Social Media
From Digital-JumpStart
Contents |
Using Social Media
Major Questions
- Why use social media?
- Who will use social media for this project?
- How can we increase user participation of social media?
- How can we use social media in a way that is more meaningful than marketing?
Findings
Here's some research from Australia about the use of social media generally and by Museum visitors specifically: Visitors to the Australian Museum use social media - http://australianmuseum.net.au/blogpost/Visitors-to-the-Australian-Museum-use-social-media
How do Australian Museum visitors use social media? - http://australianmuseum.net.au/blogpost/How-do-Australian-Museum-visitors-use-social-media
How do Sydneysiders use social media? - http://australianmuseum.net.au/blogpost/How-do-Sydneysiders-use-social-media
Are we addicted to social media? - http://australianmuseum.net.au/blogpost/Are-we-addicted-to-social-media
Resources
- Web 2.0 For Museums discusses nine free or nearly free ways to engage in Web 2.0 from ASTC News
- Social Media and Young Adults Report from Pew Internet and American Life Project:
- Two Pew Internet Project surveys of teens and adults reveal a decline in blogging among teens and young adults and a modest rise among adults 30 and older. Even as blogging declines among those under 30, wireless connectivity continues to rise in this age group, as does social network use. Teens ages 12-17 do not use Twitter in large numbers, though high school-aged girls show the greatest enthusiasm for the application.
- Twitter and Status Updating Report from Pew Internet and American Life Project.
- Some 19% of internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others. This represents a significant increase over previous surveys in December 2008 and April 2009, when 11% of internet users said they use a status-update service.
- Building Audience Diversity Through Social Networking, Technology in the Arts blog, Amelia Northrup, (February 14, 2010).
- Twitter for Museums Case Study from Museu Picasso (pdf) excerpt.
(from Jeremy Boggs at Clioweb)
- "Twitter to connect, blogs to reflect." Use Twitter as a way to find and connect with other people with similar interests. Follow their tweets, send responses. Use Twitter as a backchannel or reporting mechanism for conferences. Organize meetings. Twitter in academia is increasingly about finding and working with other academics.
- "Microblogging": Limited to 140 characters.
- Use "@" other users to send them public messages.
- Tweets can be "retweeted", so you send useful tweet by one person you're following to your entire list of followers. Helps expand network, opens conversations.
- Retweets make up a rough "editorship" of posts aggregated at Digital History Now. Dan Cohen argues that Digital History Now is a "real-time, crowdsourced publication" that "takes the pulse of the digital humanities community" from Twitter. Links that are retweeted frequently get aggregated to the site. More explanation on Dan Cohen's blog.
- Follow hash tags: used to extend conversations to interested users who, for example, can't attend conferences: #AHA2010, #MLA09, #thatcamp.
- Academics and Social Media: MLA09 and Twitter
Weblogs and Newsfeeds
(from Jeremy Boggs at Clioweb) A website that provides regularly published entries, displayed in reverse-chronological order. Usually includes a news feed, which allows readers to subscribe and receive updates through a newsreader, and a commenting system, which allows readers to leave comments associated with a particular post.
- Posts can be of any length.
- Posts are published in reverse-chronological order, can be categorized and tagged.
- Blogs include news feeds, which let you subscribe to many different blogs.
- Lots of feed readers, on the web and on desktops/mobile devices, including:
- Google Reader, a web-based feed reading service by Google. Lets you add feeds to categories, star and share posts with other users.
- Bloglines a web-based service.
- Thunderbird Desktop email client that also includes a feedreader.
- Sage, a Firefox addon for reading feeds.
- Services
- Software
Wikis
(from Jeremy Boggs at Clioweb) A wiki is a website that encourages easy creation and collaboration; A collaborative writing space. Really is about drafting, revising, reorganizing, and working in groups. Unstructured until individuals or groups give it structure. Wiki is Hawaiian for "fast." This page itself is a wiki, easy for me to update on the fly, keep versions.
