The Tweeting Astronomer

Twitter has been one of the big game changers in social media on the web in recent years.  Those who know me are aware that I’m an active tweeter. In fact, those of you who know me through this blog are very likely to have found me through Twitter. I have statistics to tell me that, it’s rather neat.

So much has been written about the pros, cons and dangers of Twitter in general or in the context of science specifically, I feel this post is moot – but I’ve promised several times to write about Twitter and astronomy,  and it’s about time I delivered on that. I should start off by saying that most of the things I like about Twitter are not related to astronomy per se – I’m sure non-astronomers have a very similar experience. I’ll also concentrate on the person-tweeter, rather than the institute-tweeter or telescope-tweeter – those are whole other topics. So here’s what I think.

At its very simplest, twitter is the ultimate vehicle for ultra-rapid dissemination of information. It’s no different with science. I’m so much better informed about science news from around the world than I ever was before: whatever new instrument comes online, new discovery is made, or funding body goes into crisis, one of the 200-odd scientists I follow on twitter is likely to tweet about it in the space of a couple of hours, before it ever appears on an official channel.

Even better, a few people might have a conversation about it that I can follow, which I can join, or just follow to learn about the significance of the news item.

Social networking, you may be surprised to learn, is all about networking. We take networking very seriously in career development, why do we look down on online social networking as something juvenile and frivolous? Networking via social media like Twitter is even easier than real life networking. You don’t have to do it while you’re standing awkwardly with a glass of wine and some finger food, trying to keep your jetlag at bay. You can have engaging conversations with peers or influential people in your pyjamas on the sofa.

Online social media also break down the fence of affiliation or seniority. Top-dog astronomers on Twitter aren’t scary Professors anymore. They’re @e_astronomer, @defjaf and @telescoper. Sometimes they tweet about the weather, their kids, or that they cried over a cartoon. For highly competitive careers like science, full of (let’s be honest) snobbery and hero-worship, a medium like Twitter breaks down the social barriers and brings back a bit of much-needed humanity.

Plus, twitter gives you the opportunity to mingle with colleagues from other fields, whom you may not otherwise meet at conferences. If you don’t have the funds to attend conferences, twitter allows conference participants to keep all the rest of us in the loop with what’s happening. Several large astronomy conferences in recent years have had a significant twitter presence, such as the AAS, the Herschel first results conference in Noordwijk in May 2010 or the UK National Astronomy Meeting. Others, like .Astronomy, almost certainly thank a big part of their success to an online social media presence.

There’s a broadly held feeling that scientists tweeting leads them to engage with the public. It certainly has that potential, but I’m not sure that that actually happens. As with many forms of social media, the hard outcomes and benefits are not routinely and systematically studied, and the little research that does get published on the subject sometimes misrepresents or misinterprets the history and relevance of science in the social media (if you know of something good, please talk about it).

Where engagement clearly has occurred, however, is between scientists from different fields, and between scientists and the media. It’s allowing researchers from niche sciences like astronomy to embed themselves in the broader research landscape. The funding cuts currently being inflicted on the British astronomy and nuclear and particle physics communities were widely discussed on Twitter (here’s an archive and my post), first by a small group of physicists and astronomers, but quickly by a broader group of tweeting scientists. In the run-up to the British elections in May, those scientists participating in the  #stfc debate became active proponents of the #scivote movement that aimed to bring attention to science and engineering policy.

Even traditional media, often slow to adopt new technologies, these days have many twitter feeds for diferent subjects and types of content. Some excellent science writers, such as Mark Henderson of The Times or Dutch astronomy writing legend Govert Schilling, actively take part in conversations about science via twitter. That can only lead to a more trusting and mutually beneficial relationship, and better science reporting. Just this week, the Guardian launched a science blogs section that brings together several well-respected science bloggers – more about that later.

A lot of twitter-sceptics seem to think that twitter is one more source of background noise to destroy our abilities to focus on our work. I’m pretty sure that twitter hasn’t negatively affected my productivity or my attention span. I spend just as much time browsing the web as before twitter, only that now I have more interesting content to read while I’m taking a break. And when I’m really busy, I just switch my twitter client, along with my email inbox, down for the day.

There are some caveats. The style of twitter is very colloquial, chatty and laid-back. That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to tweet everything you’re thinking or would say to your friends. If you want to take twitter seriously as a networking tool, you have to treat it as such. And as twitter feeds are generally public, you have no control over who reads what you say.

Twitter, like any other web-based medium, attract herds and mobs, and is perfect for spreading misinformation.

Finally, twitter takes some time. I found that it took me about 6 months of not-quite-getting-it, before I’d found the people whose content I was interested in. And just maybe it’s not for you, which is fine too. But before you make up your mind, do give it a try (a great intro guide to twitter here, find scientist friends here). Don’t be that person who bitches about twitter without having tried it. We tweeters really don’t like them.