HEU on Facebook & Twitter in 2012

Allison Stevens Health Economics Unit, University of Cape Town

RESYST Research Uptake Workshop September 2012, Cape Town

Source: http://www.fredcavazza.net/2008/06/09/social-media-landscape/

Entering the social media landscape

• Reciprocal communication and attribution (Priego, 2012)

– Discover viewpoints

• Help others by sharing interesting links

– Include information from other institutions

• Source news

• Reach more people

• Becoming mainstream, if not already?

Priego, E. 2012. How Twitter will revolutionise academic research and teaching. Guardian professional online

Loose networks

Photo Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SNA_segment.png

We live in a world of loose connections – you will discover news from someone you will never know via a series of repostings that eventually reach you via social media (Neylon 2012)

Neylon, C. 2012. Research assessment to support research impact, UCT seminar, August

Social media @ the HEU

• 2009:

– RSS feeds Still very popular

– Blog Discontinued in 2011

• 2012:

– Facebook

– Twitter

HEU Facebook Page

Messages & networking

Viewpoints & conversations

Others share your posting with their networks

Insights for monitoring

Highlight & pin features

The CHEPSAA project on Twitter

Send short, timely news broadcasts

Share external news

Receive news

Get notable followers

Retweets & mentions

Other Twitter functions

• Conversations

• Live Twitter chats

• Search for topics and who to follow

• Hashtag major events

Digital professionalism

• Practise good online management

– Constant updating

– Content creation

– Hootsuite

• Coach researchers within your institution to use social media

Thank you

www.facebook.com/uct.heu https://twitter.com/hpsa_africa

The HEU is a partner of the RESYST consortium. RESYST is funded by Ukaid from the Department for International Development http://resyst.lshtm.ac.uk/