This week we're focussing on social, academic and professional networking tools. These are tools that enable to you keep in contact with other people and keep up to date with what they are doing. Many include features such as email and instant messaging, and allow you to upload images and videos. Quite a few of you already use some of these tools, such as Facebook and LinkedIn. We'll explore these and some other tools that might be of interest to academics or clinicians.
There has been some debate about privacy issues on social networking sites, which might make people disinclined to sign up or put them off using them as a tool for their work. Many sites have privacy settings but the point of ‘social media’ is to be social, so if a researcher, academic or clinician is worried about making their work public in this way it's probably not the tool for them.
Twitter is sometimes classed as a social networking tool, and we feel it fits in to this week's theme as it is about keeping in touch and networking as well as sharing thoughts and information. Twitter is also defined as a micro-blogging tool, a quick way of widely sharing your thoughts or information in 140 characters or less. Twitter has been reported to have around 200 million followers. Wikipedia provides a good background and history to Twitter.
Why tweet?
- Twitter can be used for both dissemination and gathering of information. Researchers might want to tell people about their own research and events and find out what other people in their field are doing and reading
- Twitter can be used to ask a question or ask for advice from people with similar interests.
- Many professional organisations, government bodies and funding councils use Twitter to keep people up to date with news and opportunities. Look out for 'Follow us on Twitter' links on their websites.
- Twitter is now widely used at conferences, so delegates can post thoughts about the speakers, lectures or seminars. It's also a useful tool for people who were unable to go to a conference - they can follow what's being said on Twitter.
- Informal peer review - social media tools such as Twitter provide a much faster method for people to comment on new publications, such as journal articles, than traditional scholarly methods. See this article in Nature for more on this.
Thing 3: Set up an account on Twitter, tweet about 11½ Things and start following our twitter account
If you don't already have a Twitter account we'd like you to set one up. If you do already have a Twitter account then you're welcome to use that account.
- Go to http://twitter.com/ and follow the steps to create an account.
- You are taken to a screen where you can choose people to follow based on your interests or friends. You can browse or search for people to follow. You do not have to choose anyone at this stage if you don't want to, and can just continue to the next step.
- Once your account is set up you will receive a confirmation email from Twitter. You need to click on the link in the email to compete your registration.
From your Twitter home page type a comment about 11½ Things in the 'What's happening' box and click on Tweet. Make sure you include the hashtag #11andahalfthings in your tweet. Remember you can only use a maximum of 140 characters!
To search for tweets on a particular topic you can enter a search term or hashtag into the search box at the top of the screen. Try carrying out a search for #11andahalfthings to see what other people have been tweeting.
WARNINGS:
- It's very easy to type your search term into the 'What's happening' box, rather than the search box. Don't do this or you'll end up tweeting your search terms!
- Some tweets may not appear in a search - Twitter explains that due to resource constraints not every tweet can be indexed in Twitter Search. Do not fret if you do not see your tweet when you do your search. If anyone is following you they should still see all your tweets.
Tips: Saving searches and reducing URL lengths
You can save your search and come back to it at any time from the 'Searches' tab to see more tweets on that topic. If you want to start a topic thread then you can always make up your own hashtag, but it's a good idea to search for the hashtag first to make sure it isn't already in use!
Information you want to share on Twitter may include useful websites, but URLs can sometimes be long and take up a lot of characters. You can use a free website such as https://bitly.com/ or http://tinyurl.com/ to create an alternative short URL to link to any website.
How to follow someone on Twitter
To follow someone on Twitter, click on the 'Who to follow' link from the black bar at the top of the page. You can then browse by interest, find friends from your email address book or just carry out a search for someone. Then click on 'Follow'.
Now start following us on Twitter. Our twitter username is 11andahalfthing.
Tip: Another Twitter convention
If you want to address another person in your tweet, add an @ to the front of their username. This shows you are addressing them and it also means your tweet will appear in their 'Mentions' tab when they log in to Twitter so they can see who is addressing them or referring to them. For an example of using the @ and # in a tweet, you might type: #11andahalfthings @11andahalfthing Thanks for putting together this course!
Probably the best known social networking site is Facebook. You can set up a personal profile and link to friends, but can also create or join groups or set up a facebook page, like a webpage, or become a fan of a page. Many companies or organisations choose to do this as a promotional tool and a way of keeping in touch with their customers or members. The 'groups' facility also provides a simple way to send a message to all members of the group at once.
Why use Facebook in a professional context? Many of the reasons mentioned above for Twitter also apply to Facebook. Here are some further reasons:
- Monitor news and opportunities from relevant organisations and professional bodies – look out for ‘Follow us on Facebook’ links on organisations’ websites.
- The flexibility of being able to include text, photos and videos and inviting interaction means that researchers and research groups might want to use facebook to publicise their work or invite comments or debate.
- To get feedback on an issue from a large number of people. eg. See this article in the Lancet about how discussions on Facebook helped change health policy in Taiwan.
LinkedIn is a social networking site set up specifically for professionals and has over 100 million members worldwide. It demonstrates that, especially in business, it's not what you know but who you know that counts. It enables you to create links with colleagues or professional contacts, to keep ahead of the job market through inside connections and ask for advice or contribute to debate with fellow industry experts. You can link directly with people, but can also make second or third degree connections through people they know. LinkedIn also has groups that you can join.
Doctors.net.uk
There are other social networking sites that are set up for particular communities. Doctors.net.uk is the biggest medical networking resource in the UK, available to UK-registered doctors in primary and secondary care and has around 140,000 members. Although it doesn’t have all the interactive features of sites such as Facebook, it includes clinical and non-clinical forums which allow discussion and interaction between its members. It also offers a professional e-mail facility, medical news and continuing professional development tools.
Thing 4: Find an example of the use of a social networking site and share it on your blog
Try to find a profile, group or page on a social networking site that might be of use to a researcher, academic or clinician to support their research or practice, or created by them to assist with their work.
You could explore the sites we've already mentioned or explore some of the other sites mentioned in the Optional extras section below, or other sites you may know about. For most sites you should be able to access them and carry out limited searches without logging in but to get the full search capabilities you may need to set up a profile.
Alternatively you could try to find an instance where someone has written about how social networking has helped them in their research, academic work or clinical practice. For example, you could look in newspapers, journals or search the web for blog posts.
Post your example, or examples, on your blog. Add the tag 'Thing 4' to the labels box, and any other tags you might think are appropriate. You also might want to tweet about your examples or your thoughts on this week!
We look forward to reading your blog post.
The next set of 'Things' will be posted on this blog next Friday, 15 July 2011. We'll be looking at social bookmarking and social citation-sharing. If you're interested in social citation-sharing you might want to come to the Summer School session on 'Freely available bibliographic management and collaboration tools' on Friday 15 July from 10.00-12.00. We'll be exploring freely available social citation sharing tools such as Mendeley, Zotero and CiteULike. See the Summer School Moodle course for more information.
Optional extras
Oher social networking sites
Here are some examples of other social networking sites you might like to explore:
Conferences and events:
- Lanyrd describes itself as a social conference directory. It utilises your social networking links set up through twitter to help you identify conferences that might be of interest. It alerts you to conferences that people you follow on twitter have found interesting. You can also add details of your own conferences or events and you can add slides, videos and audio files. Or you can search for conferences and then simply click on a link to share a conference on Twitter. You don’t need to register, just log in with your Twitter account and have a browse around.
- MethodSpace - a site for researchers engaged in research methods
- Graduate Junction - for postgraduate students in any subject doing a Masters or PhD, to connect with other postgrad students with similar academic interests
- Sermo - largest online physician community in the United States
- Ning - A subscription-based site that allows you to create your own social network. Eg. The Master Clinician Network is a project designed to make peer reviewed examples of evidence-based clinical practice in speech-language pathology available for observation and critical discourse.
- Ozmosis - US-based company providing software solutions for healthcare companies and organisations who wish to establish social networking, content management and communication channels.
Tip: Adding social networking links to your blog
You can add links on your blog or website to your Twitter, Facebook or other social networking profiles you may have. For example:
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