Wired Academia: Why Social Science Scholars are using Social Media

Wired Academia:

Why Social Science Scholars are using Social Media

Anatoliy Gruzd* and Melissa Goertzen

Email: [email protected] Twitter: @dalprof

*Assistant Professor, School of Information Management

Director of the Social Media Lab

Faculty of Management, Dalhousie University

Social Media Lab

Academic Social Networking

• Academia.edu

• ResearchGATE.net

SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof

Academic Microblogging

Sciencefeed.com


Academic Blogging

Researchblogging.org


Research Questions

What are the most popular social media tools among

scholars?

Why are scholars starting to use social media?

What is the perceived utility of social media for scholarly

practices?

What are the perceived problems associated with social

media?


Defining Social Media

Broad definition

any website that includes web 2.0 characteristics and contains

some aspect of user-generated content

Examples

social networking sites like Facebook and Academia.edu

microblogging tools like Twitter

video/teleconferencing tools such as Skype

online media repositories such as Flickr

SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof 7

Method

• Online Survey

– Oct. 2010 – Feb. 2011

– ASIS&T, AoIR, INSNA

– 367 participants

SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof 8

76%

under 45

79% Social

Scientists

72% Work

in the UK,

US & CAN

37%

Professors

57%

Women

38%

Grad Students

Survey Demographics

Top five social media sites based on the

frequency of use


Frequent Use

Non-academic soc.networks

Blogs Online document

management Media

repositories Wikis

Occasional Use

Presentation sharing sites

Video/tele conference

Blog Wikis Academic

soc.networks


frequency of use


Intention to Use

Presentation sharing sites

Bibliographic management

Academic soc.networks

Blogs (maintain)

Social bookmarking


frequency of use


Not popular

Virtual worlds

Social bookmarking

Blogs (maintain)

Microblogs Bibliographic management

Concerns:

• time consumption

• privacy

• persistence of digital records

• absence of professional audience

Explaining social media use through

the Uses and Gratifications (U&G) theory

Describes media use based on individuals’ gratification or

psychological needs

“[A]ssumes that media have little or no impact on those

who do not use it, but that people select a particular

medium because it is meaningful” and because it “gratifies

one or more needs” (Chen, 2011)

Applied to both traditional media such as radio and TV, and

non-traditional and more interactive media such as emails,

instant messaging and social media


Explaining social media use through

the Uses and Gratifications (U&G) theory

Raacke & Bonds-Raacke (2008)

Question: Why college students use social networking sites?

Result: Make new friends and locate old friends

Brandtzæg & Heim (2009)

Question: Why users in Norway use social networking sites ?

Result: Connect with new people, keep in touch with friends and

generally socialize

Quan-Haase & Young (2010)

Question: Why people use Facebook?

Result: Sociability, social information, and pastime


Benefits of using social media

among scholarly users


0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

Discovering new funding

Garnering mass media attention

Publishing findings

Maintaining professional image

Soliciting advice from peers

Collaborating with other researchers

Making new research contacts

Promoting current work/research

Discovering new ideas or publications

Following other researchers' work

Keeping up to date with topics

Commonly cited

benefits in the

literature that scholarly

users of social media

mentioned in the prior

studies

Benefits of using social media

among scholarly users


* Based on 315 people who completed Part 2

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

Discovering new funding

Garnering mass media attention

Publishing findings

Maintaining professional image

Soliciting advice from peers

Collaborating with other researchers

Making new research contacts

Promoting current work/research

Discovering new ideas or publications

Following other researchers' work

Keeping up to date with topics

Related benefits of social media use

based on the factor analysis

Expected categories

social benefits: benefits such as making new research contacts;

collaboration: collaborating with other researchers

information dissemination: promoting current work/research

information gathering: keeping up to date with topic.

Social & Info

Dissemination

Information

Gathering

Collaboration

Related benefits of social media use

based on the factor analysis

explains 24%

of the total

variance

explains 16%

of the total

variance

Conclusion

• Most of the scholars in the study already adopted a wide

range of social media sites.

• Non-users were less than 30% (except for virtual worlds,

where this percentage reached 58%).


Conclusion

• Scholars use social media for

1. information gathering,

2. a mixture of social benefits and information dissemination,

3. collaboration.

• People who tend to use social media to promote their

research are also likely to use it to make new research

contacts.


Related study

Gruzd, A., Staves, K., and Wilk, A. (2011). Tenure

and Promotion in the Age of Online Social

Media. Proceedings of the American Society for

Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T)

Conference, October 9-13, 2011, New Orleans, LA,

USA. DOI: 10.1002/meet.2011.14504801154

Gruzd, A., Staves, K., Wilk, A. (2012). Connected

Scholars: Examining the Role of Social Media in

Research Practices of Faculty using the UTAUT

model. Computers in Human Behavior 28 (6),

2340-2350, DOI: j.chb.2012.07.004


• Interviews

– 51 participants

– ASIS&T 2010,

Pittsburgh, PA

http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/meet.2011.14504801154




http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.07.004

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.07.004

Other related papers

Gruzd, A., Black, F.A., Le, Y., Amos, K. (2012). Investigating

Biomedical Research Literature in the Blogosphere: A Case

Study of Diabetes and HbA1c. Journal of the Medical Library

Association 100(1): 34-42. DOI: 10.3163/1536-5050.100.1.007

Gruzd, A., Wellman, B., and Takhteyev, Y. (2011). Imagining

Twitter as an Imagined Community. American. Behavioral

Scientist 55(10): 1294-1318. DOI: 10.1177/0002764211409378


http://dx.crossref.org/10.3163/1536-5050.100.1.007





http://abs.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/07/23/0002764211409378.abstract

http://abs.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/07/23/0002764211409378.abstract

New Book


http://bit.ly/cfpInfluence

Call for Papers

Submission Deadline: April 30, 2013


Special Issue on Measuring Influence in Social Media

Editors:

Anatoliy Gruzd <[email protected]>, School of Information Management, Dalhousie University

Barry Wellman <[email protected]>, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto



References

Chen, G. M. (2011). Tweet this: A uses and gratifications perspective on how active

Twitter use gratifies a need to connect with others. Computers in Human Behavior,

27(2), 755-762.

Raacke, J. and Bonds-Raacke, J. (2008). MySpace and Facebook: Applying the

Uses and Gratifications Theory to Exploring Friend-Networking Sites.

CyberPsychology & Behavior, 11(2), 169-174.

Brandtzæg, P. B. and Heim, J. (2009). Why People Use Social Networking Sites. In

A. A. Ozok & P. Zaphiris (Eds.), Online Communities and Social Computing (Vol.

5621, pp. 143-152). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Quan-Haase, A. and Young, A. L. (2010). Uses and Gratifications of Social Media:

A Comparison of Facebook and Instant Messaging. Bulletin of Science, Technology

& Society, 30(5), 350-361.


Wired Academia:

Why Social Science Scholars are using Social Media

Anatoliy Gruzd and Melissa Goertzen

Email: [email protected] Twitter: @dalprof

Wired Academia: Why Social Science Scholars are using Social Media

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