Science, Technology and Social Media

Social media as a powerful tool for anyone skilled enough to utilize properly. In the field of science and technology this fact is proven true many times. Social media has: helped technology firms secure funding, proliferate a love of science and technology in South Africa and has nailed home exactly how many people depend on it to accomplish important tasks.


Money, Social Media and "The Firm"
There have been many instances of people on Twitter making comments with many negative repercussions. Notable examples are: Rob Ford's niece, Krista Ford receiving a lot of flak for her comments about what women wear and CNN's Middle East Editor Octavia Nasr getting fired for tweeting that she was "sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah... one of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot"



This being said, a technology firm in Birmingham whose services help clients manage employee's activities on Facebook, such as swearing has secured a venture capital investment. Crowd Technologies, a UK based firm has received the financial backing for its social media risk management software CrowdControlHQ. The software assists organizations in protecting their brand and managing social media outlets.


With social networks becoming an increasingly important to all facets of the global community, especially that of business, software such as CrowdControlHQ is vital. Employee's using social media carry an inherent risk to a company. Therefore the potential of products such as CrowdControlHQ created by enterprising technology firms that manage these risks will become increasingly important.

(photo credit shuttershock.com)


U.S. Technology University bans students from social media
People all over the world use social media. Many of them use social media to connect and keep in touch with distant relatives, friends and colleagues. Because of this, the Harrisburg University of Science and Technology conducted a social experiment - banning access to social media sites.

Why? According to the school, "to get students, staff and faculty to think about social media when they are not available."

Additionally, according to a study by Netherlands psychologist Paul A. Kirschnera, Facebook can lower a student's grades by 20%. Another study, also cited in the article,  found that students who used Facebook while trying to study had an average GPA of 3.06, whereas those who did not had a GPA of 3.82.

This work, along with numerous others,  reinforces the fact that multitasking is bad. According to Kirschnera, "despite many people thinking that constant tasking-switching allows them to get more down in less time, in reality it extends the amount of time needed to carry out tasks and leads to more mistakes."

(photo credit: me on microsoft paint)


National Science Week and Social Media
The South African Department of Science and Technology's National Science Week, has embraced numerous social media platforms to propagate its science awareness objectives. The organization used the Twitter handle "@ScienceWeekSA", the hashtag "#NSW11" and a Facebook page "National Science Week - South Africa" to establish their presence to South Africa's almost four-million Facebook users and almost one-million Twitter users.

According to the article, social media has provided a "different, yet compatible kind of interaction between the organisers and supports of National Science week." Social media, particularly Twitter, allows people to get in contact with others they would normally never have met.

Since 2000, National Science Week has encouraged over 500, 000 students to learn science, engineering and technology. With almost five-million social media users, by establishing a presence on the Internet, the South African Department of Science and Technology has tapped into a massive potential market.