Bear with me. Here's something I included in a presentation recently:
- Social Media already embraced by numerous conferences – related to physical sciences, engineering and beyond
- Twitter, viewed by many as a not-quite-respectable source of questionable information, is leveraged with effectiveness by..
- AIP, Elsevier, other science publishers
- Dozens of highly respected manufacturers of instrumentation and software for science
- NSF, APS, Stanford University, CNRS, Max Planck Society
- NFL, MLB, NBA, MLB
- POTUS, The White House
- The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Times Magazine
- Eric Clapton
I'll admit I typed the first line tongue-in-cheek. While informal, this blog is about science and technology. In our realm, ideas are demonstrated to be valid by being subjected to evaluation, criticism and possibly experimentation. As a result, many ideas are proved to be "wrong" -- not valuable in making predictions, not useful in solving problems or, say... strengthening relationships/alliances.
Readers are invited to list ways in which they see social media being put to good use in S&T. You may wish to alert us to dangers, disadvantages, pitfalls....
Personally, I am impressed and delighted by the way APS and ACS are using Facebook and Twitter to make Physics (and Physicists); Chemistry (and Chemists) increasingly accessible to the general population. At the same time, I'd speculate they are influencing young students in their career choices, while validating those who have already selected these fields.
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ReplyDeleteI totaly agree with you. In France researchers are very suspicion about social media for S&T. Thanks you for helping in convincing them!
DeleteI totaly agree with you. In France researchers are very suspicion about social media for S&T. Thanks you for helping in convincing them!
DeleteAnne,
DeleteMerci pour les mots. It truly seems this is a widespread reality. I have been quite encouraged by what I've seen on Twitter. Researchers from all over the world are using that channel to announce new publications, share interesting new papers they've found, or publicize beautiful images related to science. I find it somewhat more difficult to locate interesting material on FaceBook, but realize it is present, and that I have only scratched the surface. LinkedIn is another environment where there's a great deal of valuable discussion - but fundamental science, or even applied science is still a small fragment of what one finds.
There is value in open dialog about phenomena - natural, astronomical, experimental... Conventional research articles or "papers" are one way of communicating, and will forever be of crucial value due to the entire peer review system and the high standards to which authors are held.
Social media, on the other hand, can allow informal discussion between peers, as well as discussion between the scientific community and "regular humans" (taxpayers, policymakers, investors, consumers).
A bientot, perhaps.
-Daniel