The role of social media in ornithology

A Round Table held at #EOU2015, Badajoz, Spain, 27 August 2015

Organisers:
Steve Dudley (BOU) and
Jen Smart (RSPB Centre for Conservation Science)

You can view the individual presentations below.

Social media is a fast-moving technology and now plays an increasing role in research, including ornithology. Researchers who have embraced social media have discovered that it is much more than a social networking opportunity, but it can be an important tool for their research needs at the research, publishing and networking levels.

Social media is now an important tool to disseminate research results. The arrival of individual article metrics now means there are developing metrics which will allow researchers, institutes, funders and others to measure the outreach and public impact of individual pieces of research.

Ornithology, more than many other research areas, requires the input of the wider ornithological and birding communities. These communities are social and many exist as clubs or societies. Social media has seen these groups, as well as many more individuals traditionally outside of these groups, move online en-masse, embracing social media and web-based technology for information exchange, bird recording and data collection. Social media enables ornithologists to engage with, and mobilise, this online community for research projects.

Discussion took place around a series of short presentations covering different aspects and experiences of using social media within ornithology.

Presentations

Social media use in ornithology
Steve Dudley @stevedudley_ About Steve
BOU, UK @IBIS_journal | bou.org.uk
View presentation

Using Twitter to promote your research and drive your papers’ Altmetrics
Arjun Amar @arjundevamar About Arjun
Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, South Africa fitzpatrick.uct.ac.za
View presentation

The RSPB’s use of Altmetric data
Jen Smart @drredshank About Jen
RSPB Centre for Conservation Science, UK @RSPBScience | rspb.org.uk/science
View presentation

The use of Twitter in the Devon Cuckoo citizen science project
Sara Zonneveld @sarazonneveld About Sara
University of Exeter, UK @UofE_Research | exeter.ac.uk/research
View presentation

The Yellowhammer dialects project use of social media
Pavel Pipek @YDialects About Pavel
Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic Dept. of Ecology
View presentation

Social media from the BOU

Check out other social media content on the BOU website View