Many people are still trying to work out exactly what twitter is good for [1] but with more than 100 million users worldwide making around 50 million tweets per day, the website is clearly popular with those who like to communicate via short “sound bites” of 140 characters or less.
Communication is an important part of what Universities are all about, so how many UK universities are on twitter? Knowing this could help us assess the use of the latest web technology in research where adoption has been rather limited so far, especially in Science [2]. Rather than survey all the @UniversitiesUK, for a quick overview, let’s pick the twenty Russell Group Universities. According to their website, the Russell Group:
“represents the 20 leading UK universities which are committed to maintaining the very best research, an outstanding teaching and learning experience and unrivalled links with business and the public sector.”
So they are exactly the kind of places you would expect to be embracing and experimenting with new technology. The table below shows which of these institutions are on twitter:
There are plenty of important UK universities (@1994group, @UniAlliance, @million_plus etc) excluded from this quick-and-dirty survey but it gives us an idea of what is going on. As of May 2010, 16 out of 20 Russell Group Universities are on twitter – perhaps this is another reason to love Higher Education because it is full of twittering twits?
But the last words on the United Kingdom of Twitter should go to the @number10gov Prime Minister David Cameron who has enlightening views on twitter including this quote below:
“We complain about the sound bite culture [3] but if you think about it and go back in history sound bites have always been used. Do to others as you would be done by, that is a fantastic sound bite … If you can’t convey what you’re trying to convey in a few short sentences you’ve got a problem and you have a particular problem in the media age. You have to work at communicating something complicated in a simple way or you’re not going to take people with you.”
References
- Haewoon Kwak, Changhyun Lee, Hosung Park, & Sue Moon (2010). What is Twitter, a social network or a news media? WWW ’10: Proceedings of the 19th international conference on World Wide Web, New York, NY, USA, 591-600 DOI: 10.1145/1772690.1772751
- Amy Maxmen (2010). Science Networking Gets Serious Cell, 141 (3), 387-389 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2010.04.019
- David Slayden and Rita Kirk Whillock (1998). Soundbite Culture: The Death of Discourse in a Wired World. Sage Publications, Inc. ISBN:0761908722
* These Universities had no central account that I could find in May 2010 but some have departmental accounts like @kingsbiomed, @kingsmedicine, @lsepublicevents, @lse_recruitment, @mcrmuseum and @manunicareers etc which are not counted here because they don’t represent the whole University in question. The University of Manchester has an account @UoMRSSFeed but it isn’t official and hasn’t been updated recently. Dear beloved Alma mater, sort it out!
[Creative commons licensed picture of Twitter icon for a fluid app via Miha Filej.]
This years Reith Lectures by Martin Rees are being broadcast on BBC Radio 4 during June. An important theme in the lectures this year is scientists relationship with society. Rees argues that science is part of our culture, crucial for dealing with pressing international issues like population growth, food security and energy development. He also argues that science is not just for scientists, everyone has have a feel for it, not just the specialists. Here is the blurb from the first lecture: “Science and the Citizen”…
O'Really? 