• Question: What is your opinion on social media?

    Asked by MirandaSWAGISHSings to Alan, Becky, Jo, Sankar, Sarah on 11 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Jo Sadler

      Jo Sadler answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      I think social media is a very useful tool for certain things. For example, it allows scientists to quickly share ideas and comments and news with the fellow researchers, but also the rest of the world. It’s also very useful for keeping in touch with people, both professionally and socially.

      However, I think we all need to be wary of it and use it with caution. Employers have been known to check people’s facebook profiles when making job offers so important to keep an eye on what people can see! I personally think it’s also important to keep a healthy balance between the real world and the virtual world on social media – if you’re not careful you can end up spending all your time on social media websites and not actually interact with the real world, which is a shame as I think the real world is much more interesting!

    • Photo: Alan McCue

      Alan McCue answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      I really like social media although I tend to keep science and social media apart. I.e., social media is for my social life.

    • Photo: Sarah Kirk

      Sarah Kirk answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      I think it’s pretty cool, and it has allowed me to stay in contact with my friends who live in different countries around the world 🙂

      Like with all media, it can be used to put across ideas and personal opinions, so when using it you have to be media savvy and be critical of stuff, rather than just believing and accepting everything you read on social media.

    • Photo: Becky Gregory

      Becky Gregory answered on 12 Mar 2015:

      Social media has it’s good and bad points. I think it is a good way to interact, and allows us to keep up to date with current issues and events. It also allows us to keep in contact with people from different countries or friends you don’t see very often. However, there are a lot of people in the world that use social media, and it can become overwhelming and potentially dangerous.
      From a science point of view, it is good to be able to spread the word about science and your research, as long as you know that people you know you might be competing with in your field aren’t going to see important information!

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