Communications

Twitter – a powerful platform?

/ Katja Reuter / 2 Comments

The debate on the usefulness of Twitter is ongoing and whether it could serve communication and promotion efforts at big research institutions in one way or another. I am still befuddled what Twitter could offer that email and text messaging are not doing already.

I came across the post “Nine Ways to Use Twitter” by John C. Dvorak who explains why he thinks Twitter is a valuable service. Some of his arguments may be interesting to some of you. Surprisingly, he concludes that there may be nothing to get from Twitter, unless one invents a use, which – I guess – leaves all options open for further discussions.

Some of Dvorak’s use cases:

  • Tweeting about an event: something solitary is turned into an interactive, shared experience.
  • Spread of breaking news updates/announcements/ public address system: “when a major event happens, often a Twitterer will be there tweeting about it on the spot”.
  • Contact multiple people who work within an organization using the mobile service feature to easily broadcast a quick message to all of them.
  • Easy feedback mechanism for writings etc.
  • Asking and answering questions is easier than with e-mail, almost instantaneous
  • Poll people/crowd-sourcing information/audience voting

Tangential Thoughts: Data collection with mobile phones and human-tracking systems in scientific research

/ Katja Reuter

 

I call this post Tangential Thoughts, since it focuses on what the research community things about communication technology, which might be interesting to some of you.

I found two articles: One talks about how researchers more and more use mobile phones to collect data. In “Personal technology: Phoning in data” Roberta Kwok explores how “budget-conscious” and “digitally savvy scientists can write and distribute mobile-phone software for everything from monitoring traffic to reporting invasive species”. Maybe this is something for us to keep in mind and exploring?

Another article titled “Big Brother has evolved” by Jerome E. Dobson mentions human-tracking systems in scientific research. Dobson argues that the “social-networking benefits of human-tracking systems will surely be substantial” and that” the technology is bound to alter all sorts of social relationships”, including the one between researcher and subject. Yet, “investigators need to understand the risks as well as the benefits of new research opportunities”. His conclusion is not at all comforting, though: “We have entered a grand social experiment as momentous as any in our past and yet one so insidious that hardly anyone seems to have noticed”.