University of Wisconsin Scientists Find Social Media Boosts Research Recognition

From the The Badger-Herald:

Researchers at University of Wisconsin have found a correlation between the use of social media to publicize a scientist’s work and the amount of recognition they will receive.
However, not all scientists agree that it is actually a good thing to use social media as an outlet to spread their findings and reach a larger audience, Dietram Scheufele, professor of life sciences communication, said.
“I think in many ways the topic is so popular because there has been a long debate in the sciences to which degree [scientists] should engage with the public or use some of these new tools in the first place,” Scheufele said.
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“With a single tweet, with a single well-placed social media message, I can reach way more people,” Scheufele said. “It has the ability to tie together learning and research in ways we’ve never seen before.”

Read the Complete Article
See Also: Professor Scheufele’s Website
Note: The “What’s New” section of the website has direct links to several papers that might be of interest.
UPDATE: The full text of the research paper discussed in the article is available online. Thanks to SAGE for making it available to us.
Title: Building Buzz: (Scientists) Communicating Science in New Media Environments
A PDF version of the article is also available.

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