Category Archives: Online

Social Media’s growing interest in Science: Aust. science followers top half a million

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We all know how important social media is for any communications today. But what about science communications? It seems that social media interest in science is an exciting and growing area which all science communicators can tap into.

Also don’t forget to follow ASC (@auscicomm) on TWITTER!

[Press Release from Science Alert]:

Aust. science followers top half a million

Science from Australia and New Zealand has attracted half a million followers on the global internet phenomenon Facebook.

Australasian science news reported on www.ScienceAlert.com.au this month topped 500,000 Facebook fans worldwide for the first time.

“We’re finding there is a wonderful appetite among young people worldwide to learn more about Australian and NZ science via Facebook,” says ScienceAlert managing director Chris Cassella. “From a short item on Facebook, they can click right through to the full story on ScienceAlert, or to the university or science institution where it originated.

“Science Minister Kim Carr has encouraged us all to ‘inspire Australia’. Well, thanks to Facebook we’re inspiring the world, as well Australia, with what our science is achieving, and with the science courses and jobs it offers.”

Mr Cassella said that Facebook itself now had 800 million users – and is growing rapidly worldwide, especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America. “It’s clearly the coming thing in communication, replacing traditional media and even websites as the place where people get their information and share new ideas.

“For half of the 18-34 year old users, Facebook is the first thing they check when they wake up in the morning. Half of them do it on their smartphones, before even getting out of bed.”

In another milestone, ScienceAlert’s following has overtaken the Australian Open Tennis Tournament in popularity among Australian Facebook sites. “That was pretty remarkable, considering the huge boost which Australian tennis gained from Sam Stosur’s win at the US Open,” Mr Cassella says.

“On Facebook at least, Australasian science now ranks ahead of the tennis, rugby league, Cricket Australia, our World Cup soccer bid and popular rock ‘n roll station Triple J.

“You can see the rankings on http://www.famecount.com/facebook/sciencealert”

“In our view, this underlines the remarkable power of social media to increase awareness of Australasian science and technology – and to expand the global reach of our university courses and research positions.”

He added “In another remarkable development Sciencealert is presently ranked 14th in the world among news sites, in terms of its Facebook following.

“This means Australasian science has more followers on Facebook than news icons like The Wall St Journal, TIME magazine, The UK Financial Times, The Washington Post, and the popular online newspaper the Huffington Post.” www.famecount.com/facebook-rank/Worldwide/News

“It’s not just about how many fans you have, though. Each of these fans has hundreds of friends, who in turn have hundreds of friends, and information disseminates exponentially among them. This is what makes social media different from all other kinds – the information tree keeps growing more branches and twigs.”

ScienceAlert founder Julian Cribb said it was very pleasing to find such a large and enthusiastic audience for Australian and NZ science via Facebook. “When I started ScienceAlert, the aim was to share the good news about our research achievements freely with a wider audience. That was achieved through the website, but social media have added an entirely new dimension.

“The fact that Australasian science now attracts a larger audience among this segment of young people internationally than any other science publication in the world holds considerable promise for the future, if we can keep it up. The next generation will grow up with a keener awareness of Australasian science and what it has to offer the world.”

More information:

Chris Cassella, Managing Director, ScienceAlert, 02 6100 4307
chris.cassella@sciencealert.com.au
Julian Cribb, founder, ScienceAlert, 0418 639 254.
Web: www.sciencealert.com.au
Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/sciencealert

News and opinions: editor@sciencealert.com.au
Advertising inquiries: adsales@sciencealert.com.au

Rally for Research – Adelaide

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This article was originally published here with pictures and video.

In Australia at the moment there is a real fear that our Government (who are supposed to be on the left side of that political line) is going to cut $400 million from medical research budgets. To protest this rallies are being run in most Australian capital cities to advertise the role of scientists in the community and to show all scientists that collectively we have a voice that can be heard, you just have to start shouting.

A couple of days ago the rally in my city was held and whilst I couldn’t make it (due to teaching obligations) my good friend Thomas Tu, with whom I started Disease of the Week (on which he has also written a post about this) a few years ago, has been heavily involved. You can find a radio interview he did on one of Australia’s largest radio stations, Triple J, here (about a third of the way in) and there is a video of him giving a speech at the rally. He is standing on the steps of our city’s Parliament House.

So what can you do if you can’t make a rally or are in another country but want to show your support? Jump on the Discoveries need Dollars website or the Facebook page and ‘Like’ or follow the Twitter page and at all these places there is more info.

We are trying to make it a big issue to protect medical research, our livelihoods and encourage more students into science careers and it makes it very difficult when not only is money taken away but when its predicted to affect early career researchers hardest.

If you can help and you care about medical research I implore you to do as much as you can.

I’ll get off my high-horse now.

James Byrne

Associate Lecturer at University of Adelaide
Bacteriology PhD student and writer at Disease Prone

Social media tools from Web 2.0 in museums conference

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List of useful social media tools referenced during the conference, 5 & 6 March 2009.  This was organised by Museums Australia (Victoria) and Swinburne University in partnership with Melbourne Museum.  Attendees from SA, NSW, TAS, QLD, VIC and Europe participated in masterclasses and conference sessions exploring the uses of web 2.0 tools in museums and their websites.

Google Analytics

ReInvigorate

Compete (US websites only)

Alexa

- statistics on your website and how users interact with it

ClickDensity – heat maps of what users look at on your website

Google Trends – realtime search of ‘trends’ (i.e. keywords) referenced online

DomainTools – domain registration/look-up portal

FeedBurner – tool to manage and track multiple blogs

Flickr – online photo sharing site

StumbleUpon – sharing tool to recommend websites or particular pages to others (similar to Digg, Reddit, etc.)

Reddit – sharing tool (as above)

HowSociable? – tool to measure brand visibility in social media, i.e. how often your organisation is referenced in  Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Technorati, etc.

Twitter – similar to sending and receiving mass text messages.  Easier to show than tell.

WorldInternetProject – analysis and comment on global internet trends

NING/Museums 3.0 – blog ring for museums

1stfans @ Brooklyn Museum – online membership of Twitterers and bloggers with an interest in the Brooklyn Museum

Social media links from 5 Feb event, Melbourne

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As a quick follow-up to last night’s Vic event on Web 2.0, science communicators and museums, I’ve put together a quick list of some of the social media/news references made during the discussion:

Transformations in Scientific & Cultural Communication conference details:

http://www.mavic.asn.au/events-training/2009/03/#56

http://nlablog.wordpress.com/conference-2009/

The 2008 version of the Transformations… event

http://nlablog.wordpress.com/conference-2008

Angelina Russo & Jerry Watkins’ home pages at Swinburne

http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/ourpeople/staff/Angelina-Russo-ID50.html

http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/ourpeople/staff/Jerry-Watkins-ID45.html

Niall Byrne’s details

http://www.scienceinpublic.com

Museums Australia (Victoria)

http://www.mavic.asn.au

Mythbusters

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mythbusters

http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/mythbusters.html

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=25BA2E43B30816A7&playnext=1&v=QW0DocsxRmo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythbusters

Colossal squid defrosted

http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/TePapa/English/CollectionsAndResearch/CollectionAreas/NaturalEnvironment/Molluscs/ColossalSquid/

Giant squid dissection

http://museumvictoria.com.au/giantsquid

CSIRO Publishing

http://www.publish.csiro.au/

Einstein A Go Go

http://einsteinagogo.net/about-2/

Melbourne Writers Festival

http://www.mwf.com.au/

Eureka Prizes

http://amonline.net.au/eureka/

Flickr groups

http://www.flickr.com/search/groups/?q=australia+science+&m=names

Twitter

http://twitter.com/search/users?q=science

http://twitter.com/search/users?q=news

British wildlife surveys (public engagement)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/breathingplaces/doonething/simple/surveys.shtml

An unsuccessful albatross tracking project (NB: not the one Niall referred to)

http://www.ladbrokes.com/bigbirdrace/bettingandform.html

ICOM definition of a Museum

http://icom.museum/definition.html

CERES

http://www.ceres.org.au/

‘Peter Mac’ (Peter MacCullum Cancer Centre)

http://www.petermac.org/