Social media and academic research

Yes, a special report about web 2.0 tools within academic research!

It would seem, that due to the “publish or perish” rule, that a significant amount of professors at the university are more driven within their allocated research hours versus their teaching hours. This is not a judgement, rather, for change management purposes it is important to be aware of the drivers and motivating factors amongst your target group. Can we tap into the drive to conduct research, to pull users over the “social media divide” and introduce new tools/methods of sharing knowledge and networking? A tug is necessary in some cases because learning to use new tools, or new methodologies with old tools, requires an initial extra investment on the side of the user.

Are social media tools relevant, usefull, effective for academic research? Hence my enthusiasm about this special report in The Broker, Social Academia.

The first article by Janelle Ward: The impact of web 2.0 on research practices starts with pointing out three major obstacles to the adoption of web 2.0 tools in academic research (my elation subsidied somewhat).

1. "First, the formal system of peer review to guarantee the quality of research is at odds with the informal and much more open ways of communicating via online social networks.
2. The second obstacle is the ‘publish or perish’ rule – researchers must publish in peer-reviewed subscription journals in order to further their academic careers. This does not fit well with philosophy behind social networking that all knowledge should be freely available.
3. Finally, the ambition of all researchers to publish their findings before anyone else, and to secure potentially profitable intellectual property rights, discourages them from sharing work in progress on platforms that are open to all."

I read a premise in these obstacles which I must question, namely that web 2.0 tools are by definition tools which are open for editing and reading for all. Web 2.0 tools or social media tools can be extremely effective amongst a specific group of people. Doesn’t all research build on former research and on the input and inspiration, ground work, provided by others? How many effective researchers truelly function in an ivory tower? Or are there specific characteristics to social scientists (my target group) that make them more probable to work in groups than others?

A subsequent article, also by Janelle Ward: Rewriting research questions whether the traditional manner of academic publishing (peer review by an anonymous group of experts and written according to specific criteria) will be shaken up by the use of social networking tools, in particular wiki’s and blogs. Lots of valuable information about the use of blogs and wiki’s (collaborative writing) amongst academia. Some great examples to exhibit, as well a valuable statistics.

A quote from the article I would like to highlight here, comes from Torill Mortensen, of Volda College, Norway:

"one of the responsibilities of a publicly paid academic is to participate in the public debate. Yes, there should be ways to register blogging in a way that would give us “points” when counting publications, and I am certain this would propel Norwegian academics into a blogging frenzy. No, I wouldn’t turn down the money if I were paid for this. But yes, I am willing to do it, because it’s part of what I am supposed to do."

Reflecting on blogging itself

I’ve now posted three blog posts and am struggling to find time to write my next post. Why?

One of the premium success factors to a blog (success=being widely read), is regular updates. When starting to write a blog, the challenge is also to find your own voice, your flow. Have I found mine? Or will it change drastically over time? I’ve already had one comment about my posts being “so long” which was a valid remark. It’s also about discipline, not finding the time but making the time.

So, when considering using blogs in education, suggesting to educational staff to publish their thoughts, findings, questions, in a blog, I am now reminded that the challenges to blogging should not be overlooked and tools/suggestions to overcome them should be given, as well as realistic planning. For example, when starting out, a group blog might be the best way to start because as I have been struggling to write my next post, Arif filled the gap with the previous post. Thank you Arif!

I am reminded of a previous group blog initiative I was involved in “I collaborate, e-collaborate, we collaborate”. The group of bloggers invited to write were all members of the ecollaboration group, a then vibrant group of practitioners in the development sector in the Netherlands. Even with such a clearly defined community of practice the blog struggled somewhat in the beginning. Maybe others experienced the struggle differently but I think for me the struggle lay in the question of ownership as well as audience. Who (if anyone) is reading what you write? Reflecting on this experience versus the experience of writing for an intranet, where the audience was clear and you received live feedback from colleagues, makes me consider that maybe having a somewhat dedicated audience in the beginning could possibly increase the success factor of a blog. Although, for some, blogging for peers might be even more daunting than blogging for an anonymous audience…

Which reminds me that this is meant primarily as a reflective blog, so let me go on to finish the blog post I have been meaning to write, whether it is as comprehensive as I would want it to be or not.

… I can’t help myself. One more point to remember, made by Christian Kreutz during a presentation at IICD, which he also refers to in this blog post where he stresses the point of using blogging to increase a two way conversation. That not enough discourse is taking place between blogs. I have failed in this up until now. Note to self: comment more on blog posts of others!

Augmented Reality

However, i find the surplus of this one very questionable.

Wikipedia, shun or cherish it?

In light of the recent changes in Wikipedia’s policies I’d like to share with you the little clash of civilisations I experienced when starting my job at the University last spring.

I had one of those 'the world freezes, your mind goes blank, and slowly the first word that surfaces is "but..."' moments. In other words pure disbelief, when I heard that there were teachers who refused to accept references to Wikipedia in papers from students. Who actually gave their students negative advice about using Wikipedia, calling it an untrustworthy source of information. In retrospect it was a moment where two worlds met, and yes I guess you could say clashed, at least in my head.

Up until that moment, Wikipedia was for me a place, a movement that was to be embraced, cherished, valued and awed. The ultimate example of what individuals pulling together can do, open, sharing knowledge, building upon one another, all volunteers, and thousands and thousands of them... The only resistance I had seen up until that moment was disinterest or lack of time to invest. An active resistance or distaste to it, was not something I had been exposed to yet. I guess this says something about the cocoon I lived in up until then, but let me share a bit of what that cocoon looked like from the inside.

It was during a poignant speech given by Ethan Zuckerman at the Web2forDev conference initiated by CTA and held at the FAO offices in Rome, that I felt my eyes were opened to the possibilities of Wikipedia. I’d like to share some of what he said. His full speech is also available online.

"The single biggest (bang for your buck) thing you could probably do as an NGO in this sector is to get smart about wikipedia. You do a search right now on food security on Google, the number one match is going to be wikipedia, and it’s going to be there for a long long time. The reason for that is wikipedia is now the 9th most popular internet site in the entire world. […] Wikipedia is an enormous project with hundreds of thousands of people working on it but you can be one of them at a very very low cost of entry. It costs almost nothing for people who are working at FAO to monitor this article [displayed food security on wikipedia] very carefully. This is an article that people at FAO should really care about. I know people get very paranoid about wikipedia; “can I edit wikipedia, can I participate in it?”. The answer is yes, just don’t be an idiot. […] You have to go in and be believable. You have to go in and share information. Wikipedia is a culture of sharing information. The people who work in this building [FAO] and the people who are here for this conference [Web2forDev] know more about food and agricultural food security and things like that than most of the people in the wider world. You are welcome. Come on in, lend a hand. Just do it in a way that is respectful and respects the culture. Learn how that culture works. It is literally the biggest bang for the buck thing you can do. "

Moving from the development sector into the educational sector, I brought that speech with me and felt the enormous potential ahead of me. The opportunity to tap into the knowledge within academia and facilitate activities to get that knowledge out into the wider world. Via, amongst other avenues, Wikipedia (the biggest “bang for your buck”, in the words of Ethan Zuckerman). Then you can imagine how ‘jaw-dropping’ sobering it was to hear that wikipedia was being shunned by some teachers who didn’t want their students “exposed” to incorrect information. In the meantime I have heard that at my nephews school, they also discourage the use of Wikipedia.

In fairness to the anti position towards Wikipedia, I have to explain that the teacher who held this opinion had found an entry in Wikipedia which was incorrect. She took the trouble to edit the information, but her edits were removed and considered not correct. This brings to light the editing policies of Wikipedia. Just recently they have been adapted, at least when it concerns entries about individuals. Otherwise, they must be doing something right if you consider the research conducted by Nature magazine in 2005. They had an expert group of people examine 42 entries and the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.

I have been brought up to trust Nature, but this research, widely publicized, was based on the examination of 42 entries. Wikipedia contains millions. But who am I to question Nature, right? They must be right, and Wikipedia must be… hm.

Conclusion: A clash can be a very useful wake up call (no pun intended to my recent car crash…). It was good to become more aware of the critique Wikipedia receives and probably in many cases, justifiably so. But this just drives me to want to improve what is already there, not shun it. Maybe teachers and university students are not using Wikipedia, but the rest of the world is. Let’s improve what is there so that all those people who are very thankful to have access to Wikipedia (think mobile phone coverage in Africa), can also have access to correct information.