Science and social media - are you connected?

Are scientists embracing the power of social media, or still living in the dark ages when it comes to communication in the 21st century? Social media has taken over: you can’t browse a website without seeing the little blue ‘Tweet’ or ‘Share’ buttons from Twitter and Facebook, and adverts are littered with logos asking you to ‘Follow’ or ‘Like’ the brand in question.

Most people now have some form of personal social media account – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or Flickr, or even a blog. Social media is a great tool for communication – Facebook was designed to let our friends know what we’re up to, while microblogging site Twitter provides a useful tool to share quick updates and links.

But things have moved on – social media isn’t just an easy way to stay in touch with friends and family – it’s become an important tool for conducting research, promoting brands, and dispersing news. While some in the scientific community seem cautious to embrace the power of social media, others have succumbed whole-heartedly.

One such scientist is Dr Jenny Rohn – a cell biologist at University College London, and a keen blogger and Tweeter. She uses Twitter to provide her followers with a humorous flavour of her life in the lab. She also uses it to crowd-source scientific information:

“If I tweet a query about a scientific technique, for example, I almost always get a helpful reply from someone as many of my 2000+ followers are also scientists.”

Recently she used recently to pick the brains of scientists in the Twittersphere when in the lab:

“Anyone out there know how to make a HeLa cell ruffle? (Sounds like start of a bad joke, but is a serious question...)”

And indeed she received some very useful advice from Stephen Moss (@stephenmoss):

“@JennyRohn Phorbol ester (PMA) will make many cells ruffle. PDGF may give dorsal concentric ruffles”.

Twitter is useful when you need a quick answer to something troubling you in the lab, linking to papers that might be useful for your colleagues and followers, or simply just telling people how your latest experiment is going. But it can be more than that: social media has proved to be a useful research tool.

Devin Bloom, a PhD candidate from the University of Toronto Scarborough, used Facebook to conduct the first ichthyological – the study of fish – survey on Guyana’s remote Cuyuni River1. Bloom was part of a research team aiming to find out which species of fish were living in the river and their abundance. They spent two weeks catching as many fish as they could, but needed to accurately identify and count each species in a short space of time.

We asked our Twitter followers and Facebook friends about why they use social media, here’s what they had to say: R&D scientist @craighopper: “To advertise my interest in securing a new role” @LGCGroup: “Celebrating #IYC2011 using twitter & blog to communicate scientific developments. Twitter at our open day to engage visitors” @sooallen: “I guess I just like keeping in touch, business wise and socially. I'm quite new to Twitter but I love the freedom it gives.”

Bloom suggested using Facebook – his research leader Dr Brian Sidlauskas loved the idea and they began uploading pictures of each species. In less than 24 hours, their network of friends – many of whom hold a PhD in ichthyology – had identified almost every one of the 5,000 specimens.

“Social networking is so powerful,” said Bloom. “Scientists should be using it more to connect with the world-at-large.”

And this was exactly what happened when Twitter was used to monitor the swine flu epidemic in 2009. Researchers tracked more than 1 million tweets between early May and the end of August for mentions of influenza including “I have swine flu” and “I have the flu” to terms like H1N1, death or outbreak.

Dr Patty Kostkova, a research scientist from City ehealth Research Centre said: “There were two main advantages to using Twitter; unlike Google searches (used to generate Google flu trends) posts are freely available and could be searched in real time which makes them an invaluable source for an early warning system.”

Doctors in Japan used Twitter to coordinate medical assistance following the earthquake and tsunami in March this year2. Yuichi Tamura and Keiichi Fukuda from Keio University School of Medicine said Twitter “played a significant role in triumphing over the disaster.” Phone lines were unreliable but the internet was working fine, so they used Twitter to tell people where they could get medication. Patients and the general public alike retweeted the message, meaning it spread rapidly and the constant stream of information enabled patients to receive necessary treatment.

In cases like this, hash tags – a sophisticated Twitter version of search terms – can be great for obtaining information quickly. They are also useful for scientists and the general public wanting to follow events or discussions online. The #openscience hash tag was used recently at the Open Science meeting hosted by the Royal Society – attendees were tweeting what was said and their opinions with #openscience in the message, enabling those who were interested follow the stream of conversation.

Many may feel that social media can be faceless – you can connect with people all over the world but never actually meet them, but Twitter has spawned Tweetups – informal meetings of like-minded people keen to learn more about their shared interests.

NASA is one such agency who is making use of this social media phenomenon. They hosted a tweetup for 150 followers of @NASA at the final space shuttle launch in Florida in July3. Participants were given the chance to learn more about NASA, explore the Kennedy Space Centre and experience the last space shuttle launch.

Tweetups are now considered so popular that the word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2009. Tweetups – as well as social media generally – open up the possibility of meeting and working with other scientists who you might not have had the opportunity to meet, and learning and sharing in their experiences.

Want to follow us on social media? Find us here: @laboratorynews / www.twitter.com/laboratorynews www.facebook.com/laboratorynews www.youtube.com/labnews www.flickr.com/laboratorynews Jenny can be found at @JennyRohn or http://occamstypewriter.org/mindthegap and a summary of Brady’s many projects is at http://periodicvideos.blogspot.com/2011/02/my-video-projects.html. Chris can be found on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=12608490

Dr Rohn believes social media is incredibly important for networking: “My experiences suggest that without it, I would have had fewer career opportunities. Twitter in particular is useful, as is starting a blog and getting your name out that way. A few connections that have recently proved incredibly important for my career progression came entirely from my blog and Twitter – I hadn’t met these people in the flesh until later, and if I hadn’t ‘met’ them online, I wouldn’t have these connections now.”

Chris Hunter, laboratory manager and National Water Quality instrumentation manager for the National Laboratory Service, prefers to use LinkedIn for networking:

“It provides a good way of maintaining my network of contacts as well as developing new ones. For contacts that I'm not regularly interacting with in my current role it's an invaluable tool for maintaining arms-length contact and identifying opportunities to support each other.

“The biggest element for me is allowing me to maintain contact with individuals I've worked with previously.  As well as ex-colleagues, the wide acceptance of LinkedIn as a networking tool makes it easier to connect and maintain contact with individuals you've worked with only briefly (perhaps on a specific project) in a way that may be awkward using other media.”

In the same way Jenny asked the Twittersphere for help, Chris has used LinkedIn to exchange information with colleagues: “From a technical perspective, having ready access to technical experts in a wide range of scientific disciplines is a useful resource for helping with technical issues as well as being able to offer support to others experiencing problems that I'm familiar with.”

He has also found it beneficial for career opportunities: “It serves as a useful self-publicity tool to showcase one's CV. It is obviously used by scientific (and I'm sure other) recruitment firms as I regularly receive contact about job opportunities matching my skill set.”

And it’s not just your CV you may want to publicise – scientists use social media to drum up interest in their latest paper. If a few of their followers are interested in paper, they’re likely to have followers who would also be interested, and before you know it, the paper has reached a wider audience that it might otherwise have.

In 2007, a worldwide study of over 1,500 scientists revealed 77% of life scientists participated in some sort of social media, mostly to find applications and troubleshooting tips, protocols and product reviews. Around 54% said their purchasing decisions were influenced by social media4.

A quick look at Laboratory News’ followers on Twitter shows that scientists are using social media, but mostly in a personal capacity. Their tweets generally consist of links to science in the headlines; occasional updates on travelling for work purposes, and very occasionally what science they’re actually doing.

Facebook seems to be one of the lesser used social media sites for scientists – at least as far as their ‘professional’ personas are concerned. It is harder to identify scientists on Facebook – increased security and having to approve ‘friends’ means Facebook can be a much more private affair as you share information with your nearest and dearest. Of course, you can protect tweets on Twitter too, but that defeats the point.

“I think people should have a focus and not just meander into the social media landscape for the sake of it – have an idea, have a point and stick to it. No one cares what you ate for breakfast unless you are already famous like Brian Cox” Brady Haran

Science tweeters enjoy the fact that Twitter can be mono-directional – they like to tell their followers about their work and what they’re up to, but are not necessarily interested in hearing what their followers are doing. With Facebook, you’re constantly updated with what your ‘friends’ are doing whether you’re interested or not.

Jenny tends to steer clear of Facebook: “I use it occasionally, but this is strictly for personal stuff – I don't friend anyone who isn't a bona fide, real-life friend, and I don't talk much science there.”

However, she did use Facebook – and Twitter – heavily last year while promoting Science is Vital, a campaign aimed at fighting the proposed cuts to the UK science budget: “It was essential. First, I blogged the call for arms, which served as an initial focus and place to leave comments. It was a virtual "place" for people to sign up and show their support. Then we started a Twitter storm which was largely responsible, ultimately, for the 2000+ people at the rally and the 35,000+ signatures. Without Twitter I don't think we could have disseminated the word so quickly – we only had six weeks to make a difference.”

The social media push was supplemented with old-fashioned email mailshots and offline networking, and CaSE (Campaign for Science and Engineering) working their own contacts by email.

“Before the website was finished, we used a Facebook group to nucleate and stoke the response. This became less important later, but I think it did make a difference initially.” It might not be popular with individual scientists, but Facebook is a popular communication channel for university press offices. No longer do they just post a press release online and send an email to the editor of a magazine: they post links and a brief introduction on Facebook; upload pictures on Flickr; and, where possible, have a video demonstrating the finding or an interview with the scientists involved hosted on their webpage and YouTube.

YouTube is a fantastic way of communicating science not just to the scientific community but to the general public. Brady Haran is a video journalist specialising in science communication – he has a background in journalism but has always had a passion for science. Brady creates videos for several projects including Backstage Science with the Science and Technology Facilities Council and My Favourite Scientist with Nottingham Trent University. His best known work is The Periodic Table of Videos and Sixty Symbol filmed with “The Professor”, Martyn Poliakoff at University of Nottingham.

Social media is the most important tool in his work – next to his camera. Brady attributes the success of these scientific videos – made outside the “traditional” ways of TV – to being able to reach his audience through social media.

“I use YouTube every day as the main way to deliver my videos,” Brady said. “YouTube is seen by some as simply a way to host video, but it's actually an incredibly social website – viewer comments, ratings and responses are a huge part of what makes the site so successful.”

“I also use the more obvious forms of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, to supplement the main video work. Sometimes this is very important and can send something viral, other times it is like talking into empty space – you never really know – that's the beauty of it!”

Brady’s work spawned from a project called Test Tube –a documentary film about scientists which turned into real-time stories hosted on YouTube. This spilled into other ideas.

“I genuinely find science interesting and the enthusiasm comes across in the films,” Brady said. “And the scientists seem to like that too, so they keep working with me!”

But does Brady think scientists should use social media:

“Sure, why not. But I think people should have a focus and not just meander into the social media landscape for the sake of it – have an idea, have a point and stick to it. No one cares what you ate for breakfast unless you are already famous like Brian Cox.”

Likewise, Jenny is keen to point out the pitfalls of using social media:

“It's very important to not allow yourself to get sucked into these outlets too far, though, as they can waste an amazing amount of time. At first it's addictive, but you're not going to be able to cope if you're on Twitter every two seconds. I try to restrict myself to 15 minutes a day, and I only tweet a few times a day, and blog once a week.”

Chris has only ever had a positive experience using social media but is aware of the dangers of putting too much information online: “Bear in mind that I'm sure there are individuals and organisations out there looking to misuse personal data and give some thought to what you do disclose online and who you connect to.”

Social media is an excellent communication channel – it’s gone from being a medium to let your friends know what you’re up to, to an important tool for anyone looking to promote something, whether it be a new piece of equipment, an event, or the work of scientists.

Although we’ve only touched on the more ‘traditional’ means of social media, there are many more out there – anything inviting comments constitutes social media, so that includes podcasts, wikis (including Wikipedia) and community sites. Lots of scientists and scientific communicators choose to blog, others use LinkedIn, but it seems that Twitter is one of the more popular channels.

The popularity of social media has spawned a mass of replica sites, including some scientific-orientated ones like ResearchGate – the scientist’s Facebook – and scivee.tv, a video and content site for scientific, technical and medical markets, a science YouTube. There’s just no escaping social media in this day and age.

Whether or not social media becomes a respected channel for exchanging scientific ideas is yet to be decided, but one thing is clear – social media is already a very efficient way of getting your ideas across to a wider audience.

References: 1.    Crowdsourcing science: Researcher uses Facebook to identify thousands of fish http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-05/uots-csr051311.php 2.    Twitter helped doctors during Japanese disaster http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/05/twitter-helped-doctors-during.html 3.    NASA to host tweetup at Shuttle Space Launch in Florida http://www.nasa.gov/connect/tweetup/tweetup_ksc_04-18-2011.html 4.    Scientists using social media to inform lab purchasing decisions http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/11/28/idUS09814+28-Nov-2007+PRN20071128

Author: Kerry Taylor Smith is Laboratory News's staff writer She has a degree in Natural Sciences