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.