A decade on since their inception, Andy Tattersall considers how academics can make use of altmetrics in ways that go beyond counts and metrics. When the term altmetrics first appeared in September 2010, originating in a Tweet by ImpactStory co-founde…
Category: Academic Social Media
Book Review: Social Media and Hate by Shakuntala Banaji and Ramnath Bhat
In Social Media and Hate, Shakuntala Banaji and Ramnath Bhat explore the problem of hate speech on social media platforms, offering case studies of India, Brazil, Myanmar and the UK. The book is a timely and insightful exploration of the intersection o…
Social media has changed – Will academics catch up?
Since its purchase by Elon Musk last year, Twitter has undergone a series of rapid changes, largely with an eye to making the platform profitable. Considering these developments and those on other platforms, Mark Carrigan, suggests that just as academi…
Observer, Connector, Promoter, Influencer – How to leverage social media to be an open academic
To be an open researcher is more than simply openly sharing research papers. Marcel Bogers and Ian McCarthy draw on their research on open practices in business research to outline four ways of leveraging social media to be more ‘open’ as a researcher,…
Fun(ny) facts: Humour as a research communication strategy
If you have read any research produced by universities, civil society organisations or think tanks, you will most likely have struggled to find any good jokes. However, throughout history, humour has played an important role in critiquing society and r…
Polarisation and the network harassment of science journalists.
Reporting on their qualitative research into the online abuse faced by science journalists in the USA, Lisa Palmer and Silvio Waisbord, find an uptick in the online harassment of science journalists alongside a lack of institutional support, especially…
Are personal academic blogs a thing of the past?
The personal blog was a defining feature of the early internet and there are still a number of high-profile academic blogs studiously maintained by lone scholars. However, for researchers new to academic blogging, is it still worth setting up your own …
Socially distanced networks – 5 Reasons PhD students should engage with social media now
Peer support, finding a place within academia, staying up to date with the latest research, communicating research to wider audiences and navigating life after PhD. Ema Talam and Jon Fairburn outline five ways in which social media, and in particular Twitter, can make all the difference to PhD research at a time when regular academic … Continued
In 2021 let’s do institutional academic social media better.
Chances are you dutifully follow a number of poorly managed institutional academic social media accounts, producing infrequent, unengaging and perhaps occasionally important content. In this post, Andy Tattersall, provides advice on how to approach institutional academic social media in a more productive way and makes the case for its vital role in keeping academia connected … Continued
Equipping PhD researchers for social media success
Social media is increasingly recognised as an important feature of academic life and institutions are investing in training sessions to help doctoral students towards this. However, what this training consists of, and how sessions are best run is less clear. In this post, Mark Carrigan and Ana Isabel Canhoto share their experience of designing and … Continued