Pikas 2013 research day poster 03022013
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Twitter at scientific meetings: Scholarly communication? Christina K. Pikas Introduction Many scientists use Twitter including at and around professional conferences and meetings (Letierce, Passant, Decker, & Breslin, 2010; Weller, Dröge, & Puschmann, 2011). Is this scholarly communication? Does this replace or supplement any of the traditional conference communications (Garvey, Tomita, Lin, & Nelson, 1972) or is this new? Which of the typical features of scholarly communication in science are found in Twitter exchanges? This poster reports on work in progress to answer these questions. In my dissertation I develop a framework to 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. Methods •TwapperKeeper (http://twapperkeeper.com, now defunct) was used to collect tweets with the official meeting hashtag, #agu10 •twitteR (Gentry, 2013) was used to collect additional tweets from the time of the conference •Some summary statistics were provided by TwapperKeeper and others were calculated using Excel •Tweets were imported into Excel and analyzed using the framework elements developed through an analysis of scholarly communication. Emergent codes were added. Results The most prolific accounts by far were those from institutional accounts including NASA and the organizing society, AGU (Figure 1). 257 of the 264 tweets @NASA were re-tweets of their press release tweets. 566 of the twitterers only tweeted once, and of those, 199 were @NASA Conclusions •One reason scientists attend conferences to catch up in their field. The twitter stream does show pointer information, but unlike attendees, remote participants will have to read to get the content. •A second reason is to meet potential collaborators in person to establish or maintain relationships. The tweets did show some relationship maintenance, but likely direct messages or e-mails would be used for more sensitive negotiations. Next Steps •Complete qualitative coding and analysis •Repeat the analysis for other conferences •Interview participants on their experiences Further information Please contact [email protected] . 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/christinasli srant Figure 1: #agu10 mentions/replies network, main component, sized by degree. NASA and AGU are the two most prominent nodes. Figure 2: Number of tweets per twitterer. Common types of tweets: •Live tweeting/commentary on sessions “Holdren on #climate: "We have not reduced our commitment or our determination to get that problem solved." #AGU10” “There is some weird magnitude-focal mechanism thing going on in this talk that I don't quite get. #AGU10” •Coordinating meetings/providing schedules “@eruptionsblog What time is your talk? #AGU10” •Hallway meta-conversations “@skepticscience If funding an issue perhaps some #scicomm group or @theagu itself could sponsor you to do a workshop next year? #agu10”
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Transcript of Pikas 2013 research day poster 03022013
Twitter at scientific meetings:Scholarly communication?Christina K. Pikas
IntroductionMany scientists use Twitter including at and around professional conferences and meetings (Letierce, Passant, Decker, & Breslin, 2010; Weller, Dröge, & Puschmann, 2011). Is this scholarly communication? Does this replace or supplement any of the traditional conference communications (Garvey, Tomita, Lin, & Nelson, 1972) or is this new? Which of the typical features of scholarly communication in science are found in Twitter exchanges?
This poster reports on work in progress to answer these questions. In my dissertation I develop a framework to 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.
Methods•TwapperKeeper (http://twapperkeeper.com, now defunct) was used to collect tweets with the official meeting hashtag, #agu10•twitteR (Gentry, 2013) was used to collect additional tweets from the time of the conference •Some summary statistics were provided by TwapperKeeper and others were calculated using Excel•Tweets were imported into Excel and analyzed using the framework elements developed through an analysis of scholarly communication. Emergent codes were added.
ResultsThe most prolific accounts by far were those from institutional accounts including NASA and the organizing society, AGU (Figure 1).
257 of the 264 tweets @NASA were re-tweets of their press release tweets. 566 of the twitterers only tweeted once, and of those, 199 were @NASA
Conclusions•One reason scientists attend conferences to catch up in their field. The twitter stream does show pointer information, but unlike attendees, remote participants will have to read to get the content.
•A second reason is to meet potential collaborators in person to establish or maintain relationships. The tweets did show some relationship maintenance, but likely direct messages or e-mails would be used for more sensitive negotiations.
Next Steps•Complete qualitative coding and analysis
•Repeat the analysis for other conferences
•Interview participants on their experiences
Further informationPlease contact [email protected] . 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
Figure 1: #agu10 mentions/replies network, main component, sized by degree. NASA and AGU are the two most prominent nodes.
Figure 2: Number of tweets per twitterer.
Common types of tweets:•Live tweeting/commentary on sessions“Holdren on #climate: "We have not reduced our commitment or our determination to get that problem solved." #AGU10”“There is some weird magnitude-focal mechanism thing going on in this talk that I don't quite get. #AGU10”•Coordinating meetings/providing schedules“@eruptionsblog What time is your talk? #AGU10”•Hallway meta-conversations“@skepticscience If funding an issue perhaps some #scicomm group or @theagu itself could sponsor you to do a workshop next year? #agu10”
