Researchers’ attitudes towards the use of social networking sites
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-04-2017-0051 |
| Pages | 119-136 |
| Date | 08 January 2018 |
| Published date | 08 January 2018 |
| Author | Elke Greifeneder,Sheila Pontis,Ann Blandford,Hesham Attalla,David Neal,Kirsten Schlebbe |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Researchers’attitudes towards
the use of social networking sites
Elke Greifeneder
Berlin School of Library and Information Science,
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Sheila Pontis and Ann Blandford
UCL Interaction Centre, University College London, London, UK
Hesham Attalla and David Neal
Elsevier B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and
Kirsten Schlebbe
Berlin School of Library and Information Science,
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to better understand why many researchers do not have a profile on
social networking sites (SNS), and whether this is the result of conscious decisions.
Design/methodology/approach –Thematic analysis was conducted on a large qualitative data set from
researchers across three levels of seniority, four countries and four disciplines to explore their attitudes
toward and experiences with SNS.
Findings –The study found much greater scepticism toward adopting SNS than previously reported.
Reasons behind researchers’scepticism range from SNS being unimportant for their work to not belonging to
their culture or habits. Some even felt that a profile presented people negatively and might harm their career.
These concerns were mostly expressed by junior and midlevel researchers, showing that the largest
opponents to SNS may unexpectedly be younger researchers.
Research limitations/implications –A limitation of this study was that the authors did not conduct the
interviews, and therefore reframing or adding questions to specifically unpack comments related to attitudes,
feelings or the use of SNS in academia was not possible.
Originality/value –By studying implicit attitudes and experiences, this study shows that instead of being
ignorant of SNS profiles, some researchers actively opt for a non-use of profiles on SNS.
Keywords Social networking, Behaviour, Profile, Attitudes, Researcher, Data reuse
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Today, academic standing may be linked to online standing: a researcher’s online
presence is an important channel for dissemination of expertise and achievements
(Genoni et al., 2005; Mas-Bleda and Aguillo, 2013). Many researchers feel it is important
to have a strong online presence in addition to having high-quality publications in
order to make a scientific impact. Researchers use these sites “to build, promote,
and measure reputation”(Nicholas et al., 2015, p. 171), and to gain and maintain an
“online academic identity”(Jordan, 2014, para 2). Researchers reported that the use of
social media increases the chances of their research being noticed (Weller, 2015) and
they use, for example, Twitter as a professional medium for sharing and discussing
publications. The more marketing researchers do, the more likely it seems that their
research is noticed and cited (Eysenbach, 2011). Hyland (2011, p. 288) goes so far as to call
it “almost obligatory for academics to maintain some kind of online presence.”
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 74 No. 1, 2018
pp. 119-136
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-04-2017-0051
Received 7 April 2017
Revised 10 August 2017
Accepted 27 August 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
The authorsare grateful to all participants in the study,and to those who conducted theinterviews across
all sites. The analysis has been completed by the authors. This study was funded by Elsevier B.V.
119
The use of
social
networking
sites
Social networking sites (SNS) are the main venue where people establish their online
presence through the creation of professional or personal profiles, many of them hosting
several millions of users of various professional backgrounds, including researchers.
The large number of users also attracts many researchers to make SNS and the use of SNS
the object of their study. While not all researchers have an academic profile on SNS, there is
“a sizeable number of scholars, even scholars who did not use platforms or only use them
occasionally, who feels that emerging mechanisms and platforms will be the future and
especially important for young scholars building a career. There is a sense that their time is
coming”(Nicholas et al., 2015, p. 178).
The general consensus indicates that the future researcher will have an academic profile on a
SNS. Studies describe researchers without an academic profile as the ones who “have fallen
behind”(Mas-Bleda et al., 2014, p. 350), who show a “general lack of awareness and
understanding”(Abrizah et al., 2014, p. 257) and who “have much to learn”(Fiske, 2014, p. 441).
These descriptions imply that whilst all researchers are not there yet, they should eventually be.
Today’s researchers have to constantly make decisions on how to best promote their
academic careers: where is the best publication venue for the next article, who is a
trustworthy partner for a project, where is the best conference venue to find new partners,
which grant proposals might be successful –all within the constraints of time. If having an
academic profile on SNS were indeed a successful and worthwhile way to promote academic
careers, would researchers not pursue this line more strongly? Or put otherwise: are
researchers really not there yet, or have they decided that they do not want to be there?
This paper uses qualitative data to analyze researchers’attitudes toward and
experiences with academic profiles on SNS. By looking explicitly at the wording researchers
use when talking about academic profiles and SNS, we aim to discover whether researchers
are indeed “behind the curve”and should be using academic profiles on SNS more for their
academic careers or whether, on the other hand, researchers have made conscious decisions
not to pursue this type of profile on SNS. The paper will thus help inform developers in their
design process of future SNS, particularly for academics.
The paper is organized as follows: we first define SNS, and present an overview of
research practices on academic use of SNS, structured according to their method of data
collection: content analyses, questionnaires and qualitative interviews. We then describe our
method and sample. The results section presents findings on researchers’experiences and
feelings toward having an academic profile on SNS.
Definition of SNS
SNS are “web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public
profile within a bounded system (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they
share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made
by others within the system”(Boyd and Ellison, 2007, p. 211). Some SNS are specifically
aimed at the scientific community, for example, Academia.edu. They provide additional
features like sharing research papers, collaborating with colleagues or tracking citations.
For these specialized sites, the term academic social networking sites (ASNS) is often used
(Gruzd and Goertzen, 2013; Jeng et al., 2015). In what follows, we use the more general term
SNS to include both academic and non-academic sites in our analysis, and we use the
term “profile”only to refer to academic profiles, i.e. profiles for professional academic use.
Different kinds of SNS are used in academia. Researchers use classic SNS
like Facebook, Myspace or Google+for professional purposes although they are not
primarily aimed at them. As a microblogging service, Twitter differs from classic SNS, but
conceptual borders are blurred as academics also use Twitter for similar purposes. Other
networks are aimed at professionals but not exclusively at researchers, such as LinkedIn
or XING, both launched in 2003. The former was acquired by Microsoft in 2016, reaching
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