Science and Social Media: The Importance of Being Online

Science and Social Media:The Importance of Being Online

Christie WilcoxUniversity of Hawaii at Manoa

The Connected World

of Americans use the internet

78%

more than

The Connected WorldIn 2000…

360,985,492 users

In 2012…

2,405,510,175 users

…an increase of more than 660%!

1996 20061996 2006

250,000 sites 80,000,000 sites250,000 sites 80,000,000 sites

45 million users 1 billion+ users45 million users 1 billion+ users

User Generated Content

Collective IntelligenceCollective Intelligence

Internet = InformationWhere do you get most of your news about national and international issues?

PEW Research Center, Dec 2010

Internet = InformationWhere do you get most of your news about national and international issues?

(< 30 yrs old)

PEW Research Center, Dec 2010

Internet = Information

University of Chicago, National Opinion Research Center, General Social Survey (2008)

Where do you get information on specific scientific issues?

The Internet is the main source of information for learning about specific scientific issues such as global climate change or biotechnology

Internet = CommunicationDo you use social media?

PEW Research Center, Feb 2012

57% of Americans say they talk to people more online

than they do in real life

57% of Americans say they talk to people more online

than they do in real life

In 2011, social media overtook looking at porn as the number one online activity.

17% of all time spent online is spent on social

networking sites

Social Media = Internet on Steroids

15,358

tweets per second when Italy lost to Spain in the 2012 European

Championship

684,478

pieces of content shared every minuteon Facebook

of video is uploaded to YouTube every

second

1 hour

All The Kids Are Doing ItClose to 90% of 18-30 year olds have at least one social

media account…

… and almost a third will check their networks

before they even get out of bed.

All The Kids Are Doing It

"Younger generations aren’t going to look for your company or society in print—they’re going to go directly to your Web site and then maybe your

Facebook page, and, if interested, they will follow you on Twitter.

If you’re not there, neither will they be—and you’ve lost them at a critical point of contact."

- Kea Giles Managing Editor at the Geological Society of America

Stereotypical Scientist

Draw A Scientist

Actual drawings made by 7th grade students when asked to draw a scientist

“Can you name a living scientist?”In 2009, Research!America polled the average American to name any of

the 7.1 million or so living scientists worldwide...

“Can you name a living scientist?”…65% didn’t even try.

“Can you name a living scientist?”… another 18% got it wrong…

Albert Einstein?

Albert Einstein?

Marie Curie?Marie Curie?

“Can you name a living scientist?”… only 17% were able to correctly name one.

Albert Einstein?

Albert Einstein?Stephen

Hawking!Stephen

Hawking!

Barriers to Communication

- Rick E. Borchelt, Lynne T . Friedmann, & Earle HollandManaging the Trust Portfolio: Science Public Relations and Social Responsibility

"The scientific community needs to understand what ethical

practitioners of public relations have long known: trust is not about information; it’s about dialogue and

transparency"

1. Know your audience

2. Identify precise, key main messages

1. One size does not fit all

2. Learn from your experience

Successful Science Communication

1. Know Your Audience

NOT “Dumbing Down”

This is not your audience…. … THIS is your audience

2. Identify Precise, Key Messages

Imagine you have exactly five minutes in an elevator with an influential potential funder…

What would

youwantto

say?

2. Identify Precise, Key Messages

You need to focus on what matters

so your target audience isn’t overwhelmed.

3. One Size Does Not Fit All

3. One Size Does Not Fit All

≠ ≠≠

What works for others may not be right for you!

4. Learn From Your Experience

You have to know what you’re hoping to accomplish…

… and, most importantly, how you measure success

4. Learn From Your Experience

MessageMessage

Methods & StrategyMethods

& Strategy

MeasureMeasure

Success!Success!

FredCavazza.net

The Social Media Landscape

FredCavazza.net

Diversity of Access Points

Beyond ComputersJust shy of 50% of Americans own a smartphone, and two thirds of them will use it to access the internet on a daily basis.

FredCavazza.net

Niche Uses

FredCavazza.net

Niche Uses

While these are useful in certain contexts, I won’t be talking about them

FredCavazza.net

The Big Ones

Digital Water Coolers

• Chat• Discuss• Share• Gossip• Debate• Connect• Keep In

Touch

FredCavazza.net

Blogs, Wikis, Websites

Content Producers & Curators

FredCavazza.net

Multimedia Creation & Curation

Creative ContentMultimedia that can supplement other content…

… or stand alone

• Videos• Podcasts• Music• Images• Artwork

FredCavazza.net

Networking

Digital Business Cards & Resumes

FredCavazza.net

It’s All About Synergy!

Online Communities

of internet users are.

of < 30 y.o. use it as their primary

news source

million links are shared every hour

Don't think you need to be on Facebook?

The Largest Social Network

Bigger IS Better

more people means more possibility to

your efforts!

• For an individual• Viewed by friends, subscribers• Many privacy options• No statistics• Is you• Single administrator

• For organizations, things, celebrities

• Viewed by fans/anyone• Public• Provides some analytics• Can be separated from individuals• Can have many administrators

Which? Depends on what you want to use Facebook for!

Professional Networking

Keeping in Touch

Sharing Personal Opinions

Smaller Network

Privacy

Finding/Creating an Audience

Separating Work from Home

Large Fan/Interest Base

Lots of Contributors

Exposure

The Privacy Issue

“Participants who accessed the Facebook website of a teacher high in self-disclosure reported higher levels of teacher credibility

than participants who viewed a low self-disclosure Facebook website”

The key?be

not

Don’t Think You Need To Be On Google +?

“Facebook is about connecting to people through who you know; and Google Plus is about connecting to people through what you know.”

— Kysimir, Soliloquy of Eloquence

Google+: Superior Sorting and Filtering

Google+: Easier to Find Interesting People

Google+: Video Integration

Facebook Success Stories: Collective Intelligence

“In less than 24 hours, this approach identified

approximately 90 percent of the posted specimens to at least the

level of genus, revealed the presence of at least two likely

undescribed species, indicated two new records for Guyana and generated several loan requests.”

— Smithsonian blog post

“We didn’t have really the time or resources to [identify the specimens] the way that we would traditionally do it”

— Brian Sidlauskas, lead scientist

Facebook Success Stories: Big Data

Google + Success Stories: Virtual Astronomy

“We pull together live feeds from multiple

telescopes around the world and broadcast

them into a live Google+ hangout… The response has

been overwhelming, as we’ve made it

possible for people without telescopes or

who have cloudy skies a chance to see the night sky from the

comfort of their home.”

— Fraser Cain, publisher of Universe

Today

Microblogs

A web service that allows users to broadcast short messages to other subscribers of the service

#1 Microblogging Platform: Twitter

"The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and

half-baked are what make it so powerful."

Jonathan ZittrainHarvard University Law professor and Faculty Co-Director, Berkman Center for Internet and Society

1

billion new tweets every 3

days

million active users per month

200 20%

of online Americans use twitter, and the numbers keep rising

Don't think you need to be on Twitter?

5,106 Tweets Per Second

Speed and Virality: A Case Study


in 48 hours.in 48 hours.


> 80,000 > 80,000 pageviews…pageviews…


Why Statisticians Love Twitter“The rate at which

people produce tweets about movies can

accurately forecast the box office revenue of the

film, but only after it is released.

And the predictions from tweets are more

accurate than any other method of

forecasting.”

— MIT Technology Review

Why Statisticians Love Twitter

“Measuring how calm the Twitterverse is on a given day can foretell the direction of changes to the Dow Jones Industrial

Average three days later with an accuracy of 86.7 percent.”

— Lisa Grossman, Wired Magazine

Twitter Predicts Citations

(in bottom and top quartile of tweets within 1 week)

Highly tweeted papers were

11x more likely to be

highly cited!

Twitter 101

A brief introduction to the Twitterverse

Filtering The Deluge

You have to accept the fact that you cannot, and will not, see everything.

The LingoUsername or Handle: this is your identifier, your Twitter “Name”. It is how users will identify you.

Following and Followers: your twitter stream consists of tweets from the people you choose to follow, much like an aggregation of subscriptions. Others who follow you, called your followers, have your tweets appear in their twitter stream.

Username

A running tally of a user’s

followers and who they

follow

The follow button: click to

follow this user

The LingoTweet: tweets are your method of communication via twitter, and are limited to 140 characters. Twitter automatically shrinks links of any size to 20 characters to help them fit.

Click on this symbol in the menu bar to compose a new tweet. A window will open that looks like this:

The LingoDirect Message: a direct message or “DM” is a tweet that is only viewable by the user it is sent to, like the twitter version of a text or email. You can only send DMs to people who follow you.

Favorites: Favorites allow you to like a tweet or save it for later without passing it along to your followers.

Lists: Twitter allows you to create public and private lists which can be used to filter different groups of twitter users. You can look at the stream of tweets from a list rather than your whole feed.

The lock symbol indicates a list is “private”, or only visible to youClicking here will show you

all of the tweets you have favorited

The LingoInteractions: all of the ways other tweeters interact with you. Interactions include new follows, if you’re added to a public list, mentions, retweets and favorites by others of your tweets.

Mentions: placing @ symbol before a username links a tweet to their account. Such mentions can be used to reply to a tweet, or simply draw another user’s attention.

Retweets: A special category of mentions, retweets are one of the fundamental twitter interactions. By clicking the square arrow symbol, you pass along another’s tweet in its entirety. You can also add commentary to another’s tweet by adding your two cents then pasting their tweet after the letters “RT” (retweet) or “MT” (modified tweet, if you had to alter their tweet to fit.)

Click to see your interactions

How mentions appear in tweets:

The LingoHashtag: the # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a tweet. You can search twitter by hashtags, and thus follow the stream of tweets related to your interest without following every person that might tweet about it. For example, the conference hashtag #AAASmtg curates tweets related to the American Academy of Sciences annual meetings. When used correctly, hashtags are powerful ways of filtering through the deluge of tweets.

Search for hashtags

An example hashtag stream

“If you have, say, a thousand followers on Twitter, that’s like talking to a large auditorium

every time you tweet something about your science: a powerful tool

indeed. A direct line like that means the scientist can ensure that their science is accurately

portrayed and that they have an opportunity to share with the public

the personal passion that drives them to science in the first place.”

Twitter Success Stories: The Power of Twitter

Twitter Success Stories: Live-Tweeting An Expedition

“We had arranged a text to donation number, and I tweeted that every dive in PNG cost us about $5USD and that $5 donations to support the expedition could be made by texting the number. That single tweet raised a couple of

hundred dollars.”

Joshua Drew, lead scientist

Twitter Success Stories: Online Journal Club

“I have read papers that I would never otherwise have come

across and I have had the chance to discuss microbiology papers with

other microbiologists which results in different discussions to the ones that happen at the more general journal

club I attend at university.”

— Zoonotica, PhD Student

Microblogging Success Stories: Changing Stereotypes

“The project was definitely a huge success….

The site had over 100,000 unique visitors in the first month alone. The website

was initially shared on Twitter in nearly 20

different languages, and visitors have come from all

around the world.”

— Allie Wilkinson, co-founder

What is a Blog?

“Defining a science blog – heck, just defining a blog – is difficult. After all, a blog is just a piece of

software that can be used in many different ways.”

— Bora Zivkovic, Blogs Editor Scientific American

A Brief History of Blogging

First online diary

Term “weblog” coined “Blog”

usage spreads

First platforms emerge

Bloggers become influential and trusted as news and

information sources

Blogging becomes

‘mainstream’

1994 1997 1999 2003

Google acquires Blogger

2006

Science blog networks

first emerge

Today

RSS is

born

RSS: Digital Subscriptions

RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a family of web feed formats used

to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and

video—in a standardized format.

The Emergence of Science Blogs

Blogs: The New Frontier “A new generation of young researchers has

grown up with an ever-present Internet. Publishers have been quicker than academics to react to this new world, but scientists must catch

up. Even if you choose not to blog, you can certainly expect that your papers and ideas will increasingly be blogged about. So there it is —

blog or be blogged.”

— Paul Knoepfler, Research Scientist & Blogger

Major Blogging Platforms

To determine whether fish were responding to chemical cues from the seaweed or the coral, we used 60-ml syringes to pull in situ seawater from: among the filaments of C. fastigiata alone, the C. fastigiata–A. nasuta contact area with C. fastigiata still present, the C. fastigiata–A. nasuta contact area after removing C. fastigiata 20 min earlier (allowing loss of algal odor but retention of odor from the damaged coral), and the water column well away from the benthos (as a control) and then slowly released these odors into corals containing G. histrio. Olfactory cues from C. fastigiata alone generated no response by the goby. In contrast, odors from the coral-algal contact point or from the stressed coral alone caused 17 and 19, respectively, of the goby pairs in 20 separate A. nasutacolonies to move toward the odor source. Thus, the goby responds to chemical cues from the host coral, not to cues from the seaweed (Fig. 2, Υ = 559.12, df = 2, P < 0.001; G test,).

Clarity, Without Jargon

...the scientists took water samples from next to undamaged corals, corals damaged by algae while the algae was still present, corals damaged by algae after the algae was removed, and the algae alone away from coral. They exposed gobies to these water samples and watched how they responded. In less than 15 minutes, gobies were drawn to the water from damaged corals, but didn’t react to the chemical signature of algae by itself. “We found that the gobies were being “called to” the area damaged by the algae, and that the “call” was coming from the damaged coral, not from the seaweed.”

“I view it as a fundamental part of my job as a scientist and an educator. I use social networking to

follow the literature, to do outreach, to

communicate with colleagues, etc.”

- Jonathan Eisen

Blogging Success Stories: Enhancing The Network

Blogging Success Stories: Research & Peer Review

“Their most striking claim was that arsenic had been incorporated into the backbone of DNA, and what we can say is that there is no arsenic in the DNA at all”

— Rosie Redfield

,

What is a Wiki?

“Wikis create a sense of shared knowledge, which may be carried across courses, curricula,

or countries.”

— Toby Coley, Wikis in Writing Education Research

Wikipedia

“Imagine a world in which every single

person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human

knowledge. That's what we're doing.”

— Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia

Free Wiki Platforms/Software

Innovative Uses: Open Notebooks

Innovative Uses: Evolving Resources

http://socialnetworkingforscientists.wikispaces.com

Be Creative

Why Do Visuals Matter?

• More than 1/3 — 36% — of tweets are images

• Articles with images get 94% more total views

• Including a photo and a video in a press release

increases views by over 45%• Photo and video posts on Pinterest refer more traffic

than Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn and Google +

ImagesA picture is worth a thousand words.

Photograph from the mid-1870s of a pile of American bison skulls waiting to be ground for fertilizer

Five United States Marines and a United States Navy corpsman raising the American flag atop Mount Suribachi; by Joe Rosenthal

We ALREADY Visualize Science!

An animated gif of MRI images of a human headGraph of global temperatures over time

Visualizing Science: GIS

Visualizing Science

© Dave Beck & Jennifer Jacquet

Image Platforms

Video

On Facebook, videos are shared

12x more than links & text posts

combined

Video Platforms

Audio

Podcasts

Podcasts

Creative Outlets

The Best Part: Integration

Multimedia reaches out to a diverse set of learning styles and appeals to a broader audience

Most social media platforms, from twitter to blogs, allow you to

enhance text posts with images, video and more

“Facebook” For Scientists

ResearchGate

Academia.edu

115

Data And Other Products

Reference Management

Crowdsourced Funding

Bringing It All Together

Most likely, a combination of platforms and media

types will be the best way to achieve your goals.

Return on Investment

Figure 1. Monthly audience by communication methodology shown on a linear scale.Filled bars indicate traditional methodologies and unfilled bars indicate online methodologies. Data sources are as follows: 1. estimate; 2. estimate; 3. Scientific American (http://bit.ly/Z0dkaF); 4. San Diego Union-Tribune (http://bit.ly/WusyhV); 5. New York Times (http://bit.ly/14aktDi); 6. Twitter (http://tcrn.ch/146wWsy); 7. Wordpress (http://bit.ly/WVBwDa); 8. Facebook (http://bit.ly/10xUemL). Numbers reflect the potential monthly audience for each medium, and not necessarily the number of users who access a particular content item on that medium. All data accessed on January 22, 2013 and normalized to monthly views.

Social media is the definition of

“Broader Impacts”

Setting Up An Action Plan

Goals What are you trying to achieve?

ActionsWhat platforms? How often?

MetricsHow will you know if things are working? How will you judge performance?

Personal ResponsibilityWho does what? Be EXPLICIT.

Review and ReviseTrack impacts, change actions etc as necessary.

Start by asking yourself: “Why?”

GoalsGoals

ActionsActions

Measuring Success

• Citations• Pageviews• Tweets, shares, likes• Community

involvement• Fundraising• Attendance at events• …

Measuring Success

Measuring Success

“Coming up with good metrics requires some critical thinking. Don’t rely solely on the easy

analytics, like pageviews. Spend some time and mental energy to figure out what you really

want… then spend some more time and mental energy to come up with meaningful ways to

determine whether you’re getting it.”

— Matt Shipman, PIO and Science Writer

Tragedy of the Commons

Especially for groups or organizations…

be explicit about who is responsible for what

If At First You Don’t Succeed…

No one expects you to get everything right the first time.

• Use your metrics

• Experiment with new techniques and ideas

• See what works and what doesn’t

• Tweak the plan along the way

One more time…

Goals What are you trying to achieve?

ActionsWhat platforms? How often?

MetricsHow will you know if things are working? How will you judge performance?

Personal ResponsibilityWho does what? Be EXPLICIT.

Review and ReviseTrack impacts, change actions etc as necessary.

The Internet is Yours!