Communicating Science to non-

technical audiences: Maximizing

web 2.0 and other social media

tools

Dorine odongo 15th May, 2013

What is social media/web 2.0?

•interactive

•web-based

•people

•share information

• collaborate online

•Is primarily a social, rather than a technological evolution.

The social media landscape

People, content, access, impact, participation

Social media

Approaches

Tools Curate, publish, collaborate, network, aggregate

5 ways researchers can use social media:

Building own toolkit

Social networking

Collaborating on the internet

Contributing to the internet

Content aggregation and

curation

incorporating strategic use

in organisation

Social networking

Key features:

- create profiles

- find people with

common interests

- share content

•Individuals connecting

and communicating

around a common interest

using online tools

•Real time updates

Collaborating on the internet

• Collaboration tools refer to social media

applications that facilitate the interactions of

working groups online

• provide group members with more options for

obtaining, changing and sharing knowledge within

the group

• collaboration is supported by groupware tools at

four basic levels:

Content management

collaboration

conferencing

communication

• Communication- e.g. D-groups and list serve

– A list serve is an e-mail based tool that allows groups of

people to be easily connected together for discussions

and information exchange

– key feature message sent to the listserv, all the listserv

subscribers automatically receive the message in their e-

mail inbox

• Conferencing e-.g. using video conferencing

• Collaboration – e.g. through wikis, allows members

to add, modify and re-shape each other's work.

– Example: joint proposal writing online

• Content Management- allowing members to create,

share and organize content

Contributing to the Internet • Creating and publishing user -generated

content

• level of expertise required is low

• tools allow users to voice their expertise:

publish articles, include links, publish video

and images, and even small audio recordings

Tools

Podcasting and online radio

• distributing audio files over the Internet

• users access by subscribing and downloading them.

• anyone with internet access can create their own content, and people have more choices of types of content they can get

Blogs

• shorter and less formal than scientific articles

• more accessible to a non-expert audience

• Dynamic-can be easily and frequently updated

• Enables one to have visibility and a presence on the web,

A large amount of information is generated on the Internet every day

There are a number of key strategies for working with this content using social media

Instead of users checking on the website for new content, the content reaches the user through a feed reader or aggregated onto a central website.

Content Aggregation and curation

Aggregation: consolidate information into

one place. How?

Subscribing to content from the web and

having it come to one central place

cuts down on the time to visit many sites.

– ability to subscribe to website content is

provided by a “feed”-.

Using feeds- a stream of information over the

Internet

Feeds enable users to have an overview of

dynamically published content drawn from many

sites in one place on your computer

Curation takes the feed and adds value by

selecting, sorting, annotating and organizing

content.

organizing, filtering and “making sense of” information on the web

Sharing that content with your network

Example?

Content curation Content curation adds value to information.

.

compiles news feeds from a variety of online sources for the user to customize and

share with others

Feedly

tagging and book marking

– web supports production and sharing of both

formal and informal content,

– Thus, directories increasingly complicated to

produce and maintain.

– Tagging: human indexing of material on the

Web, in order to make it easier to find and

share

– Tagging provides content with context and

meaning

– Social bookmarking is one of the ways in

which users on the web use tagging to

share and aggregate their knowledge.

– Social bookmarking allows users to: save

web pages address on the web; under a

personal account; tag each page with

keywords

Building own toolkit

– Developing a social media strategy to

incorporated strategic use in organisation

– Issues to consider:

• What are the audiences you want to reach out?

• What are your communication objectives?

• What are the key messages you want to convey?

• What are the tools you will use and for what purposes?

Audiences to reach: policy makers, researchers

Organisational

Objectives

Communication

Objectives

Generate evidence to

support policy and

decision making through

the research programmes

Build awareness and

publicity about our

programmes and

projects- Facilitate use

of research outputs

Building own toolkit

Key messages for audience:

– Training opportunities available

– Courses offered and scheduling

– Advantages of these courses

Tools:

– Social Networking sites- Building on-line communities,

connecting with stakeholders, networking,

– Image and Video sharing-posting tutorials, sharing slides

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