Social Media & Academia

Why universities should start taking social media far more seriously  

Social media is a risky space. Many people have learned this the hard way ...

Employers must understand the risks involved as they and their stakeholders set out to engage with the wider community on social media...Universities in South Africa have neglected the development of social media policies until now. 

From: The Conversation, January 18 2016. Article by Miemie Struwig & Amanda van den Berg(CC BY-ND 4.0)

 

How Articles Get Noticed and Advance the Scientific Conversation

Gozde Ozakinci, a lecturer at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, offers an exemplary use of Twitter in a research workflow.

I dip in and out during the day and each time I have a nugget of information that I find useful. I feel that with Twitter, my academic world expanded to include many colleagues I wouldn’t otherwise meet. … The information shared on Twitter is so much more current than you would find on journals or conferences.

The good news is you’ve published your manuscript! The bad news? With two million other new research articles likely to be published this year, you face steep competition for readers, downloads, citations and media attention — even if only 10% of those two million papers are in your discipline.

So, how can you get your paper noticed and advance the scientific conversation? 
One word: Tweet.

From: Victoria Costello, March 30 2015, on PLOS Blogs,              blogs.plos.org/plos

A guide to using Twitter in university research, teaching, and impact activities

Available now: a guide to using Twitter in university research, teaching, and impact activities

How can Twitter, which limits users to 140 characters per tweet, have any relevance to universities and academia, where journal articles are 3,000 to 8,000 words long, and where books contain 80,000 words? Can anything of academic value ever be said in just 140 characters?

We have put together a short guide answering these questions, showing new users how to get started on Twitter and hone their tweeting style, as well as offering advice to more experienced users on how to use Twitter for research projects, alongside blogging, and for use in teaching.

from the LSEIpactBlog dated 29 September 2011