Early career researchers and PhD students from the social sciences use of Social Networking Sites (SNS) for science communication: an affordances approach

Manco-Vega, Alejandra Early career researchers and PhD students from the social sciences use of Social Networking Sites (SNS) for science communication: an affordances approach., 2017 Master thesis thesis, Uppsala University. [Thesis]

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English abstract

This research aims to understand the different practices and strategies early career researchers and PhD students from the social sciences have in Social Networking Sites (SNSs) for science communication in one particular country: Brazil. Following this purpose, the central research question is which are the motives and rationale of the researchers for using social networking sites for science communication. Two sub-questions arise from this general research question: How do practices and strategies relate to the academic system of this country? And How do the traditional science communication practices translate into the use of Social Networking Sites (SNS)? This research is empirically oriented building up on case studies in Brazil. This study makes use of the adaptation that Van Dijck (2013) made of the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and the review of affordances of social media platforms (Bucher & Helmond, 2016) to apply it to the study of social media as the theoretical approach. The methodological approach of this research is qualitative, using both interviews and netnography as research methods. The primary motivations for using different Social Networking Sites are all related to connectivity: communication with peers, to the public and research subjects, updating themselves about their research issue, dissemination of research, availability of papers, self-branding and participation in interest groups are the most mentioned. These motivations translate into cross-posting practices and integrated communication strategies -combining online and offline elements- on the different Social Networking Sites. These motivations translate into perceived affordances all related to social affordances, therefore, social capital processes: availability, scalability, visibility and multimediality. The academic system of the country has remained unchanged as it privileges traditional scholarly academic formats; therefore, early career researchers and PhD students from the social sciences only use the different Social Networking Sites (SNS) as a side aid but not as a primary means of communication. Social media is underused as a means of public science communication, even though these platforms offer a lot of advantages for pursuing such issue. Traditional science communication practices translate into the use of Social Networking Sites (SNSs). The most important issue that came out in this report was the fact that social affordances provided by Social Networking (SNSs) are still required to be endorsed by real life meeting to start further collaboration and the fact that English is the preferred language for such issues.

Item type: Thesis (UNSPECIFIED)
Keywords: Social Networking Sites, Brazil, Early career social sciences researchers, social sciences PhD students, science communication, scholarly communication, Affordances, ANT
Subjects: B. Information use and sociology of information > BJ. Communication
C. Users, literacy and reading. > CA. Use studies.
H. Information sources, supports, channels. > HN. e-journals.
H. Information sources, supports, channels. > HT. Web 2.0, Social networks
Depositing user: Alejandra Manco Vega
Date deposited: 05 Nov 2017 23:16
Last modified: 05 Nov 2017 23:16
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10760/31922

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