Tweet or Go Extinct

By Carol Schadelbauer, July 3, 2013

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In an opinion piece in The Scientist, author Sara Yeo reports on the results of a survey of leading scientists at U.S. universities about their interactions with traditional media as well as social media like Twitter. Yeo and her colleagues then tracked the impact of this communications on their academics.

The results? Yeo reports that “public communication efforts are linked to academic impact and that social media can augment more traditional forms of public communication.” By “academic impact,” she means scholar productivity, recognition of their science and collaborations with other scientists. All good things for scientists.

She concludes, “…public communication efforts by scientists will have rewarding paybacks. Although some scholars may continue to perceive public communication efforts as detrimental to career advancement, our evidence suggests the opposite. Moving forward, the essential question is no longer whether scientists should engage with the media, but how to do so effectively.”

In terms of the impact of the use of Twitter, while Yeo’s findings indicate that Twitter extends the reach of their science, it does take time to do so. Time that scientists say they rarely have. But I would suggest that if scientists can’t or won’t dedicate the time, they should consult with their public affairs office for support in spreading their latest finding through social media. It could pay off.

Yeo predicts evolution for scientists in this arena: “As the definitions of expert and public communication continue to change, and the media environment and public audiences adapt to it, scientists will have no choice but to evolve, too.”