Communicating Your Research With Social Media: A Practical Guide to Using Blogs, Podcasts, Data Visualisations and Video

This dynamic, engaging guide empowers you to go beyond bar charts and jargon-filled journal articles to bring your research online and present it in a way that highlights and maximises its relevance through social media.

Drawing upon a wealth of timely, real-world examples, the authors present a framework for fully incorporating social media within each step of the research process. From visualising available data to tailoring social media to meet your needs, this book explores proactive ways to share cutting edge research. A complete ‘how to’ for communicating research through blogs, podcasts, data visualisations, and video, it teaches you how to use social media to:

• create and share images, audio, and video in ways that positively impacts your research
• connect and collaborate with other researchers
• measure and quantify research communication efforts for funders  
• provide research evidence in innovative digital formats
• reach wider, more engaged audiences in academia and beyond

Through practical advice and actionable strategies, this book shows how to achieve and sustain your research impact through social media.

Amy is Social Media Manager at the London School of Economics. She previously managed several blogs at LSE, including LSE Review of Books and the Impact Blog. She has published popular guides for researchers on using social media, including ′Using Twitter in university research, teaching and impact activities: A guide for academics and researchers′ with Patrick Dunleavy, downloaded by 100,000 readers. With her coauthors, Amy has won a Times Higher Education Award for Knowledge Exchange. Amy is a graduate of the London School of Economics and the University of Sussex, and is interested in academic communication, digital engagement, and podcasting. She tweets @amybmollett.

Cheryl is senior producer at The Economist where she produces daily podcasts on economics, politics and science. Previous to The Economist, Cheryl worked for the LSE Public Policy Group for four years, producing the award winning podcast series The LSE Review of Books podcast, as well as podcasts for the LSE Impact Blog, the British Politics and Policy Blog and EUROPP. Additionally, she has worked at the BBC World Service and Monocle Radio. She is also a freelance radio journalist reporting for outlets such as Public Radio International and Deutsche Welle English. Cheryl was named a “New Voices” scholar for her achievements as a minority producer by the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR). With her coauthors, Cheryl has won a Times Higher Education Award for Knowledge Exchange. She tweets @cherylbrumley.

Chris is Managing Editor of USAPP - American Politics and Policy, the blog of the LSE’s United States Centre (http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/). He also launched and managed the LSE’s British Politics and Policy blog (2010), and EUROPP - European Politics and Policy (2012), and supports the creation and management of other blogs around the LSE. He has a undergraduate and a Masters degree in Geography, and a postgraduate diploma in Strategic Management, all from the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. With his coauthors, Chris has won a Times Higher Education Award for Knowledge Exchange. His interests include blogging, research communication, US politics, urban politics, and community activism. He tweets @chrishjgilson

Sierra Williams is Community Manager at PeerJ, an open access science publisher for biology, medicine, and computer science. She previously managed strategic communications for the global non-profit, Open Knowledge International and spent four years at the London School of Economics as the Managing Editor of the LSE Impact Blog, one of the most popular LSE blogs, now reaching over 90,000 readers a month. She has an MPhil in Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation Studies from Trinity College, Dublin, and a BA in Sociology from the University of San Francisco. Sierra also provided research and administrative support for the LSE Impact of Social Sciences Project. Her interests are in open scholarship, the role of expertise in society, distributed communication networks and data sharing. She tweets @sn_will.