science communication via social media

SCIENCE COMMUNICATION VIA SOCIAL MEDIA

Simon Schneider

Science Communication via Social Media

Organizational and individual perspective

Strategies and Examples

Science Communication via Social Media Simon Schneider

Organizational perspective Increase visibility (Branding, see Kanter and Fine (2010))

supports education (not yet fully used) Supports collaboration (knowledge exchange) Supports „Grass root-Principle“ Fostering transparency – leading to acceptance?

(e.g. large scale technologies) Fostering a dialog with „the public“ Media-Sharing (increase visibility by sharing videos,

slides etc.)


Organizational perspective Marketing of competency/excellence Marketing of services (learn about new demands to

tailor service portfolio) Employee branding and Recruiting Commercialization of research results and services In particular, practitioners working for nonprofit

organizations can benefit from adopting social media due to their often-limited monetary resources. (Seltzer & Mitrook, 2007; Waters, Burnett, Lamm, & Lucas, 2009; retrieved from: Adoption of social media for public relations by nonprofit organizations; L. Curtis et al. / Public Relations Review 36 (2010) 90–92; Elsevier)


Organizational perspective

Solely having a profile will not in itself increase awareness or trigger an influx of participation.

In April 2006, Facebook opened its registration process to organizations, and more than 4000 organizations joined within 2 weeks

(Source : Engaging stakeholders through social networking: How nonprofit organizations are using Facebook; R.D. Waters et al. / Public Relations Review 35 (2009) 102–106; Elsevier)


Organizational perspective Waters (2007) found that there are significant differences

in the utilization of interactive elements and the skill at communicating about organizational successes with their stakeholders between different types of Non-Profit organizations (e.g. arts and humanities, education, religion, etc.). -> leading to the question: Are there differences between different Sciences in their use of social media?

Of the 204 non-profit organizations with a Facebook profile (within the 2007 study), more than one-third (36%) did not use the discussion board within the past month.

(Source: Engaging stakeholders through social networking: How nonprofit organizations are using Facebook; R.D. Waters et al. / Public Relations Review 35 (2009) 102–106; Elsevier)


Organizational perspective Social Media Strategies of Research Organizations share the idea of

a two-way symmetry within communication. But: Facebook profiles are oftentimes used in a two-Way asymmetrical mode, not taking the possibilities of a true dialog into account.

Waters and Jamal found, that public information and press agentry (propaganda) were used more often than two-way asymmetry and two-way symmetry. - „While the provision of information demonstrates a willingness to share information, a follower of these nonprofit organizations’ Twitter accounts might sense an unwillingness to answer questions or respond to others’ comments.”

(Source: Tweet, tweet, tweet: A content analysis of nonprofit organizations’ Twitter updates; R.D. Waters, J.Y. Jamal / Public Relations Review 37 (2011) 321– 324; Elsevier)


Example Fraunhofer Transition to new CI/CD in 2011 and 2012 Website relaunch of Fraunhofer Gesellschaft

as well as all separate Institutes Change in communication culture (from

information to dialog, from facts and figures to 3M-principle (Moving, Meaningful, Memorable)

Currently less than 50% of 72 institutions are active social media users – nevertheless, nearly all PR-professionals from Fraunhofer see the increasing value of Social Media

(Source: Oliver Mauroner; Social Media im Wissenschaftsmarketing - Strategien und Nutzungskonzepte für Twitter, Blogs und Social Networks; wissenschaftsmanagement 5 • 2011)


Example Fraunhofer Social Bookmarking, followed by twitter (as

supplement to Newsletters and RSS-feeds) Central Fraunhofer Twitter account

(@fraunhofer), 8990* followers are journalists, scientists, industry partners, students etc.

Blogs are identified as major key medium (mid-term perspective) – Blog blog.iao.fraunhofer.de doubled traffic to the website within one year of existence


* Stand 22.5.2014


Example Fraunhofer Fraunhofer website as „Landing Page“ for all social

media channels Connection into the Science-Blogosphere as crucial

milestone Cross-Media strategy connects Social Media with

„traditional Media“ Social Media Strategy as integral part of communication

strategy Permanent evaluation and content analysis as well as

feedback analysis Key target groups:

shot-term: Media and Studentsmid-term: Scientists, Politicians, Industry partners



Example Fraunhofer

Social Media Use of 72 Fraunhofer Institutes, 2011



Example Fraunhofer

Strategic Social Media for Science Marketing at Fraunhofer

Press and Media

Students, Young Scientists

Companies, Industry

Science Community

Politics, research funding

Employees

Twitter Quick response, fast information, Networking

Information, Career Service, Contacts

Networking, Information (Events)

Networking, Information (Events)

Information (Events, Projects)

Rapid response, fast information

Blogs Emotional and subjective topics, archive

Infotainment (blogs about daily work)

Information (Project-blogs), Dialog



Information, Knowledge transfer

Social Networking

Networking, Dialog

Image building, reception, Dialog

Networking, Dialog

Networking, Dialog

Networking, Dialog

Individual networking (partners, customers)

Media Sharing Background information for complex issues

Background information, knowledge transfer

Background information, competency



Information, knowledge transfer

Wiki Knowledge transfer, media agenda

Knowledge transfer

Knowledge transfer

Knowledge transfer, knowledge exchange

Knowledge transfer

Internal science management



More Examples - Fraunhofer


Example National Geographic

www.facebook.com/natgeo2011: 7 Mio LikesYesterday: 26 Mio Likes

Concept of FB-profile:Sharing pictures, linking toNG-documentations on otherplatforms


More Examples http://science.nasa.gov/connect/


http://science.nasa.gov/connect/

More Examples

“In an effort to foster a more open, transparent and accessible scientific dialogue, we’ve started a new effort aimed at inspiring pioneering use of technology, new media and computational thinking in the communication of science to diverse audiences. Initially, we’ll focus on communicating the science on climate change.” (Google.org)


More Examples – LMU (RSS is Dead?)


More Examples – MIT (http://connect.mit.edu/)


Individual perspective Increase visibility Increase network (decrease mesh-size) Increase quality Increase Indicators of Excellency (Quotations, etc.) Faster publication (The battle of Publishers vs. Open

Access) Quick response and feedback (e.g. within publishing:

both preprint commentary, such as at http:// arXiv.org, and post publication review)

Global informal collaboration (e.g. Facebook helped researchers identify thousands of fish specimens in under a week)


Individual perspective Skill-building (e.g. writing) Software support No value in terms of qualification (not yet) – strong

influence on traditional scientific metrics (citation index, article downloads, etc)

Initiate citizen science projects (www.scistarter.com) Crowdfunding (www.kickstarter.com)


Individual perspective "Simply put, there's not much tweeting from the ivory

tower." In a survey of 1,600 researchers in the US, Greenhow

and Gleason found that only 15 percent use Twitter, 28 percent use YouTube and 39 percent use Facebook for professional purposes. Those who do mainly use social media to find collaborators and disseminate their work and the work of others; they do not use it largely in their teaching of students.

"Academia is not serving as a model of social media use or preparing future faculty to do this."

(Source: C. Greenhow and B. Gleason, 'Social scholarship: Reconsidering scholarly practices in the age of social media', British Journal of Educational Technology, 19 Mar 2014, DOI: 10.1111/bjet.12150)


Individual perspective Social Media tools are already part of German

sciences: Wikis are used by more than 95% of scientists, online archive and -databases (79%), Mailing lists (76%) and Content Sharing/Cloud-Services like Dropbox or Slideshare (68%), are used for professional purposes

scientists consider video conference systems (e.g. Skype) or Video sharing (e.g. YouTube).

(Source: Daniela Pscheida, Steff en Albrecht, Sabrina Herbst, Claudia Minet, Thomas Köhler: Nutzung von Social Media und onlinebasierten Anwendungen in der Wissenschaft Erste Ergebnisse des Science 2.0-Survey 2013 des Leibniz-Forschungsverbunds „Science 2.0“)


Individual perspective Science communication as well as science management

units are not as enthusiastic as scientists themselves about social media – nevertheless social media is seen as increasingly important

There is a strong divide between professional use and private use.

Twitter is seen by scientists as a hype, only 10% of scientists actively use Twitter in Germany

Specialized scientific tools such as education management systems or bibliographic systems do not use their potential (nearly 50% do not use or don‘t know such systems)

(Source: Daniela Pscheida, Steff en Albrecht, Sabrina Herbst, Claudia Minet, Thomas Köhler: Nutzung von Social Media und onlinebasierten Anwendungen in der Wissenschaft Erste Ergebnisse des Science 2.0-Survey 2013 des Leibniz-Forschungsverbunds „Science 2.0“)


Individual perspective In the UK (2007):

• 77% of life scientists participated in some type of social media• 50% viewed blogs, discussion groups, online communities, and social networking as beneficial to sharing ideas with colleagues• 85% saw social media affecting their decision making

Many scientists perceive Facebook and Twitter, for example, as unprofessional platforms that may compromise or threaten years of life-changing research.

(Source: Van Eperen and Marincola: How scientists use social media to communicate their research. Journal of Translational Medicine 2011 9:199)


Individual perspective

There is mounting evidence to suggest that an active online presence may directly impact a researcher’s credentials as measured through traditional metrics. (e.g. tweeting and blogging about papers led to spikes in the number of article downloads, even for older literature that had been available for years without much previous attention).

For articles deposited in the preprint server arXiv, Twitter mentions were positively correlated with rapid article downloads and citations appearing only months after deposition

(Source: Shuai X, Pepe A, Bollen J (2012) How the scientific community reacts to newly submitted preprints: Article downloads, Twitter mentions, and citations. PLoS ONE 7: e47523. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0047523 )


Individual perspective There is a pressing need for scientific institutions

to offer formalized training opportunities for graduate students and tenured faculty alike to learn how to effectively use this new technology.

(Source: Bik HM, Goldstein MC (2013) An Introduction to Social Media for Scientists. PLoS Biol 11(4): e1001535. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001535)



New tools for tracking a researcher’s output include Google Scholar profiles (http://scholar.google.com), ImpactStory (http://impactstory.org), and the Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) initiative (http://orcid. org).


In a 2011 study, only 2.5% of UK and US academics had established a Twitter account

(Source: Priem J, Costello K, Dzuba T (2011) First-year gradute students just wasting time? Prevalence and use of Twitter among scholars. Metrics 2011 Symposium on Informetric and Scientometric Research. New Orleans, Louisiana, United States)


http://scholar.google.com/

http://impactstory.org/

http://orcid/


(Source: Bik HM, Goldstein MC (2013) An Introduction to Social Media for Scientists. PLoS Biol 11(4): e1001535.doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001535)


Examples from an individual perspective

A projects aimed at changing the perception of science and scientists themselves has recently gone viral in the online science world: the hashtag #iamscience (raised more than 6.700$ on kickstarter, soon to be turned into a book and podcast)


Get more out of Twitter Tweeting from conferences (discussing cutting-

edge research developments, linking to journal articles or lab websites, e.g.) can introduce other scientists to valuable content, and consequently provide networking opportunities for users who actively post during meetings.



Get more out of Twitter Journalists and scientists may be additionally

introduced to new groups of researchers (particularly early-career scientists) with relevant and related interests; conference tweeting can thus serve to enhance in-person networking opportunities by expanding these activities to online spheres.



Get more out of Twitter

Create a Global Meeting

#AGU12 may attract 10′s of thousands of participants but there are lots of us who didn’t make it …

In ages past (say, 5 years ago) we’d miss a conference and really regret a lost opportunity. But not anymore. Because of the #agu12 tweet stream and because a portion of my twitter community DID attend, I don’t feel that regret.

(Source: Wading into a Conference Tweet-Stream, 10 December, 2012 by Liz Neeley, COMPASSBLOGS, http://compassblogs.org/blog/2012/12/10/wading-into-a-conference-tweet-stream/)


Get more out of Twitter Scheduling

Tweets from colleagues, presenters and conveners as reminders



Get more out of Twitter Live-tweeting

keeping tabs on quotable quotes, key concepts, and conversations

add richness and depth by sharing links to related materials and comments



Get more out of Twitter Keeping Track

who is covering which stories, what ideas are gaining traction, and how science stories are playing out beyond the scientific community.



The economic Value of Social Media for Science For Organizations

Membership engagementFundraisingEffective collaboration (e.g. editing)Cost reduction (e.g. skype)Marketing of Services

For IndividualsEffective collaboration (e.g. publications)cost reduction (e.g. exchange of results)Building reputation


Literature Christine Greenhow and Benjamin Gleason (2014): SOCIAL SCHOLARSHIP: RECONSIDERING SCHOLARLY PRACTICES IN THE AGE

OF SOCIAL MEDIA, British Journal of Educational Technology, DOI: 10.1111/bjet.12150 Oliver Mauroner (2011): SOCIAL MEDIA IM WISSENSCHAFTSMARKETING - STRATEGIEN UND NUTZUNGSKONZEPTE FÜR

TWITTER, BLOGS UND SOCIAL NETWORKS; wissenschaftsmanagement 5 • september/oktober • 2011 Daniela Pscheida, Steffen Albrecht, Sabrina Herbst, Claudia Minet, Thomas Köhler (2013): NUTZUNG VON SOCIAL MEDIA UND

ONLINEBASIERTEN ANWENDUNGEN IN DER WISSENSCHAFT - ERSTE ERGEBNISSE DES SCIENCE 2.0-SURVEY 2013 DES LEIBNIZ-FORSCHUNGSVERBUNDS „SCIENCE 2.0“

Seltzer, T., & Mitrook, M. A. (2007). THE DIALOGIC POTENTIAL OF WEBLOGS IN RELATIONSHIP BUILDING. Public Relations Review, 33, 227–229.

Waters, R. D., Burnett, E., Lamm, A., & Lucas, J. (2009). ENGAGING STAKEHOLDERS THROUGH SOCIAL NETWORKING: HOW NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS ARE USING FACEBOOK. Public Relations Review, 35, 102–106.

Waldemar Dzeyk (2013): EXPLORATIVE DATENAUSWERTUNG UND IDENTIFIZIERUNG VON SCIENCE 2.0-NUTZUNGSTYPEN - Im Auftrag von Goportis – Leibniz-Bibliotheksverbund Forschungsinformation - Eine Untersuchung im Rahmen des Leibniz-Forschungsverbundes Science 2.0

R.D. Waters et al. (2009): ENGAGING STAKEHOLDERS THROUGH SOCIAL NETWORKING: HOW NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS ARE USING FACEBOOK; Public Relations Review 35 (2009) 102–106; Elsevier

Kanter, B., & Fine, A. (2010): THE NETWORKED NONPROFIT: CONNECTING WITH SOCIAL MEDIA TO DRIVE CHANGE. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.

Bik HM, Goldstein MC (2013): AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL MEDIA FOR SCIENTISTS. PLoS Biol 11(4): e1001535. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001535

Van Eperen and Marincola (2011): HOW SCIENTISTS USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO COMMUNICATE THEIR RESEARCH. Journal of Translational Medicine 2011 9:199

R.D. Waters, J.Y. Jamal (2011): TWEET, TWEET, TWEET: A CONTENT ANALYSIS OF NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS’ TWITTER UPDATES; / Public Relations Review 37 321– 324; Elsevier

L. Curtis et al. (2010): ADOPTION OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR PUBLIC RELATIONS BY NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS; / Public Relations Review 36 90–92; Elsevier

Shuai X, Pepe A, Bollen J (2012): HOW THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY REACTS TO NEWLY SUBMITTED PREPRINTS: Article downloads, Twitter mentions, and citations. PLoS ONE 7: e47523. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0047523

Priem J, Costello K, Dzuba T (2011): FIRST-YEAR GRADUTE STUDENTS JUST WASTING TIME? PREVALENCE AND USE OF TWITTER AMONG SCHOLARS. Metrics 2011 Symposium on Informetric and Scientometric Research. New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
