Slides to support De Montfort University workshops for PhD students and early career researchers

1. Social Media for Researchers
Professor Richard Hall
@hallymk1
rhall1@dmu.ac.uk
Fraser Marshall
DMU Information Officer
fmarshall@dmu.ac.uk

2. 1. personal data, research & social media
2. case 1: social media and research
management;
3. case 2: the potential of social
networking sites for data collection; and
4. Case 3: the potential of social
technologies for sharing/dissemination.

3. Any other business?

4. This is an increasingly live
research space

5. • Carpenter et al. (2010). Researchers of Tomorrow: Annual
Report: 2009‐2010.
• Kroll and Forsman (2010). A Slice of Research Life:
Information Support for Research in the United States
• Procter et al. (2010). If you build it, will they come? How
researchers perceive and use web 2.0. Research Information
Network, London.
• James et al. (2009).
The lives and technologies of early career researchers
• Harley et al. (2010).
Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication:
An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven
Disciplines. UC Berkeley: Center for Studies in Higher
Education.
• Jisc (2013). Social Media and Academia: http://bit.ly/1f2cka8
[with thanks to @mweller]

6. • UCL Social Networking Sites & Social Science Research
Project: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/social-networking
• Pew Research Centre: Social Networking:
http://bit.ly/1iDjpC3
• London School of Economics Blogs: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/
• DMU Commons: http://our.dmu.ac.uk/
• DMU/CELT Guidelines when using Social Media
Technologies for Teaching http://bit.ly/1iDiIc2
• See also DMU Email, Internet and Social Media Policy
(On Intranet > POD > Human Resources > Policies)
• DMU Library Copyright pages:
http://library.dmu.ac.uk/Support/Copyright/

7. Headlines
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•
•
•
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Frequent or intensive use is emerging/rare
Researchers as ‘risk averse’ and ‘behind the
curve in using digital technology’
Culture against using social media for either
soft or hard publishing
BUT almost all researchers have created a
strong network of friends and colleagues
Social media supports spontaneity and
serendipity

8. Social or co-operative as resilient
practice:
1. modular engagement;
2. inside diverse networks;
3. tied to feedback loops.
Issues of trust, power, rules

10. Tools and stuff: http://www.rin.ac.uk/node/1009
Jisc (2014). Social Media for Beginners.
http://bit.ly/1dILobg
I like really simple overviews: http://bit.ly/1jX8S2t
On how organisations use social media:
http://bit.ly/yynf81
Information Commissioner’s Office, on social
media and the DPA http://bit.ly/1b82SOP
Research Information Network, guide on using
social media for research: http://bit.ly/1ic9enM

11. What do you understand by social media or
the social web?
Which technologies do you use in your
research? What for? Are they social?
What are the ramifications of your work being
social?

12. Personal Data, Research & Social Media

13. What is Personal Data?

14. 2 Classes of Data
Class determines how data is handled

17. When can we process personal info?

18. When can we process sensitive personal info?

19. Special Conditions for Research
S33 “Research, history & statistics” provides
• Exemption from right of access to personal data
• Right to hold data indefinitely
• Enables processing for purposes other than for which
collected
• Where info doesn’t support decisions about data
subjects
• Not processed in way that might cause damage or
distress to data subjects.

20. Rights of Data Subjects

21. The Data Protection Principles

22. Any Questions?

23. 1. Blogging for critique, comment, aggregation and
testing ideas: http://jennifermjones.net/
2. Amplifying networks using Twitter:
http://twitter.com/#!/jennifermjones
3. Flickr as an image bank:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jenniferjones
Case 1: JJ – testing ideas and building networks

24. Visualising data taken from the social web, based on
connections/connectivity: http://blog.ouseful.info/
Visualising data from publications: http://bit.ly/kxlhPH
Open data: http://bit.ly/gbzB3z and
UK Government: http://data.gov.uk/
Case 2: open, data-driven research

25. Research critiques: http://richard-hall.org
Hashtags in Twitter: managing trends: http://bit.ly/1f2iMOi
Communities of Practice:
Galaxy Zoo: http://www.galaxyzoo.org/
RunCoCo: http://projects.oucs.ox.ac.uk/runcoco/
The Social Science Centre: http://bit.ly/1jXc6Dc
Case 3: open, collaborative research

26. A note on Twitter
'Highly Tweeted Articles Were 11 Times More Likely to
Be Highly Cited’ (2012): http://bit.ly/woj8ob
Analysis of science on social media service finds little
correlation with standard measures of academic success
(2013): http://bit.ly/18INZEo
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Connection and connectivity
Serendipity
Voice
Echo chambers, reliability, validity and trust

27. On research in public
http://bit.ly/1daaJ3G

29. http://snapey.our.dmu.ac.uk/

30. It’s your research.
What issues do you foresee?
Where might you start?

31. Does size matter?
You are connected at a range of scales.
How will you utilise that for research
management, data collection and
networking?
How will you think about reliability,
validity, trust, power and ethics?

32. Social Media for Researchers by Professor Richard Hall is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0
Unported License.