Eventbrite Lanyrd

Events

• Find and create events in your area or on a topic• Easily manage events• Tie in with other social media tools• Lanyrd enables sharing of presentations, profiles and follow up

Practical

Timing Activity

15 minutes • Choose a tool to explore• Read the ‘About’ page or take a tour of the features• Create a profile• Explore!

• Try searching for people, your department, association, or activity in an area of interest to you.

• Was it easy to find something interesting?• Did you find anything useful?• How could YOU use this tool?

15 minutes Feedback to the group

• Share with the group your first impressions of the social media tool you explored

• Would you go back to explore it further?

• Can you anticipate any drawbacks?

Feedback

• Privacy and the blurring of boundaries between personal and professional use

• The risk of jeopardising their career through injudicious use of social media

• Lack of credibility

• The quality of the content they posted

• Time pressures

• Social media use becoming an obligation

• Becoming a target of attack

• Too much self-promotion by others

• Possible plagiarism of their ideas

• Commercialisation of content and copyright issuesFrom Lupton, 'Feeling better connected' Social media us by academics' (2014)#

• Be aware of University advice: http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/iss/security/training/social-networking/

What are the potential pitfalls?

• Altmetrics: metrics based on the social web

• Track how many times a research paper (or any other digital content with a DOI) receives ‘attention’

Engagement and impact?

ImpactStoryAltmetric