The Use of Social Media to Foster Trust, Mentorship, and Collaboration in Scientific Organizations

Abstract

Many domains are well known for their resistance to social media. Currently, there is a dearth of literature that explores social media use in these contexts. This study seeks to help address this gap by evaluating the use of social media within a scientific organization (anonymized as SciCity) that has a strong virtual presence and quarterly face--to--face meet--ups. We evaluated SciCity's use of social media to foster trust, collaboration, and mentorship. We found that the prominent social media platform Twitter fosters trust amongst organizational members and plays a role in creating and maintaining lightweight collaborative relationships. Additionally, Twitter--based relationships often act as precursors to collaborations that occur face--to--face. However, Twitter, by itself was not found to be successful in promoting formal collaborations. Though the medium did facilitate sporadic mentoring, supplementary non--social media--based communication was needed to form mentorship relationships. Twitter was also found to serve as a 'social lubricant' (Leonardi and Meyer 2014) making contact easier and faster, thereby helping to foster a scientific social network. Though minor in its role in specifically fostering scientific collaboration, the use of social media by SciCity indicates a shift towards acceptable uses of social media for scientific organizations that have traditionally been hesitant to use social media. INTRODUCTIONNot only has the Internet made data management easier, but it has also allowed scientists in geographically displaced areas to rapidly share their results (Olson, Zimmerman and Bos 2008).However, while the internet has increased the ease with which scientists communicate and share information, some argue that the internet has not fundamentally changed models of scientific knowledge production (Glaser 2003). Rather, advances such as online journal publication have just made it easier for scientists to disseminate research to a wider, global audience (Glaser 2003).Computer--mediated--communication (CMC) has also made it possible for scientists to maintain virtual workbenches and share observational/experimental data with a wide audience (Glaser 2003). However, This is a pre--publication version. The definitive version is available in: Bulletin of Science Technology Society 2014 vol. 34 no. 5--6 170--182 This article seeks to address this gap through a qualitative study of a life sciences virtual organization whose members combine social media based communication with regular face--to--face events in New York City followed by a social event. The organization, anonymized as SciCity, SciCity's encourages knowledge sharing, collaboration, and scientific innovation. SciCity is unique in in its strong offline and online organizational structures. Much of its online interactions take place on the social media platform Twitter. Because tweets can be either directed or undirected, Twitter has the unique duality of being both collective and personal. In its collective form, it creates a lang...

Institutional Predictors of the Adoption of Employee Social Media Policies

“…They become more satisfied with their jobs when they use these technologies in the workplace (Charoensukmongkol, 2014), and they can act as brand ambassadors on social media to convey corporate culture and attract new talent (Laick & Dean, 2011). Social media can also foster collaboration and trust among the members of an organization (Murthy, Hastings, & Mawrie, 2014). On the other hand, however, social media use by employees can give rise to privacy and reputation issues (Cain, 2011;Protiviti, 2013Protiviti, , 2014, and lead to legal ramifications and workplace disputes (Hidy & Mcdonald, 2013) as well as stress and information overload (Bucher, Fieseler, & Suphan, 2013).…”