HELPING PEOPLE'S

Kandy Woodfield is one of our NSMNSS network leaders, she's based at NatCen Social Research and you can contact her on Twitter @jess1ecat I was delighted to be able to present the work of the #NSMNSS network to a roundtable event today hosted by the ESRC and the Indian Council of Social Science Research . The event, supported by the Newton Fund , aimed to bring together academics working in social media research in both the UK and India to explore shared interests and opportunities for collaboration. It was a lively discussion and provided an opportunity for me to reflect on how far the network has come in the three years we have been building our community. Here's the presentation:

NSMNSS knowledge exchange event: Using social media for academic work - opportunities and challenges Following on from the successful launch of our book of blogs on social media research , we will be holding a new knowledge exchange event on January 12th at NatCen in central London with two of the blog authors sharing their experiences of using social media for research. We're delighted to be joined by Dr Deborah Lupton , Centenary Research Professor at the University of Canberra, who is making a flying visit to the UK and also by Dr Luke Sloan from the COSMOS team at Cardiff University. As well as the two main presentations there will be an opportunity for networking, lunch and the chance for you to share your research experiences in an open space forum where you can ask for advice and input on challenges or dilemmas you may be facing with your own research projects. A draft agenda for the event is below; places are free but limited to 25 people so ...

Kandy Woodfield is the Learning and Enterprise Director at NatCen Social Research, and the co-founder of the NSMNSS network. You can reach Kandy on Twitter @jess1ecat. It started with a tweet, a blog post and a nervous laugh. Three months later I found  myself looking at a book of blogs. How did that happen?! Being involved in the NSMNSS network since its beginning has been an ongoing delight for me. It's full of researchers who aren't afraid to push the boundaries, question established thinking and break down a few silos. When I began my social research career, mobile phones were suitcase-sized and collecting your data meant lugging a tape recorder and tapes around with you. That world is gone, the smartphone most of us carry in our pockets now replaces most of the researcher's kitbag, and one single device is our street atlas, translator, digital recorder, video camera and so much more. Our research world today is a different place from 20 years ago, social media are comm...