Social media for research: Twitter etc.

A kind guide to Twitter with the aim of helping academics build confidence in navigating the digital space, and to empower them to join the conversation.

Tweets about the American Psychological Association’s annual conference in Washington DC 5-8 August 2023

Tweets about the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences (ISSID) Conference at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, 17-21 July 2023

Tweets from the Criminology and Criminal Justice Conference in Nairobi, July 2023

Tweets from the SBS International Conference 2023 on Sustainability: Global and Local Challenges, organized by School of Business Studies at IBA Karachi

Tweets from Nursing World Conference on October 16-18, 2023
(You'll notice that this is the same hashtag used by a netball association!)

Twitter's advanced search has lots of options to help you pinpoint what you're after.

Lists are a useful way of finding others with similar interests. This example is a list of history researchers - see if you can find lists relevant to your field.

Article which includes a selection of researchers to follow.

Student perspective - why Twitter was useful for her own research

In this edition of Wasim Ahmed’s long-running series on using Twitter data as a research tool, Wasim considers the significance of the newly introduced Twitter ‘academic research product track’ and the different ways in which Twitter and social media data have been used to analyse the global COVID-19 pandemic, as well as updating his regular list of resources for researchers looking to use Twitter data in their research.

Useful overview of tools and techniques: also see comments.

In the past decade, social media platforms have been recognized as an important tool in the dissemination of science among the research community and as an interface between scientists and the general public. Publishing companies that specialize in scientific research now pay attention to alternative metrics (“altmetrics”) and provide comprehensive guides about social media management to editors. Twitter has emerged as a leader among social media platforms in the dissemination of science. This Perspective will assert the merits of using Twitter to expand the reach of scientific conferences while providing guidance on how to disseminate conference findings in real-time, called “live-tweeting,” without compromising scientific integrity.

A blogpost from an English literature professor.

Handy tips for people who are already using Twitter.

Report of a research project evaluating what people like/dislike about academic tweets.

With over a 100 million new users, the launch of Threads has a real potential to unseat Twitter as the default platform for academic social media. Taking stock of Threads, Andy Tattersall, examines the positives and negatives of the platform and suggests how it might develop as a platform for academic communication.

As Twitter moves to become a private company owned by the billionaire Elon Musk, Mark Carrigan, reflects on the increasing importance academic social media and academic twitter has secured in universities for building academic communities and for public engagement and impact. Assessing what the acquisition might mean in terms of relations on the platform, he argues universities should more carefully consider how they engage with social media platforms to achieve these aims.