UTS Research Week 2012:Make me famous with social media

All images taken by Mal Booth unless otherwise specified. Most are available using CC licensing on http://www.flickr.com/photos/malbooth/

1. Why? The background

2. What? The basics: setting it up

3. How? Some tips

4. What else? Things we’ve no time for

WHAT WE’LL BE COVERING

A quick review of some reasons for

researchers to use social media

1. WHY?

“We want to be connected to one another, a desire that the social surrogate of television deflects, but one that social media actually engages.”

Clay Shirky Cognitive Surplus

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Internet_map_1024.jpg

TV was one to many, social media provides us with a facility to establish many to many connections.

“. . . media is the connective tissue of society.”

“. . . things used to be separated into public media . . . and personal media . . . Now those two modes have fused.”

Clay Shirky Cognitive Surplus

For those who don’t know it this photo is of Millennium Bridge. It is a pedestrian only bridge that connects Southbank (near the Tate Modern) to the north of the Thames near St Paul’s Cathedral, seen here in the background. It isn’t so far removed from the quote above.

This is a screen shot of Gary Hayes’ Social Media Count for just 31 seconds in early-February 2011. Pretty impressive statistics. There are any number of ways to present imposing social media statistics, but I guess what really matters is what is being done.See also:http://wallblog.co.uk/files/2011/01/facbook_vs_twitter_infographic.jpghttp://mashable.com/2011/01/24/the-history-of-social-media-infographic http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/growingknowledge http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2wpAsg/s.hbr.org/dPg4wJ

BenefitsConnections

Participation

Interactivity

Communications

Instantaneous

Extends reach

Learning

Sharing wisdom

This is just my own quick & dirty list. I’ve highlighted those that I think are the most important benefits with the most potential for researchers with an imagination.The benefits vary from an individual perspective, so I’ve tried to be generic here. I’ve also avoided the marketing benefits because if social media turns into marketing media, people will flock away from it in droves. Connections means that social media encourages and facilitates connections online and I think that can only be a good thing, whether they be for those you work closely with, other colleagues in your institution, or your global peers. Participation in narrative, discussions and in the exchange of expertise is a major benefit facilitated by relatively simple and free social technologies giving everyone the opportunity to have their say should they wish. Interactivity refers to the fact that social media has changed communications in the media from one-to-many to many-to-many and from a one-way to a two-way process. So Communications have been broadened and now almost everyone has an endless list of possibilities for communicating. Social media can offer you an Instantaneous outlet and sometimes an instantaneous response to questions, observations, invitations, etc. The extension of reach is a huge benefit. It works that way for both organisations and individuals through the sheer global scale of the web. The web doesn’t really care when you are online or where you are - you can connect regardless of those factors. This facilitates access to the wisdom of crowds too. Social media offers major benefits in terms of your learning in many different areas and on many different subjects, simply through writing and creating content on the read & write web. For researchers, perhaps the most important way that you can benefit from the use of social technologies is through the sharing of wisdom. Social media can help you start this through some simple tools that facilitate the sharing of tags, bookmarks and references. Of course you still need to sort the cheese from the chalk, but you probably do that already in traditional media anyway, so all it takes is a bit of time getting familiar with the networks you select and it also helps to have list of trusted advisers you can run to when confused or in need or advice. It can all lead to a deeper collaboration through tools like wikis and the active participation in online communities.See also:http://www.slideshare.net/ignatia/social-media-benefits-for-researchers-def

2. WHAT?The basics:

getting started

The basic building blogs we think will prove useful to researchers.

twitter.com

Connect

Ask

News feed

Test voice

Share

Search

Hashtags to try & follow: #phdchat #shutupwrite #<yourFOR> e.g. #robotics

Use a Twitter client or application like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to track and follow streams of hashtags.

Like FB, but no ads or games

Find & follow peers

Share papers, presentations

Keep a CV there

Job hunting?

Ask questions

Academia.edu can serve as a very effective and academically credible profile for you on the web.The more you use it, the more effective it becomes.

Promote your research

Tap into communities

Home on the web

Learn by writing

Trial & test

Share

Learn

Blogs

museum geek

Explorations of Style

Martyn Pedler

The Three Month Thesis

The Thesis Whisperer

Research Blogging

Research@UTSLibrary

A blog can serve as your home on the web that keeps everything together, gives you a test bed, helps you learn about the read & write web and allows potential collaborators to see more about you than a simple CV/resume. Simply by sharing posts on your blog you can tap into communities that may be able to apply some or all of your research, thus allowing you to recruit participants for your research.

On the left above are a few blogs of academic research interest as examples to get you started.

Profile

Citations

h-index

i10-index

Promote

Social bookmarks

Share

Cloud access

Search/find

Organise

Setting up a Google Scholar profile is a simple and useful exercise in seeing just how famous you are on the (open) web, academically. Try it because it is easy & quick. Here’s how: http://scholar.google.ca/intl/en/scholar/citations.html

Using a social bookmarking tool like Diigo allows you to keep all of the things you find on the web in one place so you can both access them anywhere later and share them (if you want). You can also keep notes about those bookmarks. Join or subscribe to our Diigo group that shares content especially relevant to academic researchers:http://groups.diigo.com/group/research-utslibrary

Some tips

3. HOW?

An image from BikeTank at u.lab. See BikeTank.org This was an amazing 16 week Design Thinking process that welcomed people from all over Sydney to work with UTS academics and staff on socially innovative ways to improve inner city living.

Start with your own tribeIt is probably best to start within your own “tribe” as Seth Godin would say. Then branch out when you feel more comfortable. Networks can be funny things and a bit tribal to begin with so it is easier to stay on familiar ground. Don’t just be happy with family members and close friends on Facebook. You know your interests, so maybe try another platform that seems appropriate.

Perspective

Scale from the tool colour group by Robert MacPherson

Keep what you do in social media in perspective with the rest of your life. It isn’t everything.Try to remember that not everyone is going to be hanging on everything you do or say, so you cannot expect instant responses al the time.

Listen

hello mate by Stephen King

Listen to what is said online and try to understand why. You don’t need to react to everything. Sometimes people are just letting off steam.

Engage

Engaging in social media is probably one of the main things: just be involved. Do more than just lurk.

Play, fail, learn

It really is OK to try some different new things and make mistakes. You won’t be punished or kicked out. Listen to feedback and if in doubt ask someone what the form is, but experiment and play.

RespectRespect for others is key. The social web is multi-cultural and it generally isn’t popular to be intolerant, ignorant or abusive.

Be real

Audrey Hepburn by Douglas Kirkland

Some people say that anonymity is OK, but I don’t agree. I think that you need to be as real as possible to have any real impact. You don’t need to give everything away, but the social web can be really generous with you if you make genuine contributions.

Be careful how much you revealsitting hen by Tae-Geun Yang

There are many ways to make sure you do not give everything away. Just read the guidelines and learn how to adjust the settings of the applications or tools you are using to suit your own interests.

Don’t feed the trollsjolly giants by Steve Croquett

You can read what the trolls are doing on the blog posts of any major newspaper or media enterprise. They enjoy being abusive and hurling insults in ongoing arguments, usually from the safety of their own anonymity. Don’t encourage them with a response.

Be patient

It isn’t always going to happen instantly, although sometimes it does. Wait for people on the other side of the world to wake up and then catch-up on their networks.

ReadingsEverything is

Miscellaneous, David Weinberger

The Long Tail, Chris Anderson

Tribes, Seth Godin

The Wisdom of Crowds, James

Surowiecki

Cognitive Surplus & Here

Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky

The Wealth of Networks,

Yochai Benkler

4. WHAT ELSE?Things we’ve no time to cover

These links, for the scholarly explorer, might also help you to increase your fame simply by participating or joining in, or by saving you time through free web tools.

Networks

http://www.researcherid.com/

http://www.researchgate.net/

http://network.nature.com/

http://www.postgraduatetoolbox.net//

http://sciencestage.com/

http://www.epernicus.com/

Links:http://www.researcherid.com/http://sciencestage.com/http://www.epernicus.com/http://www.researchgate.net/http://www.postgraduatetoolbox.net/http://network.nature.com/

Reference & Citation

http://www.citeulike.org

http://www.mendeley.com/

http://www.zotero.org

http://www.connotea.org

Collaboration

https://docs.google.com/http://wiggio.com

http://www.myexperiment.org

Mindmapping & Data Presentation

http://www.mind42.com

http://www.bubbl.us/

http://flare.prefuse.org

http://www.degrafa.org/

http://popplet.com/

You may also be interested in:http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/01/07/creating-and-distributing-presentations-on-the-webhttp://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mrtu4MmthE (short video on Game Storming)

Utilities & Crowd Sourcing

http://www.backupify.com

https://www.dropbox.com/

http://www.quora.com

http://ideascale.com/

Some related articles:http://www.techi.com/2011/01/quora-has-social-trumped-the-semantic-web/ http://www.quora.com/Drew-Benvie/Quora/What-are-your-top-tips-for-using-Quora-10-from-me-to-starthttp://radar.oreilly.com/2011/01/esri-australia-ushahidi.html http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=question-time