Learning how to use the tools of the web in the proper way can serve to enhance your own research. Make contacts, read blog posts, write blog posts, tweet, and open up job opportunities!
An introduction to Digital Research in my life and career:
I use several different online and social media tools, such as:
- Blogging (reading & writing)
- Personal blogs
- Syndicated columns
- Research blogs
- Mostly for personal use, but have given and received small bits of advice on grad school, working in academia, and more
- "Microblogging", 140 characters of fun
- @kaylai
- RSS Feeds
- Popular science
- Peer-reviewed journals
I have made hundreds of contacts online through these mediums -- and not just casual acquaintances, but real close friends who have done everything from offering me writing gigs to meeting up at conferences to going to the pub with to putting me up at their homes! Although the internet may seem at first like a cold, isolated place for people, you'd be surprised at the depth of the relationships that you can make with a few Twitter conversations. Heck, I met my current boyfriend of 5.5 years on MySpace!
Why I LOVE Twitter:
Tweets like this can make my day:
Uses for Digital Resources:
Perhaps there are some ways to use digital resources that you haven't yet considered. Besides networking, what can the internet do for you?
Statistical analysis of trends. Especially useful in social and psychological sciences that deal with modern day issues and behaviors.
Scholarly journal articles.
Databases of previous research.
Possible Pitfalls & What to Look Out For:
Although disseminating your research widely is a great thing to do, and something I strive for, it is important to go into this with your eyes open. It is necessary to understand what can legally be done with your content by others, and who is allowed to see what you post on the internet. Rule of thumb: do not post anything on the internet that you would be upset about everyone in the world knowing about. Even your 90-year-old nearly deaf, legally blind grandmother can hear about something you post online. Word gets around.
A creative commons license is one thing you can apply to your online content that allows for the further dissemination of your work, but that can require that it be linked back to you. http://creativecommons.org/
Tags: Digital Research, geoscience, blogging, science, twitter, social media
But....
What does it all mean? Sure it is useful for us as researchers, academics people who like talking and thinking about all this stuff - but isn't there a danger we widen the gap between us and them (i.e. pretty much everybody else on the planet!).
Although you can square all this with drivers which aim to engage more with 'the public' there are still loads of challenges. I've been involved in running a blog (i don't often contribute i must admit) on issues around homelessness http://homelessinstoke.com/ but it fails to communicate with those people who we would most benefit from talking to i.e. homeless people or people on one of the various pathways to homelessness.
How then can social media be used to really engage the majority rather than just a minority of a minority? http://networkedneighbourhoods.com/ have been doing some good work around exploring how to engage communities in taking more of a role in their local neighbourhoods in an effort to increase belonging, make services and those that provide things in, and for, communities more accountable. Citizen journalism has also taken off in a big way (see Huffington Post) and the more directly local verision of hyperlocal sites (see Stoke-on-Trent's Pits and Pots http://pitsnpots.co.uk/ )
