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Wired Academia:
Why Social Science Scholars are using Social Media
Anatoliy Gruzd* and Melissa Goertzen
Email: [email protected] Twitter: @dalprof
*Assistant Professor, School of Information Management
Director of the Social Media Lab
Faculty of Management, Dalhousie University
Social Media Lab
Academic Social Networking
• Academia.edu
• ResearchGATE.net
SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof
Academic Microblogging
Sciencefeed.com
SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof
Academic Blogging
Researchblogging.org
SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof
Research Questions
What are the most popular social media tools among
scholars?
Why are scholars starting to use social media?
What is the perceived utility of social media for scholarly
practices?
What are the perceived problems associated with social
media?
SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof
Defining Social Media
Broad definition
any website that includes web 2.0 characteristics and contains
some aspect of user-generated content
Examples
social networking sites like Facebook and Academia.edu
microblogging tools like Twitter
video/teleconferencing tools such as Skype
online media repositories such as Flickr
SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof 7
Method
• Online Survey
– Oct. 2010 – Feb. 2011
– ASIS&T, AoIR, INSNA
– 367 participants
SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof 8
76%
under 45
79% Social
Scientists
72% Work
in the UK,
US & CAN
37%
Professors
57%
Women
38%
Grad Students
Survey Demographics
Top five social media sites based on the
frequency of use
SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof
Frequent Use
Non-academic soc.networks
Blogs Online document
management Media
repositories Wikis
Occasional Use
Presentation sharing sites
Video/tele conference
Blog Wikis Academic
soc.networks
Top five social media sites based on the
frequency of use
SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof
Intention to Use
Presentation sharing sites
Bibliographic management
Academic soc.networks
Blogs (maintain)
Social bookmarking
Top five social media sites based on the
frequency of use
SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof
Not popular
Virtual worlds
Social bookmarking
Blogs (maintain)
Microblogs Bibliographic management
Concerns:
• time consumption
• privacy
• persistence of digital records
• absence of professional audience
Explaining social media use through
the Uses and Gratifications (U&G) theory
Describes media use based on individuals’ gratification or
psychological needs
“[A]ssumes that media have little or no impact on those
who do not use it, but that people select a particular
medium because it is meaningful” and because it “gratifies
one or more needs” (Chen, 2011)
Applied to both traditional media such as radio and TV, and
non-traditional and more interactive media such as emails,
instant messaging and social media
SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof
Explaining social media use through
the Uses and Gratifications (U&G) theory
Raacke & Bonds-Raacke (2008)
Question: Why college students use social networking sites?
Result: Make new friends and locate old friends
Brandtzæg & Heim (2009)
Question: Why users in Norway use social networking sites ?
Result: Connect with new people, keep in touch with friends and
generally socialize
Quan-Haase & Young (2010)
Question: Why people use Facebook?
Result: Sociability, social information, and pastime
SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof
Benefits of using social media
among scholarly users
SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
Discovering new funding
Garnering mass media attention
Publishing findings
Maintaining professional image
Soliciting advice from peers
Collaborating with other researchers
Making new research contacts
Promoting current work/research
Discovering new ideas or publications
Following other researchers' work
Keeping up to date with topics
Commonly cited
benefits in the
literature that scholarly
users of social media
mentioned in the prior
studies
Benefits of using social media
among scholarly users
SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof
* Based on 315 people who completed Part 2
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
Discovering new funding
Garnering mass media attention
Publishing findings
Maintaining professional image
Soliciting advice from peers
Collaborating with other researchers
Making new research contacts
Promoting current work/research
Discovering new ideas or publications
Following other researchers' work
Keeping up to date with topics
Related benefits of social media use
based on the factor analysis
Expected categories
social benefits: benefits such as making new research contacts;
collaboration: collaborating with other researchers
information dissemination: promoting current work/research
information gathering: keeping up to date with topic.
Social & Info
Dissemination
Information
Gathering
Collaboration
Related benefits of social media use
based on the factor analysis
explains 24%
of the total
variance
explains 16%
of the total
variance
Conclusion
• Most of the scholars in the study already adopted a wide
range of social media sites.
• Non-users were less than 30% (except for virtual worlds,
where this percentage reached 58%).
SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof
Conclusion
• Scholars use social media for
1. information gathering,
2. a mixture of social benefits and information dissemination,
3. collaboration.
• People who tend to use social media to promote their
research are also likely to use it to make new research
contacts.
SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof
Related study
Gruzd, A., Staves, K., and Wilk, A. (2011). Tenure
and Promotion in the Age of Online Social
Media. Proceedings of the American Society for
Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T)
Conference, October 9-13, 2011, New Orleans, LA,
USA. DOI: 10.1002/meet.2011.14504801154
Gruzd, A., Staves, K., Wilk, A. (2012). Connected
Scholars: Examining the Role of Social Media in
Research Practices of Faculty using the UTAUT
model. Computers in Human Behavior 28 (6),
2340-2350, DOI: j.chb.2012.07.004
SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof
• Interviews
– 51 participants
– ASIS&T 2010,
Pittsburgh, PA
Other related papers
Gruzd, A., Black, F.A., Le, Y., Amos, K. (2012). Investigating
Biomedical Research Literature in the Blogosphere: A Case
Study of Diabetes and HbA1c. Journal of the Medical Library
Association 100(1): 34-42. DOI: 10.3163/1536-5050.100.1.007
Gruzd, A., Wellman, B., and Takhteyev, Y. (2011). Imagining
Twitter as an Imagined Community. American. Behavioral
Scientist 55(10): 1294-1318. DOI: 10.1177/0002764211409378
SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof
New Book
SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof
http://bit.ly/cfpInfluence
Call for Papers
Submission Deadline: April 30, 2013
SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof
Special Issue on Measuring Influence in Social Media
Editors:
Anatoliy Gruzd <[email protected]>, School of Information Management, Dalhousie University
Barry Wellman <[email protected]>, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto
References
Chen, G. M. (2011). Tweet this: A uses and gratifications perspective on how active
Twitter use gratifies a need to connect with others. Computers in Human Behavior,
27(2), 755-762.
Raacke, J. and Bonds-Raacke, J. (2008). MySpace and Facebook: Applying the
Uses and Gratifications Theory to Exploring Friend-Networking Sites.
CyberPsychology & Behavior, 11(2), 169-174.
Brandtzæg, P. B. and Heim, J. (2009). Why People Use Social Networking Sites. In
A. A. Ozok & P. Zaphiris (Eds.), Online Communities and Social Computing (Vol.
5621, pp. 143-152). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Quan-Haase, A. and Young, A. L. (2010). Uses and Gratifications of Social Media:
A Comparison of Facebook and Instant Messaging. Bulletin of Science, Technology
& Society, 30(5), 350-361.
SocialMediaLab.ca Twitter: dalprof
Wired Academia:
Why Social Science Scholars are using Social Media
Anatoliy Gruzd and Melissa Goertzen
Email: [email protected] Twitter: @dalprof