This document discusses how researchers can use social media and digital tools professionally. It outlines various social media and web-based tools that can be used for professional identity, networking, managing information, and creating/presenting content. The document provides tips for using these tools responsibly and effectively. It also discusses how digital technologies are changing practices like publishing, assessment, pedagogy, and the nature of scholarship in fields like digital humanities. Resources for good practice and further training are recommended.

1. Social Media for
Researchers
Dr Helen Webster
Digital Humanities Network

2. Modelling Good Digital
Behaviour…
These slides are on Slideshare, and the links are
live:
http://www.slideshare.net/drhelenwebster
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#DH23

3. What do you use?
Social Professional
• Facebook • LinkedIn, Academia.edu
• Blogging (Wordpress, Blogger) • Blogging (Wordpress, Blogger)
• Twitter • Twitter
• Content sharing (Flickr, Youtube) • Content sharing (Slideshare,
Scribd)
• Cloud email (Yahoo, gmail)
• Cloud storage (Dropbox, Google
Drive)
• Social Bookmarking (Delicious,
Diigo)
• Social Bibliography (Mendeley,
Zotero)
• Conferencing (Skype, Google
Hangouts)
• Alternative office tools (Scrivener,
Prezi)

4. THES article this week:
Using Social Media
Responsibly

5. Aims
Not to teach tools, but...
• an awareness of the ways in which social and digital
media platforms can enhance and be embedded in your
work as a researcher
• an understanding of the issues raised by social and
digital media tools, potential pitfalls, good practice and
future impacts on the profession
• an awareness of and ability to evaluate the various
types of digital tool and make informed decisions about
your own engagement with them in your practice

6. Thinking Digitally
•Digital
•Networked
•Open
•(Weller, 2012)

7. Thinking
Professionally
Research
Professional
Teaching
activities
Public
Administration
engagement

8. Scale of digital
engagement
TechnoFEAR! TechnoJOY!
(Izzard, 1997)

9. Issues

10. Issues

11. Do I have to…?
The minimum you need to do…
• Google yourself and check for information
put online by others
• Check privacy and permission settings
carefully
• Be aware of Online and Real Life echo
chambers – what might you be missing?
• Find efficient alternative strategies
• Tailor your research topic and methods

12. What can you offer?

13. What do you want to
do?
• Tools for Professional
Identity
• Tools for Networking
• Tools for Managing
information
• Tools for Creating and
Presenting Information

14. Tools for Professional
Identity
• Blog (Wordpress, Blogger, Livejournal)
• ResearcherID and Google Scholar Citations
profile
• Academia.edu and LinkedIn
• Personal Website (Institutional and/or using
a blog platform such as Wordpress)
• Namechk, About.me, Gravatar, Google
Profile

15. Tips for Professional Identity
• Ensure a stable web presence in the long term
• Don’t just broadcast – interact
• Think about your metadata – search terms
• Offer something of value to your audience
• Think about how personal you want your tone to be
• Collate and disambiguate your identity
• Have strategies for keeping other personal online
identities separate
• Have strategies for account and password
management

16. What might you do
with a blog?

17. Tools for Networking
• Twitter
• Listorious, SocialMention, Technorati
• JISCmail lists
• Use the interactive functions of blogs and
social/professional platforms – don’t just
broadcast, discuss, comment, ask questions,
give answers.

18. Tips for networking
• Update at peak times – 9am, 3pm, 6pm
• Have a strategy and policy for
following/friending – who is your network and
how will you find it online?
• Be aware of who’s in that webspace and
avoid the echo chamber
• Link your identity to real life – a photo, a real
name
• Update ‘regularly’

19. What might you do
with Twitter?

20. Tools for managing
Information
• RSS feeds (Netvibes), Google alerts
• Stumbleupon, Similarpages
• Mendeley, Zotero
• Evernote
• Delicious, Pearltrees, Scoop-it
• Dropbox, Google Drive

21. Tips for managing
Information
• Think about filtering information as much as
finding it
• Think about ethics – don’t store sensitive
confidential data in cloud storage (ie
Dropbox, Googledocs, Evernote)
• Think about data management, metadata,
file formats, backing up and security
• Many of these tools have a social function
also

22. What might you do
with Dropbox?

23. Tools for Creating and
presenting information
• Scrivener
• Prezi
• Youtube (+ video editing software)
• Audacity + Soundcloud or itunesU
• Issuu
• Slideshare, Scribd, Flickr
• Bubbl.us, Easel.ly

24. Tips for Creating and
Presenting information
• Think about copyright infringement (check for
Creative Commons)
• Good practice – ask consent if including others
• Frictionless ‘collateral damage’ capture digital
artefacts from routine activities
• Share them if they would be of value to others*
• Update your wider network of what you’ve
created

25. What might you do
with Youtube?

26. How is Practice
Changing?
• Publishing Models: Open Access Publishing
• Quality Assessment Models: Altmetrics
• Funding: Collaboration and large projects
• Pedagogy: digital classroom, ‘pedagogy of
abundance’
• Conference ‘attendance’ – livestreaming,
liveblogging, podcasting

27. How is Scholarship
changing?
Digital Humanities
• Born Digital and digitised research objects
• Big Data – data mining etc
• Digital analysis methods
• Data visualisation - Global information Systems
(GIS) etc
• Crowdsourcing and recruitment

28. Resources
On Good Practice for Researchers
• Vitae’s Handbook of Social Media for Researchers
and Supervisors
• RIN’s Social Media: A Guide for Researchers
On the impact of digital technologies on academic
practice
• Martin Weller (2012) The Digital Scholar
• John Naughton (2012) From Gutenberg to
Zuckerberg: What you really need to know about the
Internet

29. Further Training
• DH23Things online course
• The Researcher Online workshops (see
CRASSH activities and AHSS PhD
email list)
• Digital Humanities Network