Graduated AF: Science Twitter

One of the most consistent pieces of advice I have for people in academia at all levels is to check out all the great content and conversations happening on #ScienceTwitter. Over the years Rachel and I have used Twitter to meet other scientists, find job postings and other opportunities, share our STS blog posts, and enjoy many, many videos of kitties, babies, and puppies. 

Starting out is pretty straight forward: create an account, choose a handle, set up your bio. What comes next can be a bit more intimidating. We’ve assembled some of our favorite tips and tricks for getting started and included some examples in the form of actual tweets! Keep an eye out for some useful twitter vocabulary sprinkled throughout this post. 

TIP: Introduce yourself. Whether you have yet to tweet or you’ve been around for years and have some recent follows, it’s important to let people know who you are and what you’re about. 

Hi to all my new followers!!! I'm a grad student studying how lizard communities may be affected by stream drying which could lead to the loss of a potential food source (emerging aquatic insects). I tweet about my research, grad school, and social justice. pic.twitter.com/ROLtJotbqB

— Earyn McGee, MSc🦎🦎🦎 (@Afro_Herper) May 1, 2018

TIP: Find advice already available. There is lots of great advice in the two threads below. A thread is a connected sequence of tweets. You can see responses to the original tweet or responses to the responses. On these tweet there are over 100 responses each, full of great advice. These tweets are also using some useful hashtags to label and connect similar types of tweets. If you click the hashtag link you will be able to see all tweets that have used that tag, organizable by top vs recent tweets. 

SCIENTISTS: Why are you on Twitter? What do you get from it? What advice would you give peers who are new to the platform? Pls RT & reply, your thoughts will inform social media training for our researchers! #scicomm #stem

— UC San Francisco (@UCSF) October 16, 2018

Hey Science Twitter, what do you wish you knew back when you started tweeting? (leading a workshop in a few weeks & trying to go beyond the basics with this one. ie how to thread, best ways to network, use hashtags, hootsuite, analytics, etc) #scitwitter please R/T!

— Dr. Kate Bradford (@KateBradfordSci) October 30, 2018

TIP: Start following some wonderful folks! This thread is a great starting place. One of the nice things about Twitter is you can really curate your feed to reflect all of your interests! Twitter will also recommend accounts to follow. Starting with popular accounts is great, but following local folks or folks who work on very similar themes to yourself will help your networking efforts. 

People who do #scicomm on Twitter excellently who you should all follow:@SarahMackAttack @ConnectedWaters @HyenaProject @WindleBeth @Blackmudpuppy @PlethodoNick @TetZoo @RosemaryMosco @AlongsideWild @WhySharksMatter @biologistimo @_glitterworm @ColinJCarlson
(1/n)

— Dani Rabaiotti (@DaniRabaiotti) December 1, 2018

TIP: Don’t be afraid to brag on yourself. Did you get a paper published or even just a draft written? Celebrate all of the big and small milestones in your work and get some delightful feedback from others in this online community. In the same vein, be sure to support others with a retweet or like. A retweet via clicking the two-arrow box (not shown on embedded tweets below) will add someone else’s tweet to your timeline. A like is a nice little huzzah for someone’s tweet that is done with a click on the heart icon. 

It’s come to my attention that it’s hell yeah Friday. I will now be disbursing the hell yeahs if you want one for something you’re proud of this week. Please none of that “I pet a dog”. Are you proud of this? The dog will get a hell yeah and you will not

— Mr. Data (@ColinJCarlson) November 17, 2018

TIP: Don’t be afraid to talk about your setbacks and failures! This is a tough one, but I have so much appreciation for people who can talk about their frustrations openly and it’s helped me work through my own as well. 

current status:

"REJECTION REJECTION..REJECTION"

feeling glad i can make myself laugh over my second desk reject in a weeks time pic.twitter.com/gcw4vyamjF

— Auriel Fournier (@RallidaeRule) November 21, 2018

TIP: Ask for advice! Work smarter, not harder.  Utilize the Twitter hivemind. 

Any recommendation on good online guides for beginners in #Bayesian inference in #ecology? Which are the best #rstats #packages? I'd like to compare Frequentist and Bayesian inferences for count and percentage data from coral reefs, thanks! #postdoclife #stats #datascience

— MonteroSerra (@IMonteroSerra) November 21, 2018

TIP: Be on the look out for collaboration opportunities. For Dani Rabaiotti (below), what start out as a humorous inquiry about snake farts blossomed into a humongous science communication opportunity leading to two books! Twitter can also be great for finding people to collaborate on academic papers. 

@AlongsideWild a family member asked me the other day if snakes fart and i did not know the answer to their question. So do they? 🐍🔊

— Dani Rabaiotti (@DaniRabaiotti) January 8, 2017

So, me and @PlethodoNick have 3 exciting bits of news!
1. We are on @scifri talking about #DoesItFart tonight!!!!
2. #DoesItFart is being made into TV show in Canada
3. We are currently working on book number two – True or Poo, also illustrated by @Blackmudpuppy!!!!!

— Dani Rabaiotti (@DaniRabaiotti) April 6, 2018

TIP: Grad student solidarity. Friends and family are valuable sources of support, but commiserating with others that have been down this path as well can be helpful and hilarious. 

#Expectations

Me, 1st-yr #PhD: I will wake up early, eat healthy, walk 25 km/wk, swim 3 times/wk, control my #chocolate & #caffeine consumption, go to the lab, publish, & I WILL SAVE THE WORLD. 🦸‍♀️

Me, 3rd-yr PhD: I will wake up. I will put on pants. All else optional.#PhDlife

— Daphne S. Ling 🇨🇦 🏳️‍🌈🧠🧒💊 (@daph_ling) November 21, 2018

TIP: Protect your emotional and mental wellness. Scrolling through your Twitter feed isn’t always going to be the most uplifting way to spend your time. Remember that folks aren’t sharing every aspect of their lives online.  Additionally, Twitter can be a great way to get access to communities of support for emotional and mental health struggles.   

It’s that time again when we are overjoyed with the holiday spirit or overwhelmed by the emotional demands that come along with the holiday season.

Do you have any tips for how to navigate the holidays? Tell us! #phdchat #selfcare https://t.co/R8qAE0gUey pic.twitter.com/YCzjTtTpZE

— The PhDepression (@Ph_D_epression) November 18, 2018

TIP: Keep an eye out for amazing job/internship opportunities! I’ve found several amazing opportunities through postings on Twitter, including a workshop at NEON! 

Just to remind folks that are interested in #BayesianStatistics and #AnimalMovement modelling that there is a 3-year post-doc position available at @DukeU with the legendary Alan Gelfand and future legend Rob Schick, linked with us at CREEM. https://t.co/UZiKd2HZxQ

— Len Thomas (@len_thom) November 15, 2018

Wrapping up the #ExploreNEON workshop taught by @dr_lunch @MeganAHJones to 10 amazing #earlycareer #scientists – @AlwaysScientist @SMBittner @court_currier @ernlarson @qlarachin @zoeywerbin + Wynne Moss & Alex Wright. Reply or retweet w' your top takeaway guys! pic.twitter.com/eWf9LFhCnu

— NEON (@NEON_sci) November 9, 2018

TIP: Conference hashtags are possibly the best way to connect with others in your field! When I went to #ISEC2018 this past summer I was able to…. Check out some of these great #rstats visualizations from this conference’s tweets. You might even peek a familiar Twitter handle in the top ten tweeters chart! (Editor’s Note: I was at a conference on Sunday and had an in person, “Hey, we know each other from Twitter!” interaction because we were both tweeting from the conference.)

Following @JamesGrecian's tracks (who helped me to get the tweets), I did some analyses of the #isec2018 tweets largely inspired (if not copy and pasted) by previous analyses from @brenborbon, @_ColinFay and @bryangoodrich – Data & #rstats codes https://t.co/ZCv4DAeS5S pic.twitter.com/YmU2QBsyp2

— Olivier Gimenez 💤 (@oaggimenez) July 9, 2018

TIP: Keep exploring those hashtags! Find your people and join the conversations. 

Let's talk hashtags! These can be incredible resources to find fellow marginalized folks in #STEM. 👇#ScientistsWhoSelfie#ActualLivingScientist#WomeninSTEM#WomenInScience#WomenInMedicine#WomeninTech#WOCinSTEM#MarginSci#LGBTSTEM#LGBTscience#queerSTEM#InclusiveSTEM pic.twitter.com/69tmj1ffUH

— The STEM Squad (@theSTEMsquad) November 19, 2018

Hopefully by now you’re well on your way to navigating the Twitterverse! We’ll be tweeting this week on our STS and personal twitters and would love to hear from y’all. We don’t want to miss any of your tweets, especially if they are inspired by this post! Please tag us or use the hashtag #NewToSTEMTwitter to share with others.