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Social Media for the Physiologist –
A Modern Utopia or a Brave New World?
Dr. Isis with contributions from Danielle Lee, Pascale Lane, and Kristy Meyer
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The blogger known as Dr. Isis has some fancy-sounding degrees and is a physiologist at a major research university working on some terribly impressive stuff. She blogs about balancing her research career with the demands of raising small children, how to succeed as a woman in academia, and anything else she finds interesting. She blogs at http://isisthescientist.com and can be reached at isisthescientist@gmail.com. Danielle Lee, Ph.D. is a hip hop maven and postdoctoral researcher at Oklahoma State University. She blogs at The Urban Scientist (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/urban-scientist). Pascale Lane, M.D. is Professor of Pediatric Nephrology & Associate Dean for Faculty Development at Oklahoma University Health Sciences Center. She blogs at WhizBANG! (http://scientopia.org/blogs/whizbang). Kristy Meyer is the Social Media/New Media Director at 2eCreative. Find her at http://www.linkedin.com/in/kristymeyer.
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The term “social media” refers to online tools that allow users to connect with others, form communities, and share information and content. The scientist members of the American Physiological Society have a rich history of community building, science outreach, and public engagement. However, near ubiquitous Internet access, advances in handheld devices, and online social networking applications have dramatically expanded the opportunities for scientists to move beyond more traditional networking approaches and use social media to engage each other and the public.
At this past year’s Experimental Biology meeting in San Diego I had the pleasure of participating in a symposium titled “Using Social Media to Communicate About Science and You.” Chaired by Jim Hicks of the APS Communications Committee, this session featured scientist bloggers and communicators at different career levels with very different writing and communication styles. I also attended the Trainee Advisory Committee symposium titled “E-media Tools for the Professional Scientist” and found that discussion turned again to using social media and online networking. During my participation in these sessions, a few things became very clear to me. Many physiologists are already using social media as part of their daily life, even if they don’t recognize that they are doing it. Some physiologists want to engage in social media but feel uneasiness about where to begin and some are unsure as to how social media can be used to enhance their research and career.
So, the question remains, how does one use social media to network and talk about science? To help many of my fellow physiologists move from being total n00bs (that’s web lingo for someone who is brand new) to being total rockstarz, I have asked the symposia participants to share some tricks, tips, and bits of wisdom for using social media to talk about science.
Tip 1: Be the master of your online presence. One of the first things I do when I first hear or read a new name is turn to Google. When you search for your own name, what do you find on the first page of results? A well-designed lab web site? Links to pictures from your fraternity days in the 80’s? Nothing? By knowing what is out there – the good, bad, ugly, and inaccurate – you have a better chance of knowing what others will see when they search for you. Potential employers, mentors, and collaborators are using Google, so stay ahead of them. Manage your privacy settings properly and contact individuals who may post things without your approval.
Tip 2: Claim your professional cyber real estate. Because potential employers and faculty are turning to Google to learn more about potential employees/students, you want to give them something good, but more importantly relevant, to find. Sign up for a personal webpage at About.me (https://about.me/) and LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com). About.me is a personal webpage where you can quickly introduce yourself and your talents to the world. If you have a blog or have been quoted by the media you can include relevant links for people to follow. Be in control of the message. LinkedIn is a professional networking hub. You can post your CV and get recommendations to establish yourself as an expert and connect with potential employers, mentors, and collaborators.
Tip 3: Pick a community you like and start participating. Twitter is easiest to start with. Consider following the hash tag #scio13 (ScienceOnline). Made up of scientists, journalists, and other science communicators, these folks love to gab about science. I also maintain a feed of APS members on that I find on Twitter. You can find it at https://twitter.com/#!/drisis/apstweeple. Send me a quick tweet @drisis and I will gladly add you to the list. Linkedin is best for making professional contacts. Tumblr (https://www.tumblr.com/) is good for free form. Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/) is great for starting your personal network with friends and family. Quora (http://www.quora.com/) is also great as a starting point. Remember that it’s more fun to talk about science when you have an audience. This segues nicely into the next tip. . . .
Tip 4: Decide on some goals and know whose attention you want to attract. Maybe, like me, you’re just looking to talk about science and occasionally crack wise. Maybe you’re looking for a mentor, you want to find new collaborators, or do outreach. Maybe you have a cause you want to promote. Deciding what information you want to share will help you decide how to share that information.
Tip 5: Make using social media part of everyone’s job. Tara Smith from the University of Iowa routinely shares guest posts from her students on her blog (see http://bit.ly/KVSGRq to view them). They are fantastic. Consider engaging lab members to help revamp the lab’s website or follow Twitter feeds for funding announcements and exciting new research. The NIH, many major publications, and many professional organizations publish information to Twitter. The Drugmonkey blog (http://scientopia.org/blogs/drugmonkey) is a great place to chat about grantsmanship and professional development and is written by an NIH-funded scientist. Consider sending your trainees there to wade through the archives.
Tip 6: Use social media to set the agenda. Scientists working to counteract “animal rights” extremism have been highly effective in using social media. Consider checking out the Speaking of Research and Americans for Medical Progress Twitter feeds (@SpeakofResearch and @curedisease, respectively) and blogs. If you have your own cause that you are passionate about, social media is a potentially powerful tool and the more voices, the louder the message.
Tip 7: Use social media to reach new audiences. In the four years I have been writing my blog, I have been frequently surprised by what attracts attention. One of the most popular posts I have written was a quick rant about a morning when everything seemed to be going wrong for me. I had spilled coffee on myself, I was running late, and, to top it all off, I accidentally buckled my preschool son’s boy parts into his car seat in a rush to get him to day care. Although my intent was to simply share a funny story, I received many notes from other women scientists about how my post made them feel better about their own chaotic mornings. You may be pleasantly surprised by who your writing resonates with.
But, probably the most important tip is one that is applicable to any skill we seek to develop as scientists. The more you do it, the better you’ll get at it. The better you get at it, the more you’ll enjoy it. The biggest hurdle is making that first connection, but there are plenty of friendly voices out there. Consider starting by heading over to Twitter and saying hello to APS’s Executive Director Marty Frank (@execdirectoraps). From there, the Internet’s the limit.
Comments:
Although the article focuses on using social media to promote science, I would like to comment about the use of social media by undergraduate students. I have mentored more than a dozen undergraduate students and all of them have at least a Facebook account. I believe that as mentors we need to make an effort to educate our students about the importance of keeping a professional or "clean" presence in social media. Most of the undergraduate students doing research aspire to get accepted into graduate programs, medical school or other professional programs. Therefore, it is critical that they learn at an early stage how to self-promote their research and scientific contributions. This article provides a great summary of the different resources available to scientists, most of them can also be used by undergraduate students. In conclusion, I strongly suggest that we make an effort to inform undergraduate students how to create a scientific presence in social media.
Mary Garcia-Cazarin
University of Kentucky
Tip 1 Master your on-line presence. This is a good tip but this is not without problems. A google search has limitations because it has built in algorithims to determine the ip address of the computer, location of the search, and other information to profile the user and provide a ranking of hits based on that user profile. Thus, my search will have a different ranking of hits compared to someone in Europe doing the exact same search. If you get thousands of hits then it is difficult to truly determine your on-line presence.
Tips 2 &3. Although sites like linkedin, twitter, and facebook are great, many institutions have extensive firewalls that could limit or block emails coming from these sites to your academic email account. When entering an email account to such a site it is good to check that your email account will get the feeds and updates you want from the site.
John Imig
Medical College of Wisconsin
The large audience that follows Dr. Isis and her fellow bloggers is testament to the power of social media as a tool for networking and forming communities. A blog or video site can be a wonderful venue for expressing your creativity, offering advice, or encouraging debate. If you have the talent and desire, go for it. To the valuable tips outlined in the article, however, I would add “allocate the time spent on social media wisely.” Like any powerful technique, the use of social media should be wielded with moderation. Your enthusiasm for online pursuits must always be balanced against the many other demands on your life and career.
Thomas Pressley
Texas Tech University
Just remember that what you put out in the clouds may be there forever.
Barbara Alexander
University of Mississippi Medical Center
I appreciate the wisdom of tips 1 and 2 to actively be aware of, and to manage your internet-based public persona as a professional scientist. In addition, becoming adept in using these social media tools and understanding their advantages and limitations is important for our graduate students and postdocs. I can envision in the next 10 years or so that the traditional application process for academic positions in science—send a copy of a CV and written statements—will be supplemented, if not supplanted, by an Internet portfolio process. Consider this: Employers will be sent a link by the applicant to a password-protected web page that has collated and attractively presented all of the information needed: active links to papers, online posts and participation in online discussions, links to professional webpages of the applicant and collaborators, videos where the applicant discusses teaching, research and service directions or even presents a short lecture, CV and teaching evaluations, images and descriptions of service projects (e.g., PhUN week), individual development plans, etc., in order to present a more fluid and complete view of an applicant’s history and professional development. A supercharged version of LinkedIn, I suppose.
Second, I would like to emphasize that images and written comments you post on the Internet via social media tools never really go away and could come back to haunt you in your next job search or tenure decision, if they are perceived as unfair or damaging to the reputation of a colleague or institution, or simply unprofessional in tone. Accompanying increased use of social media tools by trainees should be a frank discussion about privacy controls and net etiquette. The definition of collegiality in tenure decisions will likely be extended to your ability to be civil and rational (if not humorous!) in online posts, tweets and discussions.
Kathleen O'Hagan
Midwestern University
Questions:
The concern that I hear most from members of our section or colleagues,
is "but social media isn't professional". I understand the concern, so I
guess my question is how do we break this stigma? Should we consider
having personal and professional pages?
Kelly Hyndman
Georgia Health Sciences University
Response:
Remarks from Drs. Hyndman and Pressley both speak to one central question – is social media a useful tool or a potentially career-harming distraction? If you had asked me two to four years ago, when everyone equated social media with Facebook, I would have told you that it is probably a professional waste of time. There is no way that wading through fifty Farmville requests per day from your Aunt Ethel is going to enhance your research career.
But, let me back up. I should disclose that I have only recently integrated social media into my professional life. I have always kept a personal journal. In 2002 I stopped keeping a written journal and moved my journal to the online site LiveJournal. Although it wasn’t intended, that was when I became a “blogger.” My family and friends would stop by the site to catch up and comment and I found it gratifying. Eventually I found myself writing more about the minutiae of my career, a topic my family and personal friends have little interest in, so I started a blog as “Isis the Scientist” as an outlet for that writing and kept my personal site as a place to post updates for my far away friends and family. I never intended a following; I see it as more of a serendipitous side effect and probably (in part) the result of my creative use of profanity. Still, my blogging occupies that time in my day that I had always reserved for journaling. This article for the APS is the first time I have really melded being “Dr. Isis” with my professional service to the society.
That said, there is no doubt that I find myself integrating social media into my professional life, but at the center of that remains the advice that I would give to any scientist about any new task they are considering. Set solid goals and then identify the tools you can use to achieve them. My professional goals are grants, papers, teaching, and service and I now rely on online media more to achieve them. I have a LinkedIn account for potential collaborators who may search for me. My name is quite common and I want it to be easy for them to find me. I get grant and journal updates through Twitter and RSS feeds. Our department recently developed YouTube videos for our department and lab websites and students and patients love them. If you’re looking to recruit high-caliber students, it is important to be social media savvy. It is also important that we recognize that pursuing “non-traditional” careers after graduate school is becoming more common place and developing good communication is key to advancing in those careers. Social media is a tool in developing that communication. Finally, as far as the idea of a “stigma” is concerned, I think the stigma is stronger among junior physiologists than senior physiologists and it is certainly less than it was when I began. Just remember to keep professional use goal driven.
Dr. Isis
This is a very interesting and well-written article, with excellent resources to help students, faculty, and researchers navigate talking about science on the internet! I think it is extremely important for scientists to have a strong voice on the internet and in the public eye, talking about the value of conducting research and interpreting scientific findings. But, I have heard a few concerns discussed recently with respect to posting information in the public domain, and I wonder if any of the authors can comment on your views of these issues:
First, have you encountered any unprofessional or inappropriate responses from animal rights organizations, groups with extreme views of science, or other groups with goals that are different from your own? How would you recommend that students and researchers handle such issues?
Second, for individuals who are associated with colleges or universities, commercial entities, or have federal funding, what is the best way to determine the rules for posting publicly-available information about research projects and methodologies, scientific results, and ongoing activities? Would you recommend as a first step contacting the Public Relations Department of our respective institutions/organizations prior to making content available on the internet?
Angela Grippo
Northern Illinois University
Response:
The louder and more persistent your voice, the more attention you’re going to attract. As someone with what one could call a unique style of communication, I attract a lot of positive and negative attention. My writing has not gone unnoticed by animal rights extremists who have deemed me a “murderer” and a “vivisector” because of my outspoken support of responsible animal research. My policy has always been (with one exception) to not censor responses to my writing. I know that members of the public read my blog and I think that it is important that they see the hateful wackaloonery that these extremists lob at scientists. I also think that it is important that the public, and other scientists, hear voices of support and stories of responsible animal use in reply to these extremists. Only half of the American population supports research animal use and, if we don’t speak up, the extremists will win. There’s no doubt that I have a social and political agenda, but that doesn’t mean this is the best strategy for everyone. I have some friends who do not allow commenting at all on their sites and I have some friends who very heavily moderate commenting. How much interaction you allow should be determined by your comfort level.
As far as posting material online, there is a spectrum of approaches. At one end of the extreme are people who believe in 100% public access science. They use online, open access lab notebooks and discuss their data as they collect them. I happen to fall at the other end of the spectrum and don’t disclose any of my work online until it is published or patented. The policy of some journals is that data posted online have been previously published and, thus, are not eligible for journal publication. There are also important intellectual property laws related to disclosure. Scientists should discuss these issues with their supervisors and intellectual property officers before posting unpublished and unpatented work on the internet.
Dr. Isis