Department of Informatics and Media Media & Communication Studies Two-year Master’s thesis Early career researchers and PhD students from the social sciences use of Social Networking Sites (SNS) for science communication: an affordances approach Student: Alejandra Manco Vega Supervisor: PhD. Cecilia Strand Fall 2017 ABSTRACT This research aims to understand the different practices and strategies early career researchers and PhD students from the social sciences have in Social Networking Sites (SNSs) for science communication in one particular country: Brazil. Following this purpose, the central research question is which are the motives and rationale of the researchers for using social networking sites for science communication. Two sub-questions arise from this general research question: How do practices and strategies relate to the academic system of this country? And How do the traditional science communication practices translate into the use of Social Networking Sites (SNS)? This research is empirically oriented building up on case studies in Brazil. This study makes use of the adaptation that Van Dijck (2013) made of the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and the review of affordances of social media platforms (Bucher & Helmond, 2016) to apply it to the study of social media as the theoretical approach. The methodological approach of this research is qualitative, using both interviews and netnography as research methods. The primary motivations for using different Social Networking Sites are all related to connectivity: communication with peers, to the public and research subjects, updating themselves about their research issue, dissemination of research, availability of papers, self- branding and participation in interest groups are the most mentioned. These motivations translate into cross-posting practices and integrated communication strategies -combining online and offline elements- on the different Social Networking Sites. These motivations translate into perceived affordances all related to social affordances, therefore, social capital processes: availability, scalability, visibility and multimediality. The academic system of the country has remained unchanged as it privileges traditional scholarly academic formats; therefore, early career researchers and PhD students from the social sciences only use the different Social Networking Sites (SNS) as a side aid but not as a primary means of communication. Social media is underused as a means of public science communication, even though these platforms offer a lot of advantages for pursuing such issue. Traditional science communication practices translate into the use of Social Networking Sites (SNSs). The most important issue that came out in this report was the fact that social affordances provided by Social Networking (SNSs) are still required to be endorsed by real life meeting to start further collaboration and the fact that English is the preferred language for such issues. Keywords: Social Networking Sites; Brazil; Early career social science researchers; social sciences PhD students; science communication; scholarly communication; Affordances; ANT 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction 6 1.2 Research question……………………………………………………… 7 1.3 Relevance and contribution to the field………………………………. 8 1.4 Disposition……………………………………………………………….. 8 2. Background 9 2.1 Brazilian system………………………………………………………… 9 2.2 Communication to the public and the peers…………………………... 10 3. Literature review: Researcher’s use of Social Networking Sites 14 3.1 Facebook…………………………………………………………………. 16 3.2 Twitter…………………………………………………………………… 17 3.3 Youtube & Whatsapp…………………………………………………... 18 3.4 ResearchGate……………………………………………………………. 18 3.5 Academia.edu……………………………………………………………. 20 3.6 Mendeley………………………………………………………………… 21 4. Theoretical framework 22 4.1 Actor-Network Theory………………………………………………….. 22 4.2 Actor-Network Theory in Social Networking Sites…………………… 23 4.3 Affordances theory……………………………………………………… 24 4.4 Affordances Theory in Social Networking Sites………………………. 25 4.5 ANT and Affordances in relation to this case…………………………. 28 5. Methodology 29 5.1 Methodological reflections……………………………………………... 37 2 5.2 Limitations……………………………………………………………… 38 5.3 Ethics……………………………………………………………………. 38 6. Analysis and discussion………………………………………………………….. 39 6.1 Connectivity across platforms and networks…………………………. 43 6.1.1 Platform, user agency and content…………………………………... 45 6.2 Contacts for collaboration: social affordances………………………... 51 6.2.1 Invisible colleges……………………………………………....... 53 6.2.2 Further collaboration………………………………………….. 54 6.2.3 Strategic uses…………………………………………………… 55 6.3 Availability………………………………………………………………. 57 6.4 Scalability………………………………………………………………... 58 6.5 Visibility…………………………………………………………………. 59 6.6 Multimediality…………………………………………………………... 62 6.7 Barriers to Social Networking Sites use………………………………. 64 6.8 Hierarchy and prospective of Social Networking Sites (SNSs) in the 66 academic culture…………………………………………………………… 7. Conclusions………………………………………………………………………. 69 8. References………………………………………………………………………… 71 9. Annex 9.1 Interview Guide……………………………………………………….… 77 9.2 List of codes and categories for data analysis………………………… 78 3 LISTS OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figures Figure 1: Codes for data analysis in Dedoose…………………………………….. 34 Figure 2: Categories for data analysis in Dedoose……………………………….. 35 Figure 3: Cloud of codes and categories for data analysis in Dedoose………….. 36 Figure 4: Facebook groups about indigenous peoples from the Amazonia…….. 47 Figure 5: Facebook groups about scholarly communication……………………. 48 Figure 6: Hashtags for conferences……………………………………………….. 50 Figure 7: Different relations between social affordances………………………... 52 Figure 8: Number of People Following and Followers of the same early career 53 researcher…………………………………………………………………………… Figure 9: Number of views of full text papers and non-full text papers……….. 60 Figure 10: Videos collection in YouTube Platform……………………………… 63 Tables Table 1: Interviewees information………………………………………………… 31 Table 2: Interviewees’ social media accounts…………………………………….. 33 Table 3: Affordances perceived by each platform……………………………….. 42 4 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Uppsala University for the scholarship that allowed me to pursue studies at the university. I’m also thankful to my advisor, Cecilia Strand for her comments and time throughout this process and Therese H. Monstad for her final comments in the examination. I’m especially grateful to Renata Aquino, Iara Vidal and Julio Santillan for providing initial contacts to start the snowballing process of this work and also I’m very thankful to all the interviewed people in this study. Finally, I would like to thank Lars Bjørnshauge and all colleagues from the DOAJ, for their support. To the memory of my grandmother, Mercedes Marquez Small, who raised me and lead by example. 5 1. INTRODUCTION Social Networking Sites offer tools for communication, collaboration and diffusion of research outputs. Many scholars are taking advantage of these sites with the purpose of science communication to network and communicate their findings. This study contributes by documenting the practices early career researchers from the social sciences have in a vast country from the global south, Brazil. These practices relate to other researchers -peers- and by doing so constructing an online identity but also to the public. The institutional system and their incentives of the country intertwine with the early career social sciences researchers' practices, in other words, it is a multifactorial phenomenon. Like many other individuals around the world, academics and researchers build their online identities through personal branding (Duffy & Pooley, 2017). However, this promotional and networking labour also demands time and energy. Besides the fact that the usage of social media is blurring the limits of what constitutes the public and the private life of the individual and making this relationship even more complicated. At the very same time, the negotiation for setting up boundaries between public and private life can be complicated "particularly when someone is motivated to publicise something that is seemingly private or when technology complicates people's ability to control access and visibility" (Boyd, 2010, p. 52). Another point related to this subject is that in the latter years, academia has entered into a series of changes at a global scale. For instance, Veletsianos (2016) argues that due to the technological advancement, a parallel system to educational institutions has appeared online. Some other people even claim that universities as institutions will eventually disappear in a not so distant future (Roberts, 2017). Science communication, and especially public science communication -as divulgation of science- is really important for researchers in public universities for making a case about their work still being relevant to society and for getting access to taxpayers’ money. This issue is also increasingly relevant for people working in the –soft sciences- humanities and social sciences fields. 6 For this research, Brazil was chosen as this country has more research outputs and also more investment in Research and Development (R&D) in the Latin American region (Van Noorden, 2014). Therefore, more researchers work in universities and research institutes within this country. The recent cuts in funding for education and research in this country (Modzeleski, Tenente & Fajardo, 2017) -and many others in the region- make the case