The Multipurpose Tool of Social Media: Applications for Scientists, Science Communicators, and Educators

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Abstract

Social media has become the fastest way to disseminate new information, share personal experiences, and discuss scientific reports in an open-access setting. It acts as an aggregator of news and reports, a platform for education, a means of public outreach, and a tool for scientific research. Each social media service offers unique communication benefits. This review discusses how scientists are using social media to inform and learn from social media communities, concentrating on microbiology and infectious disease.

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How Are Scientists Using Social Media in the Workplace?

Kimberley Collins, David Shiffman, Jenny Rock (2016)

Social media has created networked communication channels that facilitate interactions and allow information to proliferate within professional academic communities as well as in informal social circumstances. A significant contemporary discussion in the field of science communication is how scientists are using (or might use) social media to communicate their research. This includes the role of social media in facilitating the exchange of knowledge internally within and among scientific communities, as well as externally for outreach to engage the public. This study investigates how a surveyed sample of 587 scientists from a variety of academic disciplines, but predominantly the academic life sciences, use social media to communicate internally and externally. Our results demonstrate that while social media usage has yet to be widely adopted, scientists in a variety of disciplines use these platforms to exchange scientific knowledge, generally via either Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or blogs. Despite the low frequency of use, our work evidences that scientists perceive numerous potential advantages to using social media in the workplace. Our data provides a baseline from which to assess future trends in social media use within the science academy.

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Identifying the public's concerns and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's reactions during a health crisis: An analysis of a Zika live Twitter chat.

Elizabeth Glowacki, Allison Lazard, Gary Wilcox … (2016)

The arrival of the Zika virus in the United States caused much concern among the public because of its ease of transmission and serious consequences for pregnant women and their newborns. We conducted a text analysis to examine original tweets from the public and responses from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during a live Twitter chat hosted by the CDC. Both the public and the CDC expressed concern about the spread of Zika virus, but the public showed more concern about the consequences it had for women and babies, whereas the CDC focused more on symptoms and education.

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Insights into rare diseases from social media surveys

William Davies (2016)

The internet, and social media platforms, are increasingly being used by substantial sectors of the worldwide population. By engaging effectively with online and social media, scientists and clinicians can obtain unprecedented access to relatively large cohorts of individuals with rare diseases, as well as their relatives, carers and professionals involved in their healthcare. Online surveys of these stakeholder groups may provide important new insights into rare conditions and their management relatively quickly and easily, with the possibility of rapid translation into healthcare interventions and policy. Here, I describe our recent positive experience with the online survey approach to a rare disease (X-linked ichthyosis), and review its advantages and limitations.

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Author and article information

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Julie M. Wolf

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Clin Microbiol Newsl

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Clin. Microbiol. Newsl

Title: Clinical Microbiology Newsletter

Publisher: Elsevier

ISSN (Print): 0196-4399

ISSN (Electronic): 1873-4391

Publication date PMC-release: 4 May 2017

Publication date (Print): 15 May 2017

Publication date (Electronic): 4 May 2017

Volume: 39

Issue: 10

Pages: 75-79

Affiliations

[1]American Society for Microbiology, Washington, D.C.

Author notes

[* ]Corresponding author: Julie M. Wolf, Ph.D., American Society for Microbiology, 1752 N Street NW, Washington, DC 20036. Tel.: 202-737-3600 jwolf@ 123456asmusa.org

Article

Publisher ID: S0196-4399(17)30030-2

DOI: 10.1016/j.clinmicnews.2017.04.003

PMC ID: 7132423

PubMed ID: 32287686

SO-VID: 40a7207f-f3fa-4b29-a9c6-050e422a83a4

License:

Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

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The Multipurpose Tool of Social Media: Applications for Scientists, Science Communicators, and Educators

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Abstract

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Emirati Journal of Digital Arts AND Media

Most cited references 9

How Are Scientists Using Social Media in the Workplace?

Identifying the public's concerns and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's reactions during a health crisis: An analysis of a Zika live Twitter chat.

Insights into rare diseases from social media surveys

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Contributors

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