Twittering About Research: A Case Study of the World's First Twitter Poster Competition

F1000Res. 2015 Sep 14:4:798. doi: 10.12688/f1000research.6992.3. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

The Royal Society of Chemistry held, to our knowledge, the world's first Twitter conference at 9am on February 5 (th), 2015. The conference was a Twitter-only conference, allowing researchers to upload academic posters as tweets, replacing a physical meeting. This paper reports the details of the event and discusses the outcomes, such as the potential for the use of social media to enhance scientific communication at conferences. In particular, the present work argues that social media outlets such as Twitter broaden audiences, speed up communication, and force clearer and more concise descriptions of a researcher's work. The benefits of poster presentations are also discussed in terms of potential knowledge exchange and networking. This paper serves as a proof-of-concept approach for improving both the public opinion of the poster, and the enhancement of the poster through an innovative online format that some may feel more comfortable with, compared to face-to-face communication.

Keywords: Chemistry; Communication; Competition; Conference; Engagement; Poster; Twitter, Research.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work.