Social Media

A trove of billions of tweets will be a research boon and an ethical dilemma

Shortly after my Symbiartic co-blogger Kalliopi has run a workshop about social media for nature & science artists at the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators annual conference in July, I will be speaking about social media for medical illustrators and communicators at the Association of Medical Illustrators annual conference at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, [...]

Let's pretend you and I meet at a `Spring is finally here!' potluck in the park. You: Hi! Me: Hi! After exchanging niceties about your horrible subway ride (mine wasn’t so bad), you mention you work in (fill in the blank), and we chat about how crazy (fill in the blank) has become.

In 1995, Ivan Goldberg, a New York psychiatrist, published one of the first diagnostic tests for Internet Addiction Disorder. The criteria appeared on psycom.net, a psychiatry bulletin board, and began with an air of earnest authenticity: "A maladaptive pattern of Internet use, leading to clinically significant impairment or distress as manifested by three (or more) [...]

Sometimes the Luddites have a point

Those who would condemn big data ought to try making something

The growing popularity of online dating The dating scene has been changing over the last decade. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, approximately 6% of Internet users who are in a marriage or other committed relationship met online, compared to 3% who reported this in 2005.

I wasn't an early adopter of Facebook. I couldn't possibly have been less interested, but a friend asked that I join so we could keep in touch, so I obliged.

After celebrating 7 years of blogging on The Flying Trilobite, I’m going to get all old guard and pompous and established and drop some wisdom about best practices for science artists online.

This is Part 2 in a guide to social media for groups, clubs and organizations committed to members who work in various disciplines of science art.

Chain letters hit the right chord of shock, or trigger the right degree of anxiety, which prompts the reader to share the stories or information they contain. To this end, chain letters are actually really well suited to social media because so little effort on the part of the reader is required to pass them on. And the transparency offered by sharing or liking adds a degree of authenticity that is necessary to their survival.

  Guide to Social Media for SciArt Groups – Part 1 Introduction The past several years I have participated in forum discussions, Twitter chats, moderated sessions and presentations for a number of groups at the art+science boundary.