Scientific Twitter: The flow of Paleontological Communication Across a Topic Network

The field of paleontology, which is based principally on observations of the natural world, includes an active community that is engaged across multiple social media platforms, consisting of museums, academic researchers, amateur fossil collectors, paleontological artists, and commercial fossil dealers. As such, it represents an ideal environment for examining the people, interactions, and flow of scientific information. Using interactions involving the four most popular Twitter hashtags for paleontology, this embedded mixed methods study defined the members of this social world and investigated how they influenced and controlled the flow of information, as well as how their expression of scientific practice was related to their identity. Results provide further evidence for the diversity of people and practice involved in this domain of science and indicate that the magnitude and breadth of the public’s impact may be larger than previously projected. Certain types of messages were shown to be effective for different segments of the community, but news posts, essentially media outlet stories, were ineffective for generating any form of engagement. This study adds to our understanding of the important scientific contribution being made by members of the public as they interact with professional scientists and educators as peers in an open social media platform that supports a diverse and active community

Social Media Interaction as Informal Science Learning: a Comparison of Message Design in Two Niches

Social media provides science learners opportunities to interact with content-specific messages. However, most science-specific social media content is designed to disseminate information instead of encouraging dialog. In this novel, ex post facto exploratory study of a science social media community, we sought to understand the relationships among community member interaction, design elements of messages, and post type on two digital niches (i.e., Facebook and Twitter). Framed by the theory of symbolic interactionism, we conducted a content analysis of 1370 messages that were systematically created by an informal science learning project and found that usage frequency of messaging elements varied by niche; interaction within each niche differed, varying by messaging element; and differential interaction was found to be associated with post types within Facebook only. This study suggests a pathway for developing and examining social media as an educational component of informal science learning

Profiles in Practice: Stories of Paleontology Within an Online, Scientific Community

The Community of Practice framework has been used theoretically and empirically to describe the diverse ways people learn from one another through social interaction in a variety of specific contexts. To date, most research of this genre has favored investigating the community and domain constructs of the theory over the authentic practice construct. Those interested in recognizing and supporting science learning in non-school contexts across a lifespan are then limited in efforts to delineate how communities engage in domain-specific practice. This is especially relevant in the study of online environments which afford more democratic forms of participation. With the goal of adding to both theoretical and practical knowledge, this study explored practices that members enacted on a community-based website specific to the domain of paleontology. We used a multiple case study approach to provide comparative and contrasting narratives concerning the development of practice within an online, scientific community. Methods consisted of downloading data from the website, including members’ self-described attributes within member profiles, followed by their contributions to three of the website’s features: the forums, activity feed, and messages. An analytical framework which typified members based on their self-described attributes was applied, then members’ contributions were coded using an empirically based Communities of Practice framework. For one of the first times, we identified practice within an online, scientific community through comparing the contributions of three community members, finding that practice consisted of providing social support to other community members and having domain-based conversations

Scientific Twitter: The flow of paleontological communication across a topic network.

The field of paleontology, which is based principally on observations of the natural world, includes an active community that is engaged across multiple social media platforms, consisting of museums, academic researchers, amateur fossil collectors, paleontological artists, and commercial fossil dealers. As such, it represents an ideal environment for examining the people, interactions, and flow of scientific information. Using interactions involving the four most popular Twitter hashtags for paleontology, this embedded mixed methods study defined the members of this social world and investigated how they influenced and controlled the flow of information, as well as how their expression of scientific practice was related to their identity. Results provide further evidence for the diversity of people and practice involved in this domain of science and indicate that the magnitude and breadth of the public's impact may be larger than previously projected. Certain types of messages were shown to be effective for different segments of the community, but news posts, essentially media outlet stories, were ineffective for generating any form of engagement. This study adds to our understanding of the important scientific contribution being made by members of the public as they interact with professional scientists and educators as peers in an open social media platform that supports a diverse and active community

A New Tool for Characterizing Paleontological Citizen Scientists in Online Social Spaces

Characterizing the people who participate in and contribute to face-to-face and digital paleontological practices furthers our understanding of citizen science as an activity with outcomes for science and society. The Paleontological Identity Taxonomy, a new analytical tool, allowed for characterizing members of three online social spaces (two Twitter networks and an online social website). The results indicate that the majority of participants were interested in paleontology, but not credentialed. We use these results to discuss the design of effective scientific learning and communication in online social spaces, including how to recognize and support the diversity of community members’ practice-based expertise

Digging into the PIT: A New Tool for Characterizing the Social Paleontological Community

The purpose of this study is to share the development of a new analytical tool, the Paleontological Identity Taxonomy (PIT), for characterizing members of a science community of practice that is sensitive to and descriptive of individual differences, but also inclusive of a broad range of people who identify with the domain, from those that are strictly interest-based to those with professional credentials. Via the use of embedded mixed methods, including aggregating social network data and iterative coding sessions, we present the PIT as a valid and reliable tool which can be used to characterize members of digital social spaces, an issue previously viewed as a limitation for use of social network analysis in social science research. We conclude with remarks concerning the design of effective scientific learning and communication for social media, including how to recognize and support the diversity of community members’ expertise

Structuring Social Paleontology: A Description of Twitter Hashtags and Users

On Twitter, individuals can find and contribute knowledge to the scientific community, regardless of status (i.e. professional, amateur, or other). The paleontological community, consisting of museums and their representatives, academic researchers, amateur fossil collectors, paleontological artists and commercial fossil retailers, use Twitter and seemingly benefit from the collaborative nature of the platform. Such collaboration would represent an accessible and transparent aid for accelerating the overall advancement of paleontology. However, to date, scant research has documented the structure of the paleontological social network on Twitter or explored how it might impact the flow of information and eventual discovery. This study seeks to provide a robust description of the ways in which paleontology-specific information flows through the social network on Twitter. Using an open-source network analysis software program, NodeXL, the social network for the top four paleontology-related hashtags was sampled (n = 7,297 connections), analyzed and visualized. Members in the social network (n = 3,386) were further classified based upon a taxonomy for how they described themselves and expressed their status. Results indicate that the network includes a surprisingly diverse variety of members, including the public (63%), scientists (23%), education and outreach entities (12%) and commercial entities (2%). Members of the public were central actors in the flow of paleontological information whereas scientists and science organizations served as key arbiters. The composition, structure and flow of information within this social network has implications for the paleontological community as it seeks to expand access, recognize the contributions of all, and support collaborations that improve the practice of science

“You Can’t Sit With Us”: What Topic Modeling can Reveal about Paleontology on Twitter

The scientific community often relies on social media to connect and converse about topics of interest. To date, scarce research examines how members of various scientific communities use social media and the topics which generate conversations within different social media niches. On Twitter, the paleontological community is made up of a diverse group of participants including scientists from various fields, museums and their representatives, amateur fossil collectors, paleontological artists, and commercial retailers. The participants in this community have varying interests and often use different types of messaging strategies to connect with others. This longitudinal study used social network analysis and text mining to better understand how people participate in paleontology on Twitter. We used Netlytic, a network extraction software application, to pull tweets from the public Twitter search API every 15 minutes over a one-year period (July 2017 – August 2018) for the social network of an NSF-funded initiative, the FOSSIL Project (NSF-DRL 1322725), which focuses on uniting, developing, and growing the paleontology community. Sampling resulted in a corpus of 7,753 connections which were subjected to social network analysis and text mining using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). Participants (n = 1,369) were classified based upon a taxonomy for how they self-identify with paleontology (Lundgren, Crippen, Bex, 2018). Topics that reached diverse members and spanned the entire network included: opportunities to contribute to paleontology regardless of status and contributions by amateurs. One example of a topic in which we saw insular conversations and minimal bridging between diverse members occurred when paleontologists communicated about women in paleontology. Our results illustrate the diversity of the paleontological community, including how certain topics and messaging strategies reach different audiences within a single niche. Topic modeling provides a strategy for describing a network’s content, which can lead to the development of approaches to increase discourse related to science

Designing for Public Participation in Paleontology Through the Development of an App

Regardless of online or physical space, including museum exhibits, social media, fossil digs or web sites, peopleare fascinated by fossils. In this paper, we discuss the initial phase of design for a mobile app that extends the myFOSSILonline space in order to more fully support public participation in scientific research via remote collection of paleontological data and social networking. This initiative, part of the FOSSIL Project in the United States (NSF-DRL1322725), uses social paleontology to bring together amateur and professional paleontologists into a more formal community of practice. The project includes a public-private partnership between researchers at the University of Florida and a private software development firm, Atmosphere Apps. The FOSSIL App will afford documenting, connecting andconversing about a paleontological find with the established community of approximately 1,000 members. Use of the Appis predicted to increase public engagement and broaden participation with fossils and the science of paleontology. We describe a needs assessment based upon a review and evaluation of existing technologies and science specific mobile apps as well as the design framework, which is informed by social paleontology and citizen science