HELPING PEOPLE'S

Sometimes we communicate by using a few words as a kind of shorthand for big ideas: we know what we mean. Or at least we assume we have a common conception for what we mean when we use certain words, based perhaps on a shared experience of the phenomenon. But when we try to enlarge the conversation and explain it to someone else with whom we do not share experiences or frames of reference, we must be more precise. I believe we are at such a point with some of the words we use in the NSMNSS project. To include and engage others beyond the early adopters and true believers of online research, we may need to build a common language. As a case in point, last spring NSMNSS conducted a questionnaire about ethical issues in social media research. Using the narrative option many respondents posted concerns about what they perceived as a lack of understanding of online research generally at their institutions and out-of-date guidance from their faculty, dissertation supervisors and institutions...

Hello to the NSMNSS blogosphere! You may recognize my name from posts and events over the past year, and I am delighted to be a part of the continued work of the New Social Media, New Social Science project as a contributing blogger. I recorded a short introduction for the visual and aural communicators out there! I have served on the graduate faculty member of the Capella University School of Business and Technology since 1999. I thought I would teach a course or two but fell in love with online teaching and here I am! Capella learners are scholar-practitioners, working adults who integrate life and career experience with rigorous academic study. I currently focus my efforts on dissertation supervision, which provides a living laboratory for observing the development of new research—primarily with online qualitative methods. Their struggles and triumphs help me understand the eclectic mix of practical and scholarly skills needed to successfully conduct research. I am also an indepen...

Hannah is a researcher at NatCen Social Research, a non-political charity that specialises in social policy research. Before joining NatCen as a graduate research trainee in September 2012, she worked as an Employment Adviser to the long-term unemployed. Hannah is now based in NatCen’s Income and Work team and is involved in survey maintenance and smaller scale qualitative projects. Her research interests lie in poverty and disadvantage, and also now in social media use! You can follow Hannah on Twitter by searching @h_silvester. Last year I was one of eleven lucky graduates taken on by UK based NatCen Social Research. To get hands on experience –and to make mistakes in a controlled environment! -we were given a year to develop and run a study with only minimal guidance from senior staff. Now nearing the end (we’re writing our report), we’d like to share some learning points. As well as specializing in independent social policy research, NatCen has always prided itself on methodologica...

Greetings from Boise, Idaho, USA . It is my honor and pleasure to join the NSMNSS web team as an contributing expert . In this post I will briefly describe my background as it pertains to this group and the dynamic arena of social media research. I currently work as an Associate Professor and Associate Department Chair in the Educational Technology Program (EDTECH) at Boise State University . The majority of our EDTECH program is graduate level and completely online. I have been teaching online with this program for over a decade. Prior to my work in higher education I was a middle-school science teacher. I have been enamored with video in education ever since those early years teaching science to teens. Video seemed like the best way to introduce these rural Idaho teens to active volcanoes, deep sea life, or experts on topics we were studying. Of course, back then we relied on the now antiquated VCR technology to play video in the classroom. I never knew if it was going to work or no...

I was lucky enough to be chosen as the PhD blogger for #NSMNSS, but before I start posting more about the perks and pitfalls of using social media in my research, I will give a little bit of an introduction to me, my research, and how it all fits under the #NSMNSS umbrella. To start off, I think I should point out that I wouldn't really class myself as a social media researcher. Rather, I am one of those researchers who has been swayed by the possibilities of what the digital trails of social interaction that social media users leave in their path can tell us about aspects of their daily lives. My research interest could be described broadly as the English language in Japan. I come to looking at this from the background of applied linguistics, a wide-ranging field of research looking at understanding language related issues in the real world, and I am influenced by work in world Englishes , sociolinguistics , linguistic anthropology , and discourse studies . I am not so interested ...