Research and social media
Social media provides the most direct route for sharing research, it is a powerful tool to disseminate your work to a wider audience, spark debate and engage with your peers.
When used effectively, it is a quick, and effective way to share academic expertise and research to potentially millions of people worldwide.
Studies reveal that sharing research papers via social media, on Twitter in particular, results in an increase in citations and greater Altmetric scores for research papers, increasing impact and in turn raising the profile of researchers.
Previous research suggests as many as 76% of people in the UK get their news from social media (Nature Communication, 2018).
Much like traditional media, social media can:
- lead to greater awareness of your research
- build networks and connect with new audiences
- enable you to follow and contribute to discussions and public debate
- provide new information to academic and non-academic audiences and gain feedback
- be used with your other public engagement activities
Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms, with almost 200 million active users. The ability to build networks of social media followers has helped foster communication and collaboration between scientists regardless of their geographical location.
Twitter can be a career incubator in which researchers can develop professional circles, launch new research projects, and engage with the research community at various stages of projects.