Twitter in Academia: Results from 116 Marine Scientists

The best tweet of the week/month must have been Sam Sherrington sharing a visual display of the results of a survey on the use of Twitter with 116 marine scientists:

“@SagefemmeSB:@PhDForum @socphd @Phil_Baty infographic re researchers’ use of twitter pic.twitter.com/NXKtuJlOs2 @ACBmidwife”>visually stunning
— Sam Sherrington NHS (@SamSherrington) April 24, 2014

I’m sharing the figure here again:

Long ago, I wrote about the negativity surrounding social media in academia and a few years later I tried to convince fellow scientists of the benefits of Twitter.

What I shared in the past was mostly based on my personal experience. However, seeing here the data of how research gets disseminated effectively via Twitter is very powerful. Moreover, if you look at the pie chart on the right, you see that typically 45% of the followers of tweeting marine scientists are interested lay people. There is your opportunity to interact with a broader public!