Weekly Update #2

Bustling in discovery

This week meant the second week of intensive research into the use of social media by scholars. At this rate, I expect to be finished by the end of next week, hopefully developing a final report with recommendations by the start of the following week.

What did I find this week? Well here is a look at the general questions I was focused on and a few points on each:

-I continued last week’s formation of social media sites as more continue to emerge through my research and I add them to the ongoing list of popular sites (with descriptions on what they are used for)
-I began to fully engage in the use of social media by researchers, including general ideas about the rate of use by various researchers
-what type of social media sites are most used and the frequency of use of these services by scholars. Research showed that opposite to popular claims, most social media sites are not dominantly used by younger scholars, but in fact by those who are semi-established (mainly for the reason of being able to build up credibility and popularity more easily through formal, more traditional methods when you are an up-and-coming scholar)
-I found a really good study done by the Research Information Network which looked at scholars use of web applications and how these related to social media networks within the European community. I also found a similar report which coincided with this research but was focused on American scholars. Both reports were carefully analyzed and many great graphs were extracted to serve as a basis for my recommendations and general analysis of social media use by scholars
-next I focused on the goals and motivations of scholars who are using social media tools
-I focused in much more detail in extracting the benefits and the disadvantages of using social media for academic purposes. These list continue to grow and will offer a good understanding of reasons behind the use or lack of use of these services by academics
-I am just starting to delve into the differences in use between developed and developing country researchers. This information is much harder to find given that web applications are fairly recent and technology in less developed countries is still emerging
-in general, I have found information for the most popular social media and networking sites by continent and country, which will help to focus the research onto a specific service and how they are used
-factors facilitating the use of web 2.0 tools as well as barriers to their use is also being investigated, and a list tabulated which outline the factors influencing the adoption and use of online services
-next, I have tried to find studies that have looked at some of these issues (there are very few that I have found thus far) to see how the use of social media by scholars and by people of different regions of the world are analyzed. How is use of online tools measured and evaluated?
-and lastly, I began investigating the likelihood of traditional systems incorporating informal media into their databases and research tools. This also links to the notion of open and close access journals and online data, which plays into the choice to incorporate more open systems into formal, generally closed services

Voila, an outline of the basic things I have been investigating and focusing on this week. Throughout this investigation, I continue to find and jot down recommendations according to my findings of how we can encourage the use of social media by scholars and whether or not and how traditional systems should incorporate informal networks into their traditional operations in order to remain relevant.

Hopefully, next week’s update will be the last of the updates, including all of the information I researched throughout the last three weeks and providing good information to enable the formation of solid recommendations.

Weekly Update

The week that passed marked the first week of serious work into my research on the use of social media by scholars. I will try to do a weekly update as to what I have looked at and found, very briefly in order for you to follow my research.

This week I concentrated on a few things, mainly:
-general key terms
-important authors in the field and known for using/researching social media
-disadvantages of certain Internet tactics (ie. bookmarking or tagging)
-how links are shared and shortened
-popular bookmarking sites
-list of popular social networking and media sites used by scholars
-most popular citation sites
-most popular social media sites used by scholars

I looked at the concept of social bookmarking (method used by Internet users to organize, store, manage and search bookmarks of resources online), and tagging (the process by which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content).

I looked at different authors that have come up as important scholars in the field of social media. I have also gone beyond just authors and scholars but also professionals and other social media experts in order to get an understanding of how different online tools are utilized and what they offer.

Next I looked at the disadvantages of informal bookmarking and how people can track sites that have been bookmarked. This includes direct bookmarking of the site as well as informal sharing of the site through sharing links. Online tools which shorten URLs were also looked at briefly in terms of the benefits of shortening website links (mainly to stay within or simplify when links are sent).

I then looked more closely at various bookmarking sites which are most popular. I gathered lists of these sites then went onto each one to generate a one line description of the type of service they offer.

Perhaps my most interesting research was looking at which social media sites are most popular amongst scholars. I once again scrounged online sources to find the most popular sites which focus on scholarly topics or have been most utilized by scholars. I wrote out an extensive list and began visiting each website to write a brief description of the service offered. This list is very important as it will help me delve further into how various social media sites attract scholars and how they are being utilized by them on a daily basis. This will no doubt be the source of much further analysis which will become the base of my research.

That’s all for last week, lots done and still lots to do!
Until next time.

Authors to look into more

Authors to Look Up:
-Bonnie Lawlor, NFAIS Executive Director
Slide Presentation
-Jeff Boily- CEO, BioWizard
-Lettie Onrad, Online publishing/product manager, SagePublications Inc.
Slide Presentation
-John Sullivan, Chief Information Officer, the American Chemical Society
Slide Presentation
-Dr. Bay Arinze, Prof of Management Info Systems, Drexel University
Slide Presentation
-Reynolds Guida, Director Product Developer Thomson Reuters
Slide Presentation
-Jill Hurst-Wahl, Instructor School of Information Studies, Syracuse University
Slide Presentation
-Wayne Hay, IT Manager, Westchester Library System, NY
Slide Presentation
-Jay Datema, founder Bookism.org
-Darin McBeath, Director of Disruptive Tech, Elsevier
Slide Presentation
http://www.slideshare.net/dreamingspires/how-to-use-social-media-in-scholarly-publishing
-Sara Kjellberg - I am a blogging researcher: Motivations for blogging in a scholarly contexthttp://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2962/2580
-Jason Priem, Bradely H. Hemminger -Scientometrics 2.0: New metrics of scholarly impact on the social Web http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2874/2570

Research Outline

How are social media tools being used by scholars to formulate discussions and share knowledge about their academic works?

Goals:
•Research the ways in which scholars are using/could use online social media for
academic purposes
•Outline the ways in which scholars are currently using social media and compare
(if possible) these uses from scholars in the developed vs. the developing world
•Make recommendations for how we can enhance existing traditional systems to
incorporate (or at least recognize) the use of informal online tools for
scientific purposes and academic knowledge sharing (focusing especially on
Bioline – how can we improve this basic and traditional system based on the use
of social media by scholars)
•Bioline as a traditional and basic system, how can we improve this service based
on the discovered use of social media? (could be that using social media for
researchers from the developing world is not an advantage, if that’s the case,
say so in the recommendations section)

Guiding Questions:
1.How are scholars using online social media tools?
a.What social media tools are being used?
b.What types of activities/goals do scholars have in using these tools?
c.What are the benefits/disadvantages of using social media tools for
academic purposes?
2.How are scholars from the developed world using social media tools? Does their
utility differ from that of scholars from the developing world?
a.Is there a way of tracking the use of social media tools by scholars from
different parts of the world/areas of development?
b.What factors play into these differences? (i.e. the digital divide, level
of education, availability of technology, etc.)
3.How is the use of social media by scholars captured and/or evaluated?
a.How do we track the use of online social media by scholars?
b.How can we enhance the tracing of this use within academic circles?
4.Looking at the Library of Congress’ recent decision to store all Twitter posts
as ‘historical data’, will this become the case for other social media content?
a.How legitimate is user-generated content?
b.Has the legitimacy of such content been on the rise or falling?
c.Will informal content eventually become increasingly integrated within
other more traditional types of systems?
d.How will this affect the notion of open vs. closed access online services
given that these tools are based on free use and content

DONE!!!

Wow, I have never worked so long on a paper in my life. This paper would give my thesis competition for sure. The only thing that got me through it was the fact that I found it interesting, so hopefully my analysis will be interesting to read.

Im glad it's done, but now I must concentrate on doing a lot more research on citations through informal media channels. Hopefully that'll go smooth and I'll find some results.

This is it!

I am hoping to have my essay complete by the end of the week.
So far I have everything done except for the G20 case and the Conclusion.

I have decided to not make a video to accompany it. I have given my essay to a few friends to edit and they have given me pretty good feedback, stating that all of the work I want to do would be PhD level, and that I am explaining myself well enough and in enough detail that I shouldn't worry about adding anything to it. This positive feedback has been great, and I'm hoping will help me finish everything off.

I began doing the G20 case, just researching more, on Friday, and all of the emotions I had originally about being involved with it came rushing back. It made me realize how easily we forget things that affect us. This made me kind of sad considering that if we want to see anything happen with the inquiries, that we must continue to care, and that we must continue to let it affect us in the same way that it did on the actual weekend in order to feel the desire to see change happen.

Working hard

I have most of my body done thus far. All of the content, theory, study sample/area, etc etc. It's all done!!! Well, it needs a bit of work, but the bulk is there and I am pretty happy with it.

I'm afraid Ill be going over the page limit though, story of my life. So hopefully the page limitation is just a suggestion. I will definitely try to keep in concise, I just have so much to say!

Im also debating doing something different for my case study section. As it will be mostly information taken from online sources, such as posts, videos, images, etc. I was thinking that instead of a long report on each case, I could do a little video montage. Besides, my whole paper is about media and visuals, it would be an interesting way of doing it. Something like doing all the research and write up on all the theory and background information, then a few pages on each of the cases to give a bit of background, but the bulk of the showcasing of different perspectives would be done visually through a video rather than talking about it. I'm still debating this idea, given that I have not fully delved into that section yet, I am not sure if Ill find a lot of visuals or whether they will mostly be reports. If the latter, then continuing on with writing an elaborated section would be best, but if most of the information I find is videos and images, it may be more relevant to present in that format. Just a thought, what do you think?