Building and using online networks

Elizabeth FitzGeraldInstitute of Educational Technology,The Open Universityelizabeth.fitzgerald@open.ac.uk

Intro

This session will look at online networks and the use of social media, particularly in the context of carrying out research and of being a researcher in those environments.

We will look at the pros and cons of using these systems, academic practice, the role of identity and how you might use social media as a PhD student.

The evolution of the web

Web 2.0• Term first coined in 1999 by Tim O'Reilly/O'Reilly Media• Generally refers to:

– the web as platform (i.e. using it to carry out a range of tasks such as editing, image sharing, email, which previously had to be done via different software packages)

– the participatory web - editing and interacting with other people's web pages, rather than simply reading them

– the web becoming a dynamic and better-organised medium

http://tools.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/downloads/social-software/social-software.pdf

Social media

• Social interaction online• Highly accessible• Scalable publishing techniques• Democratisation of knowledge content • Evolution from consumers into content producers• Interactions moved from one-to-many to many-to-many

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media

More comprehensive example at http://tinyurl.com/soc-media-timeline

Common social media principles

• ‘Bottom-up' development and self-policing communities• User-generated content • Ease of use by non-experts• Flexibility and convergence of systems• Syndication options via news feeds• Rating and tagging of content by users

Social networking sites (SNS)“Web-based services that allow individuals to 1. construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded

system2. articulate a list of other users with whom they share a

connection, and 3. view and traverse their list of connections and those made by

others within the system.”(boyd &Ellison, 2007)

boyd, d. m., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11.

http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html

Examples of academic SNS

• Academia.edu• Mendeley.com• ResearchGate.net• Less well-used sites include:

– iamResearcher.com– Mynetresearch.com

N.B. Interesting work being done by Katy Jordan, OU PhD student: http://iet.open.ac.uk/people/katherine.jordan research into analysis of online academic networks see e.g. http://www.slideshare.net/katyjordan148

Open University sites

• CloudWorks: http://cloudworks.ac.uk “A social networking site for finding, sharing and discussing learning and teaching ideas and designs.”Has clouds, cloudscapes and cloudstreams.

• SocialLearn: http://sociallearn.open.ac.uk“A learning, sharing and social site for anyone who is interested in learning.”

• Knowledge Network: http://kn.open.ac.uk “Find and share OU expertise about teaching and learning” - see http://kn.open.ac.uk/gettingstarted.cfm

Activity (10 mins)• What Web 2.0 or social media sites do you use?• Do you use these personally or professionally, or both?• Make lists in your groups, e.g.

Website or web service/app

Personal or professional Subject discipline

Facebook Was personal, now professional MCTPersonal Business and management

Blog (e.g. Wordpress, Blogger)

Professional FELSPersonal ArtsPersonal FELS

Twitter Professional MCTProfessional Science

Academia.edu Professional Social science

Honeycomb framework of social media

Social media is comprised of functional building blocks:• Identity: the extent to which users reveal their identities • Conversations: how users communicate with other users in a

social media setting• Sharing: how users exchange, distribute, and receive content• Presence: how users can know if other users are accessible• Relationships: how users can be related to other users• Reputation: the extent to which users can identify the

standing of others, including themselves• Groups: how users form communities and subcommunities

Jan H. Kietzmann and Kristopher Hermkens (2011)"Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional

building blocks of social media". Business Horizons 54: 241–251.

Properties of academic SNS

• Identity: Constructing an online academic profile• Communication: Discovery and dissemination of research

findings; asking and answering questions• Collaboration: Finding similar or different collaborators;

supporting active research relationships

Activity (10 mins)

• Think up 4 academic experiences or outputs/processes you might want to share, from your research

• What sorts of SNS (academic or non-academic) could you use to do these?

• Also consider academic experiences or outputs from your research that should you NOT share publicly (either at all, or only to a selected audience)

Your digital identity• Consider both your public and private identities• As academics, how much do they overlap?• How much do you want them to overlap?• Risk of over-sharing• Think about your professional persona and reputation

Consider:• Having separate accounts on Facebook and other sites,

for the public you and the private you• Using the same persona across different SNS to maintain

continuity of identity e.g. Twitter: @R3beccaF, blog: http://r3beccaf.wordpress.com/

Establishing you’re you• Changing your name and/or institution can result in confusion

over identity• Other people with same name as you – same or different

discipline• Increasing integration between systems, plus complaints from

people about inaccurate data in the cloud/limited functionality of automated aggregator means things are gradually getting better (maybe)

• Ultimately, YOU need to take steps to make sure your professional identity is represented accurately online

• ORCiD and ResearcherID both useful tools

http://orcid.org/

http://www.researcherid.com/

Collaboration and dissemination tools• Online storage/hosting pre-prints of papers

– ORO or other eprints repositories– Academia.edu, ResearchGate.net, ORCiD. – Personal website/blog

• Conference presentations– Slideshare, Prezi

• Data– Flickr, YouTube, data repositories

• Information and/or publicity– Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn groups

• Creating or maintaining presence– Twitter

• Collaborative writing– Google Docs

• Web conferencing– Skype, FlashMeeting, Elluminate

N.B. Health warning attached to Microsoft

Academic Search!http://academic.

research.microsoft.com/

Other useful sites

• Bamboo DiRT: http://dirt.projectbamboo.org A registry of digital research tools for scholarly use

• Google Citations: http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en

• Klout: http://klout.com“The Klout Score is a number between 1-100 that represents your online influence. The more influential you are, the higher your Klout Score.”

• ImpactStory: http://impactstory.org “Your impact profile on the web” – metrics calculated from Google citations, Slideshare views, datasets, code etc.

Take-home message• Ignore social networking sites at your peril!

(especially professionally – although some disciplines seem to use them less than others)

• Many advantages to engaging with them, when used right– Publicising yourself– Publicising your work– Recruit participants or collaborators, share project outcomes, find

an external examiner, find a job• Consider what to share, and when/how to share it• Think about your digital identity• Investigate collaboration and dissemination tools to help

with your online networking activities

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1337

Thanks for coming!

Liz FitzGerald: elizabeth.fitzgerald@open.ac.uk

http://elara99.wordpress.comhttp://open.academia.edu/LizFitzGeraldhttp://www.slideshare.net/ejfitzgeraldhttps://twitter.com/elara99http://klout.com/elara99