Is Social Media Helping or Skewing Research?
Social Media has changed when it comes to the accessibility to people’s information and their interests. Whether we like it or not, companies and industry leaders know more about us than we know that they do. Phone internet searches, social media accounts that we follow, posts that we interact with and save, along with so many other things allow the research industry a whole new sector of accessible knowledge that they did not have before the age of social media.
I had the opportunity to read over a research article published by NC State University titled, “The Use of Social Media and its Impact for Research.” This article explores this exact topic. Social media has allowed companies and individuals to reach a massive audience. This article highlights that “the benefits of social media stem from active participation and the generation of new attractive content from an individual. Research is all about producing new information, and social media offers unique opportunities to present new content.” This statement from a reader’s perspective makes a lot of sense. I see interaction on social media, especially Instagram and Facebook. Companies can see how the information that they put out is taken and reacted to by users, whether that be by saving the photo, liking it, engaging with the post, clicking the link, ordering the product, all of these steps contribute to information that can later be used for research purposes.
Scientists are beginning to use social media more and more to gather and promote the research that they have acquired and that they need. Social media has become a popular outlet mainly due to the number of people that it can reach in a given time frame. The article mentions that while the reach of social media is important, what is often more important is who you connect or engage with. Oftentimes, researchers may be hesitant to publish the findings that they have due to how quickly and how “live” the results seem to be. Researchers fear that it may diminish their credibility.
Social media offers a great space for researchers to promote and share their findings. As I had mentioned previously, social media is great because it allows for mass information to reach a large audience quickly. This helps when it comes to published research. While most researchers are used to sharing their work with their peers and communicating with others via email and mail, social media has changed the way that researchers can promote and share their work. Not only does this reach the intended people but it can also be shared and shared by people all over the world, generating more exposure than the researcher thought was possible. This causes a snowball effect with it comes to the research industry. Once exposure has been given to one research topic, it might spark an idea within another researcher hence this snowball effect of inquisitory knowledge, making the research and social media industry stronger and more credible!
Source:
“The Use of Social Media and Its Impact for Research.” NC State, https://bioresources.cnr.ncsu.edu/resources/the-use-of-social-media-and-its-impact-for-research/.
