A few weeks ago I returned to this blog with some reflections on a article about the use of social media by researchers in Denmark. I was disappointed to see that social media and academia in traditional journalist-based media is still portrayed mostly negatively.
In search of positive Danish experiences with using social media in academic work I called out to the Copenhagen Science Communication Facebook group (closed network). Being vacation time I didn’t manage to collect personal experiences with social media (I’ll give that a try later), but I was so fortunate to be made aware of an awesome reading list on using social media for research collaboration and public engagement. The list is complied by the Impact of Social Sciences Blog by LSE.
Some of the items in the reading list I have already touched upon on this blog (e.g. how Melissa Terras boosted the number of downloads of her scientific articles), but there are also some that are new to me and which add new dimensions to the use of social media in science communication.
Social media for sharing passion
A resource that I enjoyed reading is by Tim Hitchcook, a professor of Digital History at the University of Sussex. Tim Hitchcook doesn’t add anything revolutionary new or surprising to the arguments for using social media, but he phrases many of them very well. For example, I like how he describes social media as the perfect tool for researchers to share their passion for what they do:
The best (and most successful) academics are the ones who are so caught up in the importance of their work, so caught up with their simple passion for a subject, that they publicise it with every breadth. Twitter and blogs, and embarrassingly enthusiastic drunken conversations at parties, are not add-ons to academic research, but a simple reflection of the passion that underpins it.
And he goes on to pin point to two important aspects of using social media. First: Get started on integrating social media into your work from early on and gain by building-up your skills in communication with the public; and second, communicate about the research process itself – not just about the results, findings etc.:
A lot of early career scholars, in particular, worry that exposing their research too early, in too public a manner, will either open them to ridicule, or allow someone else to ‘steal’ their ideas. But in my experience, the most successful early career humanists have already started building a form of public dialogue in to their academic practise – building an audience for their work, in the process of doing the work itself.
Finally, Tim Hitchcook addresses a concern which many researchers I talk to have about using social media. That it is time-consuming, and basically takes time away from doing other important things. Tim Hitchcook however points out that using social media may almost have the opposite effect:
The most impressive thing about these blogs (and the academic careers that generate them), is that there is no waste – what starts as a blog, ends as an academic output, and an output with a ready-made audience, eager to cite it.
I can only encourage you to read the blog post Twitter and blogs are not add-ons to academic research, but a simple reflection of the passion that underpins is in its entirety. And also to take a look at Tim Hitchcook’s own blog Historyonics.
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