User:Daniel Mietchen/Talks/Wikipedia Academy 2012/Science Communication Panel/Twitterversity

Concept

The start of the discussion will be delivered by Jenny Molloy in form of a short Twitterversity unit, i.e. a series of tweets on the topic.

Each tweet should stand on its own and contain

• a comment, observation or hypothesis,
• the hashtags #wpac2012 and #scicomm
• the number of the tweet (e.g. #08).

This leaves up to 117 content characters per tweet.

The tweets shall address the following topics:

• How far are we from scientific experiments being broadcast live on the mass media?
• What aspects of research would benefit most from open science?
• What aspects of research would benefit least from open science?
• What aspects of research have the potential to interest the wider public?
• What aspects of research have the potential to deter the wider public?
• How does opening up the research process affect the ways in which
  • the media follow and report on research;
  • the public consumes popular science sources and engages with ongoing research;
  • research funders and administrators communicate their activities;
  • research itself is changing as a result of these broadened interactions?
• What can the participants of the session do to open up research and/ or to communicate it more effectively?

• The tweets shall be posted one by one over a period of about 5-10min, so that both the physical and virtual audiences can think about each and every one of them (a Twitter wall shall be provided in the room, which also has free WiFi for conference participants).

---

The tweets

The following tweets have been sent as part fo this experiment:

1. #openscience means scientific knowledge that anyone is free to reuse without restriction (soc/tech/legal) #wpac2012 #scicomm #01
2. #openscience also means openness in the research process via collaboration and immediate public release of outputs #wpac2012 #scicomm #02
3. Focusing on #02, research would be more efficient due to reproducibility and reduced redundancy in research efforts ‪#wpac2012‬ ‪#scicomm‬ #03
4. A great example is @MatToddChem's Open Drug Discovery project, w/ open labbooks http://www.thesynapticleap.org ‪#wpac2012‬ ‪#scicomm‬ #04
5. #openscience‬ is not a cure-all. Having things out in the open does not make them useful or publicly understandable ‪#wpac2012‬ ‪#scicomm‬ #05
6. However, it gives the media/sci-comms much deeper access and allows sustained reporting of scientific progress. ‪#wpac2012‬ ‪#scicomm‬ #06
7. Not to say that researchers can't communicate well, but for the most part ‪#openscience‬ benefits other researchers ‪#wpac2012‬ ‪#scicomm‬ #07
8. Research processes of most interest to the media/public likely to involve cool experimental methods or fieldwork ‪#wpac2012‬ ‪#scicomm‬ #08
9. Also exploring questions of public interest e.g. public health and environment - the narrative is more engaging ‪#wpac2012‬ ‪#scicomm‬ #09
10. Real time coverage would be hard - lots of research mind numbingly tedious (!) ‪#wpac2012‬ ‪#scicomm‬ #10
11. However, with the right experiments mass media broadcasting of science in progress could be possible!‪#wpac2012‬ ‪#scicomm‬ #11
12. Archaeologists have managed this with programmes like Time Team http://www.channel4.com/programmes/time-team/ #wpac2012‬ ‪#scicomm‬ #12
13. Reporting of ‪#openscience‬ carries a risk of preliminary results being reported 'too early', reduced in closed model ‪#wpac2012‬ ‪#scicomm‬ #13
14. Some people are concerned that ‪#openscience‬ could increase confusion around what scientists say ‪#wpac2012‬ ‪#scicomm‬ #14
15. However, there is a lot of misinformation already available and could be avoided with researcher media engagement ‪#wpac2012‬ ‪#scicomm‬ #15
16. I'm not sure how research will change as a result of these interactions, but it will lead to different considerations ‪#wpac2012‬ ‪#scicomm‬ #16
17. If you'd like to open up your research, think about every frustration you've had with accessing/reproducing other's ‪#wpac2012‬ ‪#scicomm‬ #17
18. Then put everything out all the information that you think would stop that happening to someone else ‪#wpac2012‬ ‪#scicomm‬ #18
19. Re question : No, open science isn't automatic better science, but it allows other people to pick up on poor science ‪#wpac2012‬ ‪#scicomm‬ #19
20. If used correctly, it can lead to better science from both those generating and using ‪#openscience‬ ‪#wpac2012‬ ‪#scicomm‬ #20
21. That was a quick whistle stop tour of some points I wanted to make. Sorry for the enforced brevity! - any questions? ‪#wpac2012‬ ‪#scicomm‬ #21