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Social Media & Research

Jeff Rushton – Director of Digital Media

The Office of Communications and Marketing (OCM)

http://louisville.edu/ocm

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Social media describes the online tools and platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. Popular social mediums include blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs.

What is Social Media?

Social Comm. + a “Web 2.0”

Ideal

Global communication, collaboration, dialogue and content generation

by all and for all to access.

Social Media &Web 2.0 Technology

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LONDON'S GLOBAL UNIVERSITY

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/research/ciber/social-media-report.pdf (1,923 social media researchers, 491 non-social media researchers in 215 countries)

1 The three most popular social media tools in a research setting are those for collaborative authoring, conferencing, and scheduling meetings.

2 Awareness of social media among members of the research community is high, but there is a large gap between awareness and actual use for the majority of tools.

3 Researchers in business, health, the biosciences, and the arts and humanities are less likely to use social media professionally than their peers in other parts of the academy.

4 Researchers under 35 are generally more likely to use at least one social media application than the over-35s.

5 Age is in fact a rather poor predictor of social media use in a research context.

6 Professional users of social media are 1.68 times more likely to use a smartphone or other mobile device than non-users; and 2.11 times more likely to use an iPad.

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7 Researchers are using social media tools to support every phase of the research lifecycle: from identifying research opportunities to disseminating findings at the end. They may not be the same tools, and they are certainly not the same researchers, but social media are most definitely making an impact on scholarly workflow.

8 The most popular tools used in a professional research context tend to be mainstream anchor technologies or `household brands’, like Skype, Google Docs, Twitter and YouTube. Researchers seem to be largely appropriating generic tools rather than using specialist or custom-built solutions.

9 The key driver for the take up of social media is pressure exerted by peers outside of the researcher’s own institution. Social media are helping to fulfill the demand for cheap, instant communication between researchers fuelled by the growth of collaborative and interdisciplinary research.

10 Use of social media is usually down to personal initiative, so a clear understanding of the capabilities and benefits of these tools is essential. Time-poor researchers are still unclear about the benefits of social media and this represents a major barrier to their take up. They also have serious concerns about the authenticity of crowdsourced information.

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/research/ciber/social-media-report.pdf

LONDON'S GLOBAL UNIVERSITY

5http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/research/ciber/social-media-report.pdf

11 Users and non-users of social media express almost identical preferences when they look for scholarly information. Their first preference is for the open web, followed by searching licensed econtent through their libraries, followed by asking a colleague.

12 The traditional channels of research dissemination (especially journals, conference proceedings and edited books) are greatly and equally favoured by both social media users and non-users over informal channels such as blogs. Personal dissemination, through channels like blogs, is on a steep upward curve, with implications for publishers especially.

13 Researchers, especially senior researchers, want above all for publishers to make content readable on all platforms. This, together with more progress in linking articles to their underlying data.

14 At the top of researchers wish list, and by a big margin, is a desire to be able to search across the full text of all locally-held licensed e-content using a simple interface like Google. This is seen as a much greater potential benefit than libraries moving into the social media space by offering users, for example, an opportunity to socially tag the library catalogue.

LONDON'S GLOBAL UNIVERSITY

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What social media tools do academic researchers use?

1.Social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus)

2.Blogging (WordPress, TypePad, Blogger)

3.Microblogging (Twitter, Google +, Facebook)

4.Collaborative authoring tools (Google Docs)

5.Social tagging and bookmarking (www.delicious.com/)

6.Scheduling & meeting tools (Google calendar, Skype, G+)

7.Conferencing (Skype, G+, Ustream)

8.Image and video sharing (YouTube, Flickr, Picasa)

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Social media usage

80.5% of researchers use less than 3 social media tools

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NOT just for ages 10-24…

1.91 times more likely to be innovators or early adopters

1.27 times more likely to be found in the arts, humanities and social sciences

0.67 times less likely to be found in biosciences and health

1.68 times more likely to use a smartphone or other mobile device in their lives

1.27 times more likely to say that their main style of research is to work with collaborators in different disciplines &1.58 times more likely to say that peers outside of their institution are extremely influential drivers of social media use

1.23 times more likely to say that students are extremely influential drivers of social media use

0.67 times less likely to say that their main style of research is to work with colleagues in their own department

1.66 times more likely to strongly agree with the proposition that social media enhance academic esteem through the greater visibility it affords them

2.11 times more likely to use an iPad in their lives

Social media research profile

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What drives researchers to social media?

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Barriers to social media in research?

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Dissemination of research findings

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Social media as a part of your research

1.Study, track and find rare diseases (Stanford)• http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2011/08/using-social-media-to-study-rare-diseases/

2.Market research (IBM)• http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/0824_vegemite.pdf

3.For recruiting study participants (Mayo Clinic)• http://www.mayoclinic.org/news2011-rst/6420.html

• http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110427154301.htm (especially for controversial treatment)

4.To identify the history or origin of an event (outrbreak or other health, natural disaster or large-scale event)

• http://bytesizebio.net/index.php/2011/04/25/social-media-used-to-track-disease-outbreak/ Playboy Mansion

• http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128215.600-twitter-to-track-dengue-fever-outbreaks-in-brazil.html

• http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/swinefluchatter/

5.As a complement to traditional research methods• http://www.quirks.com/articles/2011/20110803.aspx

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Major Social Networks

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The center of our social hub

http://louisville.edu/uofltoday + http://louisville.edu/• Facebook http://www.facebook.com/UniversityofLouisville

• YouTube + Vimeo http://www.youtube.com/user/univoflouisville

• Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/uofl/

• Twitter http://twitter.com/uofl

• Foursquare, GoWalla & Scvngr (don’t point to primary site currently)– http://foursquare.com/uofl

• Blog http://uoflblog.com

• Other social networks we are on but not heavily participating in:– Ustream, Meetup.com

– more…

UofL Social Media?

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More about social networks

1.Infographics

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Let’s talk about you…

Open Q&A

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Contact

OCM Social Media ContactJeff Rushton

Office of Communications and Marketing (OCM)

jeff.rushton@louisville.edu

502-852-8119

UofL Social Media Group

Facebook search “UofL Social Media”

Google Plus invite

Send Gmail account jeffrushton@gmail.com