Platforms such as Twitter seem to increasingly foster and encourage unhealthy, vitriolic and hostile behaviours. These often transpire as forms of ‘outrage’ culture, virtue-signalling, mobbing, and cancel culture, none of which seem particularly virtuous. I woke up today to see that even tea, yes, tea, has now become a victim of an online mob. I […]
In my many years on Twitter, I have seen a lot of interesting things. Back when I first started some 9 years ago, it used to be, well, fun. People would joke, share, and generally enjoy engaging as part of a community. We used to go viral, discussing and celebrating the things we loved. Now […]
The logic that animates both cancel culture and broken windows is fundamentally shallow and also fundamentally fear-based. It acts on the assumption that something that’s not necessarily harmful in and of itself but that somehow has the flavor of harmfulness — be it an edgy tweet or some tipsy neighbors hanging out on the stoop […]
Well, what a wonderful start to the week. Data Science Guru Lisa Hehnke has performed a great analysis of the Open Science MOOC Twitter account! Check out what she found here: Source: Analyzing the Open Science MOOC Twitter community | dataplanes.org
Welcome to your usual weekly roundup of vaguely interesting stuff that happened in the last week! Enjoy, and let me know if I’ve missed anything out. Previous week. Palaeontology news Campbell et al: New insights into chasmosaurine (Dinosauria: Ceratopsidae) skulls from the Upper Cretaceous (Campanian) of Alberta, and an update on the distribution of accessory frill fenestrae […]
This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened on Twitter. A direct series of insults towards researchers for expressing their view on a matter relating to ‘Open Science’. Any other idiots out there that feel like exposing themselves today? pic.twitter.com/i3GdToGSdR — Jordan Anaya (@OmnesResNetwork) May 13, 2017 Yeah, that’s not helping. […]
This was initially posted at: http://www.nature.com/spoton/2013/04/social-media-for-science-outreach-a-case-study-that-social-media-thang/ as part of a series of case studies exploring how academics use social media. Jon began university life as a geologist, following this with a treacherous leap into the life sciences with a course in biodiversity and taxonomy. Now undertaking a PhD in tetrapod biodiversity and extinction at Imperial College London, […]
This was originally posted at: http://blogs.egu.eu/palaeoblog/?p=517 At this years European Geosciences Union General Meeting (Vienna), I’ve been asked to be on a panel discussion describing the ways in which I think using social media and blogging can enhance academic careers. Sometimes, talks of this kind can be very echo-chambery, and there are plenty of really cool […]
Twitter is awesome. Users tweet over 340 million times a day, and the information load coming through it, and the speed at which it comes from the real world, makes it incredibly addictive as a social media or microblogging tool. In terms of the functions it offers though, how much is really understood? Everyone knows […]
Recently, Sherry Nouraini created an intriguing poll regarding the ‘multiple personalities’ of favouriting a tweet on Twitter. From a personal viewpoint, I use it similarly to the ‘Like’ function on Twitter, although anecdotal evidence combined with this poll suggest a wide variety of different uses. However, the sample size for this previous study was quite […]