Going social

After the Arab spring, and the recent English riots it is now clear to anyone who doubted it that web based social networking is having an enormous impact on the world. The number of interactions that can occur between vast swathes of people – largely irrespective of their global location – in such compressed time scales is unprecedented.

Understanding the science behind this novel mix of technology and social interaction has to a large degree foxed current expertise in networks and systems science. This is something that DARPA – the US defence research agency – is so worried about that it is offering $42million in grants for researchers to develop what it calls “a new science of social networks”.

Their motivation is of course to develop better mechanisms to monitor any uprisings – “or adversary influence operations” as they put it. And what a gold mine of information on the population social media is – I’m sure governments across the globe are drooling at the prospect of fully mining such a resource.

Yet Twitter in particular has a bad reputation amongst nay sayers – when pushed many will subscribe to the idea that ‘never before has it been so easy for people to say something, yet seemingly they have nothing to say’.

But let’s not forget social media is just a tool, and it is how it is used that should define it. And this got us thinking – how are you using it? Can it really be a useful scientific tool?

Well, certainly there is a growing camp of scientists that think so – and of course it isn’t such leap to see why they think that. Science is rooted in the formulation and exchange of ideas and what better way to do that than through the ever growing plethora of social network sites?

This is a view best explained to me by a good friend of mine, in what may seem to the social networkers as a quaintly old-fashioned way – face-to-face over a few beers. He is an expert on many things, especially after a few beers, but on one thing I trust him implicitly - the use of computing in research. With a background in bioinformatics and genomics, he is acutely aware of the importance micro-blogging for scientists to communicate their work - and thinks that nothing could be more useful for young researchers to increase the impact of their research than a carefully applied bit of tweeting.

“I know it has a dubious rep” he says of Twitter, “but the truth is it can really increase the amount of people interested in your work, and for a PhD student for example - that level of interest can be really hard to come by otherwise. That aspect of micro-blogging shouldn’t be spoilt by a constant barrage of people detailing what they had for dinner last night.”

On p31 you can see what scientists are saying about their experience of using social networking - and it makes for fascinating reading. But let us know what you think - do you use social media? Do you think it is over rated? Can it really be useful in your research?