Everyone loves social media. While there are mainstream sites with many users, many other sites cater to niche groups in the American culture. Individual sites currently cater to teenagers, university students, the LGBT community, and other demographics. Additionally, some social media sites cater to specific hobbies, such as knitting, book reading, music listening, athletics and Christian interests. Only recently has their been a professional social media scene, particularly relating to science. No wonder most people spend a fifth of their time online with social media.
Social media has potentially broad applications for science and engineering. Scientific current events, careers in science, scientific research articles, and science answers are all features of professional science networks. Social media today allows users to share links, files, scientific current events, photos, and other media.
Scientific current events benefit from real time reporting and analysis. Until recently, most scientific current events only were known through the mainstream media. Despite the best efforts of press release writers, recent science news gets botched in the media, which not always use the scientific method.
Social media for scientists would allow them to apply real time commentary and analysis on science events from the entire scientific community. No longer would one professor or dominate scientific current events, and the media report scientific current events inaccurately. Instead, scientists could interpret the meaning themselves. Via other social media platforms, scientific current events would seep into the general public.
Engineering would also benefit. As they creatively use scientific principles to develop systems and products for everyday life, engineering professionals need the ability to share ideas. Now, there is a social network for it as well.
As niche social media grows, scientists and engineers can take advantage of it. By sharing ideas and resources, scientists and engineers can come up with better solutions, comment on scientific current events, and regain their community stature.
