Richard Grant has recently been pondering social networking for science.
Something I find interesting is successful use of Twitter for science communication (and, yes, it does exist).
Several NNers are active on Twitter – I’m brianclegg, Henry Gee’s cromercrox, Richard Grant rpg7twit, Bob O’Hara bobohara and Maxine Clarke maxine_clarke to name but a few (apologies if I missed you off, it was just a sample). Most of us use Twitter for a mix of words of wit and wisdom/everyday observation rather than in an attempt at science communication.
But I do follow the ESA’s Planck satellite, which has well done science communication tweets at planck – and there’s lots more I’d love to keep up with this way. Is there a Twitter feed for the latest on the LHC (yes there is, I’ve just discovered cern by guesswork), for example? I’d love to keep up with the latest developments in fields I’m writing books about this way too.
So – anyone know of good science communication twittering going on? Are there any relevent directories? I’ve found a fair list at the We Follow directory using the tag ‘Science’ but there may well be more. We need to know.
If you don’t use Twitter take a look at my twitter feed as an example of the wit/wisdom/drivel kind and Planck’s feed as an example of science communication. You can follow someone by signing up and the clicking on the follow button at their page. You can then use programs like Twitterfox and Tweetdeck to display the feeds (or on applications on phones like the iPhone).
Sorry, on the road (i.e. on my phone) and feel too lazy to get links, but 80% (or more) of my Twitter content discusses news, research and publishing information pertaining to neuroscience. I have already live-tweeter 3 conferences ( search Twitter #cosyne09, #molschiz09 or #wibrain) and also have 2 or 3 posts on my blog recapping those experiences. The quality of my followers has reached a point now where I am participating in at least one or two interesting discussion a day in reference to something I posted. They spikes up when I am discussing a conference.
I actually have found Twibes.com to be interesting since it aggregates specific content from a targeted group of Twitter users for public consumption. Try the science or neuroscience Twibe as an example.
@noahwilliamgray
I find Twitter to be quite interesting for discussion (I’m “kyrsten_jensen” should you care). Although there is a lot of NON-science talk on my Twitter (as I’m a multifaceted person, not just a scientist ;) , I converse with a post-doc in PA (“cells_nmn”), a director of RND for Lonza (“JonRowley”), a scientist/ethicist heavily involved in ISSCR and the CIRM (“TheStemCell”), and Invitrogen’s marketing director for stem cells (“orthostichy”). There are some interesting conversations that go on. “sciencebase” has actually started a list of all scientists on Twitter that he knows about, which can be found here: http://www.sciencebase.com/science-blog/100-more-science-tweeps. Add yourself to the list!
I hope I don’t sound too overly keen or trying too hard, but I think Twitter can be a hugely successful tool. I’ve seen its amazing use in the “corporate business world” (my partner is an accountant who uses it regularly) and there is no reason we can’t have successful communities like them.
That’s good stuff guys, but it’s really a slight different use to the one I was suggesting. To take one of Noah’s tweets:
Searching for functionally homologous neural representation areas in human & macaque http://tr.im/klRO #neuro
It’s very much techie-to-techie – I was thinking more, as a science writer, of science communication to the general public. But both are valid uses…
Brian, that’s pretty selective and I choose to mix up the level of detail in my updates to find something for everyone. I kind of doubt all of my followers are scientists. About half of my links are to blogs aimed at communicating science to the public, so I guess I’m confused as to what exactly you are looking for.
I think what I really want is more stuff like the Planck and CERN ones – if you do a mixed one it will put off the general reader. My ideal world would be every lab doing a public facing twitter stream of updates of what’s happening aimed at the general public. I’d imagine these would be owned by the lab rather than individual scientists.
You might say, but most people aren’t interested in what we do in our lab. (That’s not you, Noah, that’s you, a generalized scientist.) There are two answers to this. If the public’s funding you (so I guess I’m only talking about public funded work), people ought to be able to be interested in what you do. And even if no one looks at it, the information stream is there for when the do get interested. It’s a bit like public reporting of legal trials – it ought to happen on principle.
I’ve been tweeting about various evaluations, but not getting any feedback at all about whether people like it or not. Also not sure whether I should be promoting the Faculty Member or the original paper author.
Still learning what people like. Fun in an exasperating sort of way.
For good science communication tweets, well, just take the cue from the real world. A lot of magazines, journalists and bloggers are on twitter. So looking for some of your favourite journalists or science outlets ( @sciam for example also does live-tweets from conferences) could be of help. A lot of institutions are now on twitter too, but too often they just feed stuff into twitter disregarding the medium – rather useless.
Then checking out other user names that get “retweeted” by your friends is also useful to find other tweets of interest. And finally, the twitter search tool is also useful to find others, particularly on specific scientific topics.
In my opinion, all these twitter directories are interesting, but I am not sure they are much of use (too much noise). And finally, don’t judge people by number of followers, this often gives a wrong impression.
Joerg ( @joergheber )
That’s ENTIRELY true. I mean Joerg has like 3X more followers than I do…
hey Noah!! I have 3x more despite talking about hardcore physics quite often … ;-)
The majority of people on twitter though are not like-minded experts, so to me tweeting is often an exercise in outreach – at least most of the times I try to keep the tweet itself rather easy to digest and then provide a web link for those interested to learn more…
But more scientists are joining all the time, so you can actually have stimulating discussions as well and thus get something back in return.
Joerg