Twitter + field work

Sally Jamesseattlesciencewriter.com

Online health information:72% of internet users say they looked online for health information within the past year.

As Zen Faulkes (@DoctorZen) quite rightly stated here : ‘Everything that happens on social media has been happening at conferences for as long as there have been conferences (informal conversations). Social media is just the biggest research conference in the world’.

Written by Alexis Berger, who is French scientist working on gene regulation.https://aninfinityofhypotheses.wordpress.com/2015/02/24/a-scientists-account-to-twitter/

Notice that the voice of the twitter feed is not didactic or full of jargon.What writers call the “voice” of the tweets is conversational.

We hit the ground running!

Fri is Bangladesh's day off, so went sightseeing with field team to Sonargaon.

First person consenting into the study! Only 1,614 to go.

Wherever we go people are very curious about us! Dr. @MollyKile is always surrounded by children

OSU used the tweets to makea. A Storify (summary of tweet stream)b. Facebook postc. Story on the college’s own media

You could also create

d. Newsletter poste. Alum magazine storyf. Video for youtube about the research using some of the still photosd. Pinterest page of photos from research

Live chat

The National Cancer Institute recently had an unprecedented success, in their words, with a live chat on twitter.

They invited people (including doctors and researchers) to all share thoughts during the showing of the film, “The Emperor of All Maladies,” on PBS on March 31, April 1 and April 2.

They chose a hash tag in advance #cancerfilm

61,113 tweets13,716 participants

499,739,312 impressions

(number of times pages viewed in search results)

According to Audun Utengen of symplur.com, this was the single largest doctor-participation in the history of health social media. 490 – self-identified doctors504 – self-identified patients

Source: http://www.symplur.com/healthcare-hashtags/CancerFilm/

Hash tag –

Simply a way for people to search for tweets that have a common topic and to begin a conversation. For example, if you search on #LOST (or #Lost or #lost, because it's not case-sensitive), you'll get a list of tweets related to the old TV show. What you won't get are tweets that say "I lost my wallet yesterday" because "lost" isn't preceded by the hash mark.

Choose tags carefully Sometimes you line up your content with an already-established tag – such as #environmentalhealth

Other times, you select precisely to make a tag unique

You can register a health-related tag with Symplur.com, and they willkeep track of all the tweets that result.

Many events have tags –

Recent cancer conference examples:

#aacr15 (American Association for Cancer Research conference)#aai 2015 (American Association of Immunologists conference)#asco15 (American Society of Clinical Oncology)

Twitter chats are a great way to HEARimportant trends, comments by your influencerspublic confusion

You don’t have to say (or post) anything.

Besides creating a photo and word diary of your field work,potentially participating in live chats with the public + colleagues,

social media gives you a way to comment and perhaps discuss journalism about your field of science.

Be a curator, influencer, commenter

Some references for “Twitter and Field Work”http://www.pewinternet.org/2010/03/24/health-information/Gap between scientists and publichttp://www.pewinternet.org/interactives/public-scientists-opinion-gap/Survey of scientists about how they engage with publichttp://www.pewinternet.org/2015/02/15/how-scientists-engage-public/Scientist’s own “why I am on twitter” bloghttps://aninfinityofhypotheses.wordpress.com/2015/02/24/a-scientists-account-to-twitter/Nature journal article on Twitter – especially use for raising profile of younger scientists, garnering conference invitations and other networking.http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj7538-263aExplainer on Storifying something that has been on Twitter. https://storify.com/Birbaum speaker in SEATTLE on June 3 – MD who is rock star of social media for public healthhttps://www.grouphealthresearch.org/news-and-events/events/hilde-and-bill-birnbaum-endowed-lecture-2015/How the Nat’l Cancer Institute rocked the health landscape during “Emperor of Maladies” on PBS, by getting thousands and thousands to tweet during film.http://www.healthnewsreview.org/2015/03/social-media-reacts-to-emperor-of-all-maladies/More data on that here:http://www.symplur.com/healthcare-hashtags/CancerFilm/ How scholars use social media for “scholarly” communication – April 2015 discussionhttp://www.fromthelabbench.com/from-the-lab-bench-science-blog/2015/4/28/socializing-scholarly-communication-a-round-tableTweeters list to follow at AACR15http://www.aacr.org/Newsroom/PAGES/AACR-ANNUAL-MEETING-2015-TWITTER-USERS-TO-FOLLOW.ASPX#.VVUyrJPrvrQJessica Rohde – How scientists use social mediahttp://www.slideshare.net/rohdej/beyond-a-trend-how-scientists-use-social-media