There’s an interesting debate going on right now about the power (or lack thereof) of social media as agents of social change, spurred by Malcolm Gladwell’s article in the New Yorker which I recommend reading. Of course this spurred an immediate response on the internet, but here’s an article that I think summarizes the debate…
Tag Archives | social media
Social media, journalism, and expressing opinions
Our class was visited by NPR’s Richard Harris today. What followed was a fascinating look at what makes radio different from print, and some inside looks at how NPR does such great science reporting for radio. But that’s the subject of a whole different post. Towards the end of his talk, I was struck by…
What’s a shy guy to do at the world’s largest cocktail party (i.e. Twitter)?
I’m naturally a bit shy. This can make social media a bit overwhelming: Am I really willing to share my thoughts and opinions with the entire Web? You might argue that if I’m not interested in sharing my thoughts, I really shouldn’t become a journalist. And that’s true to some extent. But everything I write…
Crowdsourcing Science
Can science be crowdsourced? That is, can scientists turn to the average citizen for help in collecting data? Earlier this week, Genomes Unzipped, a group of genetics-savvy bloggers, announced that its 12 members had made the results of their direct-to-consumer genetic tests freely available online. Members of another group, the Personal Genomes Project , have…
Farmville in PNAS
Look out, Interwebs. The SciCom slugs are coming to a social network near you. By the end of the quarter, we have to commit an act of journalism using social media. My limited attempts to build an online community were not too successful, so I’m dubious about this project. Will our creations spread through our…
Twitter Trip-up
Our first assignment for our Social Media class was to sign up for a Twitter account and to follow people relevant to our early careers as science writers. Although I already had a Twitter account, I hadn’t used it much beyond a couple complaints and self-promoting links, largely because my complaining and self-promoting needs were…
confessions of a neophyte twit
On Saturday, I did something I swore I would never do. I opened a Twitter account. Until then, I’d managed to avoid Twitter. It annoyed me. Its over-exposed ubiquity made me want to don a Twitter-stealth-shield that would deflect any and all references to the site and ensure a blissfully Twitter-free day. I wondered why…