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Showing posts with the label engagement

How to Be A Social Media Wizz: Top Tips for Researchers

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I have written a Buzzfeed post of the 10 top tips I have gathered from science communicators, universities and science writers in the US and Canada... click on the image below to be taken through to the guide. I hope you find it useful. This list was compiled as I undertook my Churchill Travel Fellowship. I also wrote up some good example case studies and how to plan a social media engagement strategy on the LSE Impact Blog .  I wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone that supported me and met with me during my Fellowship. Everyone I met was so open about discussing what they do. I was worried that people wouldn't want to speak openly to a stranger who was external to their organisation but that wasn't the case at all. Every single person I interacted with was incredibly welcoming. Their thoughts and views have definitely impacted on me and how I will approach everything in the future. Many discussions included ...

Churchill Fellowship: Toronto and the Social Media Lab

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Ah, beautiful Toronto. I wasn't expecting to fall in love with this city as much as I did, but I really did. I met some fantastic people and had some great discussions about the use of social media for public engagement with science.* *disclaimer, there are lots of city skyline shots in this blog post.   I spent a good four days in Toronto exploring over the weekend and meeting with scientists and staff at the University of Toronto and speaking with the fantastic Social Media Lab at Ryerson University . I was invited to speak at the Ryerson University Social Media Lab about my Churchill Fellowship. I've included my slides and a YouTube video of my talk 'How scientists are using social media'  at the bottom of this post.  Toronto by day    Toronto by night The space they have in the Social Media Lab is great (it's based within offices once lived-in by Google). I tried out one of the 'chairs' in the image below although tha...

Why scientists use social media

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Over the past few weeks, as part of my  Churchill Fellowship , I've been speaking to scientists across the US and Canada about their motivations for using social media. It has been interesting to hear what motivated them to start and their motivations to continue.  The reasons scientists made the first step in setting up social media accounts for professional use have included being 'told to get online/start a Twitter account' by research funders or their institutions; to voice general frustrations and/or connect with others outside of their immediate research lab; because they heard it was 'a good thing to do' from others or they wanted to connect with the public about their work. For many, it is of course a combination of those reasons. Very few started out with an aim or vision of what they wanted to achieve. Their navigation of the networks and their choice of network was determined by what they were told to do (e.g. 'get on Twitter') or by wo...

Crowdfunding Research: Could it bring scientists and the public closer together?

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Research funding comes from a few, fairly limited places .  With the increase in crowdfunding platforms  online  there's an opportunity to bolster funding from traditional routes with additional cash direct from the public pocket. What this new funding route might bring about, rather unintentionally, is increased understanding and trust between the public and scientists as it brings them closer together through this new, more direct, funding model. In the long-term it could also contribute to the personalisation of science and the democratisation of scientific research.   Traditionally, researchers have received research funding by applying for competitive grants that are overseen by governments, charitable bodies and/or private investors. Although these grants are distributed by the research bodies and funders, other than private investment a significant portion of the money comes from the public's pocket, either through donations or taxes. These f...

Online engagement and learning in practice at Harvard and MIT

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For the  next part of my journey I visited the beautiful Harvard campus. I met with a number of scientists that use social media and a number of social media managers. Harvard Harvard is really easy to get to on the T line and is a beautiful campus to explore. The graduations had taken place the day before. There were lots of tents and food-trucks set up around the campus and a really vibrant atmosphere. It helped that the sun came out too! Here's a video round-up of my visit - no hair in my face this time! Between meetings I took a quick tour of the Harvard Museum of Natural History which has some incredible collections. My favourite exhibit in the museum is the  glass flower collection, which I stumbled upon by accident. I thought these were persevered flowers but they they were all made from glass for the teaching of botany. Yep, not a real flower... Cabinets of glass flowers at the Harvard Museum of Natural History The museum is really...