Interactive Stakeholder Communication and Online Science & Research Communities in SEA-EU-NET 2

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and Online Science & Research Communities in SEA-EU-NET 2

D5.3.1 Report on Science/Policy/Society-Initiatives

by the SEA-EU-NET 2 Work Package 5 Team

written from November 2014 to January 2015

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List of Figures

2.1. Twitter Activity of @SEAEUNET from 2010 to 2015 . . . 8

2.2. Retweeted Tweets of @SEAEUNET from 2010 to 2015 . . . 9

2.3. Mentions of @SEAEUNET from 2010 to 2015 . . . 10

4.1. Internet Usage in Southeast Asia . . . 17

5.1. Using @SEAEUNET for SUSTAIN EU-ASEAN . . . 26

5.2. Example Tweet: Interesting EU Research Facts . . . 26

5.3. Example Retweet: Important EU Information . . . 27

5.4. Example Tweets: typical SEA-EU-NET Tweets . . . 28

5.5. Example Tweet: Live Update from a SEA-EU-NET Workshop . . . 29

5.6. Example Reweet: Infographics from Daily Work . . . 30

5.7. Example Reweet: Connecting and Exchanging Information with Stake- holders . . . 31

5.8. Example Tweet: Dissemination of Conference Participation . . . 32

A.1. Favorited Tweets of @SEAEUNET from 2010 to 2015 . . . 35

A.2. Example Live Tweets: Workshop in Progress 1 . . . 36

A.5. Example Tweets: Live Conference Webcasting 1 . . . 39

A.6. Example Tweets: Live Conference Webcasting 2 . . . 40

A.7. Use of SUSTAIN EU-ASEAN Hashtag . . . 41

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3.1. Financial Resources in Person Months for Communication Work Packages 11 3.2. Hashtag use in SEA-EU-NET 2 in November 2014 . . . 13 4.1. Users Active in Social Networks . . . 16

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1. Introduction

This report will look into social media usage in the science sphere in Southeast Asia.

We want to learn how ASEAN science stakeholders use social media, in particular twitter, for promotion and dissemination of their research actitivities and how they connect with the social media using academic world, again in particular twitter.

In chapter 2 on the following page we explain which projects we focus on in this study. The SEA-EU-NET 2 project has a strong linkage with another EU FP7 funded project, SUSTAIN EU-ASEAN, which has a strong thematical focus whilst still being a science networking project and is thus of relevance.

In chapter 2 on the next page we point out the differences between classical dissemination work and the additional social media dissemination work developed in SEA-EU-NET 2, which is more interactive, more up-to-date, but also much less detailed.

In chapter 4 on page 16 we take a deeper look at the situation of social media and social network in the countries of Southeast Asia and especially at how science and research stakeholders are using social media for their communication and networking work. This chapter also gives us an insight at science-policy-society linkages in South- east Asia, featuring analyses of some of the more prominent social media accounts of Southeast Asian science stakeholders in section 4.2 on page 19.

Finally, in chapter 5 on page 23 we go into detail of the SEA-EU-NET 2 social media dissemination strategy with not only laying out our strategy in section 5.1 on page 23 but also giving a short analytical insight in section ??on page ?? and many practical examples in section 5.2 on page 25.

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While the communication strategy in SEA-EU-NET 2 is primarily used for SEA-EU- NET 2 benefits, it of course has linkages to many other projects, be they INCO-Net, BILATs, or ERA-NETs with other world regions or be they more specialised science networking projects focussing on special fields and topics.

Any science communication and dissemination addressing the wider public automatically fishes in other project’s (communication) grounds. This is especially true for social media dissemination, as we will explain in section 3.2 on page 11. Thus it is important to keep in mind other projects in the field for joint communication and information efforts.

2.1. SEA-EU-NET 2

SEA-EU-NET 2 will build upon and leverage strong EU-SEA S&T relationships developed through past support and coordination actions, to deepen engagement and build momentum in S&T cooperation. It broadens the scope of EU-SEA cooperation through stimulating sustainable innovation collaborations.

SEA-EU-NET 2 will focus on three societal challenges: Health, Food security and safety, and Water management, where the greatest opportunities can be leveraged from joint EU-SEA research. SEA-EU-NET 2 will serve as a platform for all stakeholders across governments, funders, practitioners, and the private sector, to ensure a complete and integrated approach to developing sustainable STI collaboration to jointly tackle societal challenges.

The project will have lasting impact on

1. a structured and substantiated policy dialogue between ASEAN and EU, 2. the promotion of the ERA in SEA,

3. the role of EU as major partner in research cooperation and innovation by jointly tackling societal challenges,

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2. Projects in Question

4. the development of new funding schemes in research and academic mobility.

SEA-EU-NET 2 has had a focus on social media and was actively using it from the very start of the project (namely facebook and twitter) but has started much more strategically using social media from autumn 2013 on, focussing first on ResearchGate, a social network targeted especially at academia and then from winter 2013/14 on the focus shifted strongly to twitter (cf. figure 2.1). Twitter activity has been high ever

Figure 2.1.: Twitter Activity of @SEAEUNET from 2010 to 2015

since with the success of the experimental twitter usage during the projects annual conference first held in Bangkok, Thailand in January 2014, where the #stidays hashtag was heavily used. The result of this is more re-tweets, mentions, and favorites as can be seen in figures 2.2 on the following page, 2.3 on page 10, and A.1 on page 35.

This means that the SEA-EU-NET twitter account is getting more attention within the academic community on twitter and the account’s social media activities have a much higher impact.

2.2. SUSTAIN EU-ASEAN

This coordinating action will focus on climate action, resource efficiency and raw materials issues and will aim to enhance collaboration between researchers in the EU and

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Figure 2.2.: Retweeted Tweets of @SEAEUNET from 2010 to 2015

the ASEAN region. Addressing these issues in a coherent way is vital for sustainable development that leads to economic prosperity, social cohesion and environmental in- tegrity. Both regions have developed innovative ideas to reduce greenhouse gas emis- sions, to adapt to climate change, improve resource efficiency and manage raw materials. SUSTAIN EU-ASEAN will draw primarily on EU funded projects focusing on these issues from various programmes, such as the FP7, SWITCH-Asia, International cooperation and others and will also feed in experiences from the ASEAN region and bilateral projects into the mutual learning process. The approach taken by project is driven primarily by the assumption that a wealth of knowledge has been generated by EU-funded projects and other initiatives relevant for the ASEAN region. However, the exploitation and uptake of these research results and potential joint innovations can still be improved and so can the collaboration between researchers from the EU and the ASEAN region.

As for the SEA-EU-NET 2 and the SUSTAIN EU-ASEAN project the partners respon- sible for dissemination and communication tasks are largely the same, the decision was to not open an own twitter account for the latter but rather to use a #SustainEuAsean hashtag within the SEA-EU-NET 2 account. The idea behind this is that resources are used more efficient and that both project’s dissemination work benefit from each other: while the SUSTAIN EU-ASEAN project can use the established SEA-EU-NET 2 account it generates additional traffic and activities in that channel making it more

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2. Projects in Question

Figure 2.3.: Mentions of @SEAEUNET from 2010 to 2015

visible. Examples for this can be seen in figures 5.1 on page 26, A.7 on page 41, and A.2 on page 36.

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3.1. Push-Type Dissemination

The standard means of science communication are development of websites and platforms for projects digital newsletters printed dissemination material, e. g. project brochures and leaflets, posters, fact sheets, books; not only about the project in general but also for special deliverables, reports etc. if applicable In science and research networking projects with ZSI participation and communication work package lead the typical financial resources are illustrated by the following examples:

PMs total PMs for

communication relative figures

SEA-EU-NET 2 427 54 12.6 %

SUSTAIN 115.5 4 3.5 %

Table 3.1.: Financial Resources in Person Months for Communication Work Packages It has to be noted that these are only the budgeted figures for traditional dissemination work. Especially social media dissemination work can be done easily and quick, thus neither requiring extra budget nor any additional human resources. In fact, social media dissemination work is most authentic when done by the involved researchers and scientists themselves, instead of a dissemination task group. However, social media dissemination work is just an addition to traditional dissemination and public relations work and cannot and will never replace it.

3.2. Social Media Dissemination

With the growing importance of social media the focus of science communication is shifting towards a more interactive way of information dissemination. From traditional push-type dissemination via websites, newsletters, and printed dissemination materials using social media is not only a change in technology but also a change in

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3. Types of Communication

content: social media dissemination is more likely to be successful when it is interactive, engages in discussions, and inspires user/followers to share content to their respective networks. This change in technology and content also leads to a change in roles, when science journalists and scientists themselves share dissemination tasks to some degree in order to improve collaboratively the quality of science communication [cf. Lee, 2014].

3.2.1. Social Media Channels

Given the diversity of social media channels available focussing on the right channels is not easy. A recent study conducted by Nature Magazine[Van Noorden, 2014] shows the following usage patterns:

• ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Mendeley are large platforms for academia, however most users yet use it for “in case contacted” activities only, such as main- taining profiles and posting content related to work every now and then

• ResearchGate is the most used social network in academia, slowly but steadily growing both its users and its features, which makes it ever more interesting for research purposes; at this point it is likely ResearchGate evolves into the academia’s standard social network (whether this will happen remains to be seen)

• LinkedIn and facebook are known to and used by researchers, however they do not offer special science features and are thus seen as “for private use only;” this is especially with facebook the case, a network where researchers are flooded with tons of non-science information

• twitter turns out to be the social network not generally used in academia but heavily used for research, discussion, and engagement purposes by those researchers who use it actively; because of its content-driven architecture, the brevity of its content, and the ability to easily reach out to non-academic audiences such as industry, companies, practitioners, and civil society it can be used as a dissemination channel for efficiently reaching out to a wider public 3.2.2. Social Media Technologies

In the endless news streams of social media news posts face a short life. Thus, appropriate posting technology is important to ensure posts show up in the proper news

streams and get attention.

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hashtag absolute relative

#asean 38 17.19%

#sustaineuasean 33 14.93%

#research 26 11.76%

#eu 26 11.76%

#stidays 23 10.41%

#science 19 8.60%

#innovation 18 8.14%

#onehealth 13 5.88%

#sea 13 5.88%

#cooperation 12 5.43%

total 221 100%

Table 3.2.: Hashtag use in SEA-EU-NET 2 in November 2014

Initially made popular by twitter the

#hashtag has become the way to assign content tags, keywords, and categories to posts in order to assign news posts to adequate news streams. A common hashtag makes a post more likely to be shared again. However, posts with hashtags chosen too generally face short life.

For SEA-EU-NET 2 we analyse the usage of hashtags not only by our own posts but also by the respective community/audience. These analyses end up in regularly updated and curated lists of recommended hashtags. Table 3.2 has a list of hashtag used in SEA-EU-NET 2 in November 2014. This and similiar lists are used as a base for recommendations

for 2015 twitter dissemination. The list can be analysed as follows:

#asean & #eu & #sea These hashtages are typical for the SEA-EU-NET 2 project as they represent the two research regions to be connected. Together they had a 34.85% hashtag share in SEA-EU-NET 2 in November 2014.

#research & #science #cooperation The major hashtags for the work done in SEA- EU-NET 2. Together they had a 25.79% hashtag share in SEA-EU-NET 2 in November 2014.

#sustaineuasean This is a project closely related to SEA-EU-NET 2, using this hashtags provides valuable dissemination synergies between the two projects. See also section 2.2 on page 8 for details.

#stidays The annual SEA-EU-NET 2 conference linking the two research regions.

#innovation & #onehealth Some of the major topics SEA-EU-NET 2 is focusing on (besides food, water, and STI policy issues). Together they had a 14.03% hashtag share in SEA-EU-NET 2 in November 2014.

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3. Types of Communication

3.2.3. Social Media Interactivity

Since social media are not traditional media where you push information to an interested audience, twitter accounts which just push information (e. g. automatic updates on new website posts) are not interactive enough to be present in the social media’s community. Interactivity can be achieved through active use of social media, e. g.

following relevant twitter accounts and news streams (e. g. via hashtags), re-tweeting other account’s relevant posts, and mentioning relevant accounts in the project’s post.

To achieve this interactivity experts working in the projects have to dedicate some of their time for social media work. Also they need to be introduced to social media for science communication. At ZSI we are still exploring the manifold ways of doing so.

Currently we are opening access to our social media accounts to all interested experts and preparing a twitter handbook.

3.2.4. Social Media Analysis

Analysis of activities in social media is still far from standardised. This is especially true for analysis perspectives interesting to academia and the science world. A lot of web tools offering social media analysis focus on marketing aspects, outreach, etc., however they hardly offer any more than just mere quantitative analysis of posts, tweets, how many readers these have had (if this data is made available via the social media service providers), number of comments, answers, number of re-tweets, re-posts etc. While this data is generally interesting, the much more telling aspect of social media activity is engagement in discussions, following discourses, re-active posting/blogging/tweeting and other metrics showing whether and how social media is used for interactive dissemination and communication. Here both, the internet and the academic world are still clearly lacking analysis tools.

First moves have been made with e. g. the Science Magazine¹ having published and updated a list of the 100 most influential scientists on twitter [You, 2014], inspired by Neil Hall’s ironic article on scientist’s twitter activity, where here presented the K- Index he made up for twitter vs. traditional publication output analysis [Hall, 2014].

The reactions on the list where manifold and lead to not only the Science Magazine re-publishing the list [Travis, 2014], but also inspired social media debates including a hashtag #womentweetsciencetoo² and a comprehensive list³ under which the twitter

1http://www.sciencemag.org/

2https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=%23WomenTweetScienceToo&src=typd

3https://twitter.com/laurakeeney/lists/women-tweet-science-too/members

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academia discussed shortcomings of the “study” [cf. Brown Jarreau, 2014]. Yet this is only a first effort and attempts have been made to come up with a kind of index to measure a researcher’s publication and twitter efforts [Maynard, 2014].

We expect social media activities in science communication will significantly grow and at some point there will be adequate analysis tools available. For the analysis in this report we chose to have a short automated quantitative summary of the accounts we take a deeper look at and then do manual qualitative analysis. Our main focus is to explore how science stakeholders in Southeast Asia use twitter. The knowledge we gather through our research shall help boost future dissemination and communication activities of the SEA-EU-NET 2 project.

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4. Social Media Usage in Southeast Asia

Social media statistics are almost always about “how many”? How many users, how many logins, how many postings, how many pictures etc. Yet, these statistics are often not reliable and they do not contain much more information than the estimated total number of users. And this often shows, facebook is by far the most populated social network with YouTube and Google+ following and social networks such as twitter, LinkedIn or even specialised acadmic networks far behind [Allton, 2015]. We have collected user numbers for the most popular social networks and the most academia- specific social networks:

facebook YouTube Google+ twitter

active users in millions 1,390 1,000 540 284

LinkedIn Academia.edu ResearchGate

active users in millions 187 17 6

Table 4.1.: Users Active in Social Networks

While these numbers may look interesting and clear at first, they tell nothing about the way, these networks are being used. Do the users contact other users? Do they engage in structured and moderated academic discussions, such as ResearchGate claims its users are doing? Do they just sign up for a profile once in case someone might be looking for them there? Simple quantitative data will tell us nothing about how purposeful a certain social network is for our target group, which are researchers from Southeast Asia and Europe.

Just like anywhere in the world the usage of social networks in Southeast Asia is increasing. While the Asia-Pacific region has been late adapting internet trends, it has already become a region with a very high rate of internet time spent in social networks, as figure 4.1 on the following page shows [Bradford]. Much like in the rest of the world the Southeast Asia region used to be split among several social networks with almost a single national big player per country [Crampton, 2009], however more recent figures show the unification and monopolisation/oligopolisation trend in social

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Source: [Bradford]

Figure 4.1.: Internet Usage in Southeast Asia

media usage, where a handful of big American social network companies take the lead [Do, 2013]. The trend in social media usage in Southeast Asia is not only a high adop- tion rate among individuals but also among communities and governments whereas the NGO/NPO sector is still lagging somewhat behind. Social media also plays an important role as media alternatives for the region, embracing global trends such as citizen journalism opposing especially manipulated mainstream media. These fact were findings in the 3rd ASEAN Media Forum held in Singapore on 16-17 December 2011 [Sekhar, 2012].

While the development of social media and internet usage in Southeast Asia shows the region is nowadays following general global trends, our main assumption as explained in section 3.2.1 on page 12 remains the same: (the academia parts of) twitter is currently perhaps the most interesting social network to analyse, as this is the place where the academic information exchange, networking, and to some degree debating is the most vibrant [Van Noorden, 2014]. Thus in this study we focus on twitter usage among social media users from the science and research world in Southeast Asia.

Section 4.1 on the following page will offer the general findings from our little study, while section 4.2 on page 19 will offer insight into specific twitter accounts from science stakeholders from Southeast Asia. At this point we want to point out a planned detailed analysis on the basis of a large number of data operations of the twitter sci-

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4. Social Media Usage in Southeast Asia

ence and research landscape in Southeast Asia, carried out by SEA-EU-NET 2 experts from Centre of Social Innovation (ZSI). Also in this study we focus on institutional social media accounts. The analysis of personal and institutional social media accounts is very interesting but also demanding more thorough analysis work. This too will be looked at in the upcoming twitter science and research landscape in Southeast Asia study.

Also because of its strong focus on content sorted via hashtags, twitter is the one social network best able to bridge the gaps between different usages. Neither is it a business network, nor is it a private communication network.

4.1. General Findings

In general, the twitter use landscape among institutional accounts in Southeast Asia is very diverse. In our study we have found accounts which are just being (mis-)used for pushing automatically generated news headlines from websites. This is not what we think is the purpose of social media: yet another news feed. Technologies such as RSS or Atom serve this.

Among governmental organisations we have found that ASEAN and United Na- tions institutions tend to heavily retweet each other, meaning that ASEAN organisations retweet other ASEAN sub-organisations and UN organisations retweet other UN organisations. This is also true for the Asian Development Bank.

Country-wise we dare not make analyses statements yet. We have found that accounts from Singapore seem more connected to western academia, especially the US academia. However, twitter use in Singapore still needs to be more deeply analysed.

Malaysia seems to be a country with high twitter usage and well developed twitter community. Not only research institutions and ministries but also many science policy makers and researchers use twitter and mention one another regularly, enabling higher visibility for one another. Also, this is a country using twitter mostly in native language, but not only. From our analysis so far we cannot claim typical usage patterns for any of the other countries. Much of what can be said for Malaysia is true for Indonesia as well. Thailand seems pretty diverse considering twitter usage and in countries such as Viet Nam, Lao PDR, and Cambodia twitter does not seem to be widely used yet.

However, our upcoming study will allow for much more detailed insight into the twitter science and research landspace in Southeast Asia.

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4.2. Analyses of Social Media Accounts of Southeast Asian Science and Research Stakeholders

For the account analysis we looked at data from 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2014.

4.2.1. National University of Singapore

The National University of Singapure tweets at @NUSingapore. In 2014 it had a total of 331 tweets (of which were 11% retweets), which makes an average of 0.91 tweets per day. With a rate of 0.01 user mentions per tweet but 68.88% retweets this account is rather unidirectional and far from interacting with its followers. It is being used mainly for announcements of the university to its followers, most likely the students and other stakeholders. It uses often one of the following hashtags: #nusbecause,

#nus2014, #nusopenday14, #shellideas360, #commonwealthgames, #nus, #singapore,

#ragnflag14. It has a hashtag rate of 0.07 per tweet, which means it will hardly be found by non-followers.

4.2.2. Nanyang Technological University of Singapore

The Nanyang Technological University tweets at @NTUsg. In 2014 it had a total of 409 tweets (of which were 1% retweets), which makes an average of 1.12 tweets per day. With an average number of 0.19 user mentions per tweet but 69.93% retweets this account is somewhat interactive. It is being used mainly for promotion of the university and its research results (e. g. products, spin-offs, student’s work etc.). It uses often one of the following hashtags: #ntusg, #ntufest2014, #convo2014, #pmlee,

#ntuopenhouse, #pmntu, #admissions, #undergrad, #research, #lny. It has a hashtag rate of 1.65 per tweet, which makes it more likely to be found for people following the same hashtag streams.

4.2.3. National Science and Technology Development Agency of Thailand

The National Science and Technology Development Agency of Thailand tweets at

@nstda. In 2014 it had a total of only 10 tweets, 9 of which in January. It has a total of 3,411 tweets since August 2009 but seems to have more or less stopped its twitter activities in Spring 2013 and hardly tweeted since. Thus we take a quick look at overall statistics.

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With an average of 1.59 tweets per day and 30,1% retweets the account was quite active but hardly interactive, as it hardly ever mentioned users in its tweets, it never retweeted another user, it never replied to any user, and used a total of 14 hashtags in its twitter history. The account was most likely used for announcements and perhaps for automatically generated ones only, e. g. fed from news headlines from the website.

The vast majority of tweets is in Thai language.

4.2.4. Asian Institute of Technology

The Asian Institute of Technology tweets at @AITAsia. In 2014 it had a total of 545 tweets (of which were 1% retweets), which makes an average of 1.49 tweets per day.

With an average number of 0.24 user mentions per tweet and 20.37% retweets interaction seems well established and the information exchange with the community well balanced. It is being used for announcements of work results and happenings at the AIT, including e. g. job offerings. It uses often one of the following hashtags:

#ait, #vacancy, #myanmar, #water, #scholarships, #graduation, #thailand, #earthquake,

#scholarship, #sanitation. It has a hashtag rate of 2.26 per tweet, which makes it quite easy to find for interested people.

4.2.5. Clean Air Asia

Clean Air Asia tweets at @cleanairasia. In 2014 it had a total of 451 tweets (of which were 49% retweets), which makes an average of 1.24 tweets per day. With an average of 0.37 user mentions per tweet and 30.16% retweets interaction seems well established and the information exchange with the community well balanced. Users most retweeted include evenly institutions and persons, mostly external people or institutions. Among the institution’s members Robert Early is mostly promoted at

@cleanair_earley. The account is being used for interactive communication on the institution’s activities and research results with the interested scientific community.

It uses often one of the following hashtags: #baq14, #adbtf14, #baq2014, #colombo,

#betterairquality, #greenfreight, #airquality, #energyfuture, #climate2014, #airpollu- tion. With a hashtag rate of 0.39 per tweet it can be found by interested users of twitter.

4.2.6. ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity

ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity tweets at @ASEANBiodiv. In 2014 it had a total of 229 tweets (of which were 19% retweets), which makes an average of 0.63 tweets per day.

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With an average of 0.14 user mentions per tweet and 15.72% retweets interaction seems established. The account is strongly used for pushing news headlines from the organisation’s website, although there are curated interacting tweets as well. It uses often one of the following hashtags: #biodiversity, #nagoyaprotocol, #job, #jobopening, #asean,

#accessbenefitsharing, #happyvalentinesday, #motherearthday, #wonderfulmom, #in- ternationalmotherearthday2014. With a hashtag rate of 0.14 per tweet it can be found by interested user, but this is less likely. The automatic news tweets do not contain any hashtags.

4.2.7. UNEP Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific

UNEP Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific tweets at @UNEPAsiaPacific. In 2014 it had a total of 2,292 tweets (of which were 11% retweets), which makes an average of 6.28 tweets per day. With an average of 0.46 user mentions per tweet and 18.89%

retweets interaction seems established. Many of the users most mentioned are other United Nations twitter accounts. The account is used for the promotion of the organisation’s activities and interaction with the interested community. It uses often one of the following hashtags: #unea, #climatechange, #worldenvironmentday, #wed2014,

#climate2014, #thinkeatsave, #dignity4all, #islands2014, #adaptation, #climate. With a hashtag rate of 0.49 per tweet it is likely to be found by interested users.

4.2.8. SIRIM Berhad, Malaysia

SIRIM Berhad tweets at @SIRIM_Berhad. In 2014 it had a total of 338 tweets (of which were 25% retweets), which makes an average of 0.93 tweets per day. With an average of 0.19 user mentions per tweet and 23.96% retweets interaction seems established. Users most mentioned include especially Malaysian institutions and researchers, some of which strongly use twitter, e. g. Noorul Ainur at @NoorulAinur, Datuk Dr. Abu Bakar at @DatukDrAbuBakar, at Ewon Ebin @EwonEbin, and HAMIM Ledang at @hamimsamuri. The account is used for interaction with the community and promotion of the institution’s activities. It uses often one of the following hashtags: #sirim, #innocraft, #msi2014, #sirimsolarthermaldryer, #biong, #ecoinnovation,

#medical, #mcce2014, #mcy2014, #solarenergy. With a hashtag rate of 0.71 per tweet it is likely to be found by interested users. A high number of tweets is in Malaysian language.

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4.2.9. Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Malaysia

The Malaysian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation tweets at @MyMOSTI.

In 2014 it had a total of 786 tweets (of which were 24% retweets), which makes an average of 2.15 tweets per day. With an average of 0.63 user mentions per tweet and 42.37% retweets interaction seems well established. Users most mentioned include almost exclusively Malaysian institutions and researchers. The account is used for announcements with a high interactivity rate (they do not seem automatically generated). It uses often one of the following hashtags: #nicemosti2014, #mcce2014,

#mosti, #mcy2014, #sti, #innovation, #kampungsti57, #merdeka57, #selfiemerdeka57,

#dataranpekan. With a hashtag rate of 0.39 per tweet it can be found by interested users. The majority of tweets is in Malaysian language.

4.2.10. Asian Development Bank (Headquarters)

The Asian Development Bank headquarters tweet at @ADB_HQ. In 2014 it had a total of 2,439 tweets (of which were 38% retweets) from only July 2014 on, which makes an average of 6.68 tweets per day or 13.36 per day since starting to tweet. With an average of 0.28 user mentions per tweet and 62.07% retweets interaction seems established, the account is well followed by users. Users most retweeted heavily include other Asian Development Bank accounts. The account is used for announcements of the organisation’s activities. It uses often one of the following hashtags: #asia, #india, #ado2014,

#adb, #prc, #climatechange, #myanmar, #cambodia, #asiantsunami, #philippines. With a hashtag rate of 0.76 per tweet it is likely to be found by interested users.

4.2.11. ASEAN

ASEAN tweets at @ASEAN. In 2014 it had a total of 1,436 tweets (of which were 15%

retweets), which makes an average of 3.93 tweets per day. With an average of 0.14 user mentions per tweet and 83.77% retweets interaction seems rather unidirectional with a high number of actively retweeting followers, which is quite typical for a government institution. The Account is used for announcements and promotion of the activities of members of the ASEAN Economic Community. It often uses one of the following hashtags: #asean, #myanmar, #philippines, #indonesia, #jakarta, #thailand, #malaysia,

#hagupit, #aseanwonders, #eu. With a hashtag rate of 1.51 per tweet it is likely to be found by interested users, the by far most used hashtag is #asean, accounting for more than half of total hashtags used.

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SEA-EU-NET

5.1. The Social Media Communication Strategy in SEA-EU-NET 2

5.1.1. Following SEA-EU-NET 2 Partners

The SEA-EU-NET 2 twitter account is closely following the specific twitter accounts of the partner’s institutions and organisations affiliated with SEA-EU-NET 2, if available.

The parter accounts are organised into a separate list.¹ A list set up in twitter allows an overview over the tweets of just the accounts featured in the respective list. This is a quick and easy way to monitor what is going on in specific parts of the twittersphere.

The partners using twitter are:

KNAW @_knaw: https://twitter.com/_knaw

BHC @UKinSingapore https://twitter.com/UKinSingapore

TÜBITAK #tübitak many twitter accounts, right on has yet to be identified NSTDA @nstda https://twitter.com/nstda

ZSI @zsi_fe https://twitter.com/zsi_fe CIRAD @Cirad https://twitter.com/Cirad CNRS @CNRS https://twitter.com/CNRS

SIRIM @SIRIM_Berhad https://twitter.com/SIRIM_Berhad RCN @RCN_Norway https://twitter.com/RCN_Norway AIT @AITAsia https://twitter.com/AITAsia

1cf. https://twitter.com/SEAEUNET/lists/sea-eu-net-2-partners

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5. Social Media Communication in SEA-EU-NET

NTU @NTUsg https://twitter.com/ntusg

EUResearch @SwissEuresearch https://twitter.com/SwissEuresearch

The content from the partner’s twitter accounts is regularly monitored. Tweets of interest to SEA-EU-NET 2 stakeholder are being retweeted. A retweet is a tweet for- warded/shared from one account to another’s account followers. This way single tweets containing special information can easily be spread around the twittersphere.

In twitter, users have established a whole retweet culture. The analysis of retweets gives insights on the impact of the twitter accounts analysed. This monitoring allows to develop a feel for what is happening in the science and research world of relevance to SEA-EU-NET 2. Data derived from this work can be used in quantitative and qualitative data analysis. More interesting and a lot easier to do is the exchange via retweets.

Another interesting thing is to mention the appropriate partner’s accounts in tweets.

A @mention is a link similar to a #hashtag referring to an account instead a topic. First, this can be considered a sign of both, respect and awareness of the partner institution’s activities. Second, this a way of promoting other account’s twitter feeds to your own followers. Third, mentions are part of the notification system in twitter, with the mentioned account being informed about the mention. Tweets with mentions are highly likely to be retweeted, which often brings new followers. Thus, mentions are great for mutual awareness raising. For the SEA-EU-NET 2 twitter account we look out to regularly mention not only our partner’s accounts but also any other accounts relevant to our stakeholders.

5.1.2. How to Tweet

At the 2014 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science a session focused on social media with three female scientists famous for both, their research and their social media activities, holding presentations [Bert, 2014, Pata, 2014]. Their ideas present very well some of the basic rules for tweeting or blogging or posting as a researcher:

1. In order to use social media effectively, one has to have a concrete concept of why she or he is using social media. Without a clear goal, readers will likely be discouraged following random tweets of yet another scientist. Once a clear goal is set, an adequate platform has to be chosen. Instead of trying to be on all social media platforms focus should be on the one(s) that best suit the purpose. Also

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it is important that one really wants to use social media, otherwise profiles are not authentic which is especially crucial if used with a personal account.[Koerth- Baker, 2014]

2. In order to engage with the average (interested) reader out there, social media activities should tell a story. Social media is not the place where highly specialised scientists follow an in-depth debate about the frills and furbelows of their current research. Social media has the power to make accessible scientific work for a broader public at very low barriers compared to typical scientific media. Highly scientific research can well be presented with multimedia, and once done so, it reaches out to those out there who turn scientific findings into action and policy on a daily basis. Because: “It doesn’t matter how right you are if nobody is listening to you.” [Cobb, 2014]

5.1.3. Using twitter for the ASEAN-EU STI Days Conferences

While twitter was tested for use during the ASEAN-EU STI Days conference in 2014, for 2015 a conference dissemination plan will prominently include twitter. The conference hashtag #stidays will be strongly promoted and visitors will be encouraged to make use of this hashtag. This will be done with the help of announcements in moderations but most prominently by using twitter walls. A twitter wall is basically a live feed of selected accounts and/or hashtags publicly and prominently displayed on location at conferences using e. g. video beamers (additionally to the main screens) or video screens at the conference venue or even touch screens or kiosk terminals. The STI Days dissemination working group is planning a twitter wall which displays both, details on the current programmes (workshops, sessions, etc.) and the twitter feed for #stidays showing a multimedia live stream of the conference, further encouraging conference visitors to participate in twitter activities themselves.

5.2. Examples of twitter-Posts from SEA-EU-NET 2

The following example tweets from the SEA-EU-NET 2 twitter-account will illustrate the use of social media (in this case just twitter) for project dissemination purposes.

Figure 5.1 on the following page shows: Instead of making a new twitter-account for the SUSTAIN EU-ASEAN project, the SEA-EU-NET 2 account is being used. As the projects are related to each other this spares the necessity to collect new followers in a new account and makes it easer to reach out to a larger audience. Benefits are mu-

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Figure 5.1.: Using @SEAEUNET for SUSTAIN EU-ASEAN

tual: while SUSTAIN EU-ASEAN profits from the already established communication channels, collected followers, subscribers etc., the SEA-EU-NET 2 project profits from higher activity in its twitter channel due to the added tweets and thus higher awareness for both projects. All tweets relevant to the SUSTAIN EU-ASEAN project and its audience can be reached via the #SustainEuAsean hashtag, as seen in figure A.7 on page 41.

Figure 5.2 shows: The project accounts are more lively if they contain not only project relevant data but also more generally interesting information, still the relevance to the project should be given. This short statistics overview gives a good impression of research in Europe, which might well be interesting for Southeast Asian countries in generally consideration global research co-operation.

Figure 5.2.: Example Tweet: Interesting EU Research Facts

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Figure 5.3.: Example Retweet: Important EU Information

Figure 5.3 shows an example retweet of more general, but important information.

Note the high number of retweets. This kind of viral information spreads around the network quickly and gives the channels sharing the information added activity and higher visibility. In fact, new followers come through acitivity and be it non-original tweets.

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Figure 5.4.: Example Tweets: typical SEA-EU-NET Tweets

Figure 5.4 shows example tweets on project results, a conference not directly linked to the project but still interesting to the project’s followers and some rather generally interesting science facts.

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Figure 5.5.: Example Tweet: Live Update from a SEA-EU-NET Workshop While organising workshops is a major task for the project, only a very small number of people in the SEA-EU-NET target audience can participate. Figure 5.5 shows a live tweet from a SEA-EU-NET workshop organised by the project. It not only mentions the expert currently holding a presentation but links to his institution, in this case the National University of Singapore, thus creating visibility for both. Since the NUS public relations officials were automatically informed, they retweeted the workshop posting thus again creating visibility for the SEA-EU-NET 2 project in their media channels.

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Figure 5.6.: Example Reweet: Infographics from Daily Work

Infographics and data have a high chance of being retweeted as shown in figure 5.6.

This post is also a good example of a post from data experts get along every other day doing other work (in this case the expert has his own twitter account and the post was tweeted twice). With social media in mind, this is a quick and easy update.

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Figure 5.7.: Example Reweet: Connecting and Exchanging Information with Stakeholders

Figure 5.7 shows the results of constant social media dissemination work: Other accounts working on similar topics have become aware the SEA-EU-NET 2 twitter account and are regularly mentioning and/or retweeting posts. This helps spread visibility of the SEA-EU-NET 2 project.

Yet another way to promote the project is shown in figure 5.8 on the following page:

this tweet is from the Austrian Climate Change Research day in 2014, where a SEA- EU-NET 2 expert was invited to present a poster. The poster shows all INCO projects relevant to climate change researchers, with both, SEA-EU-NET 2 and SUSTAIN EU- ASEAN being such projects. Through using the conference’s hashtag channel attention to the two projects was drawn not only in the twitter community but also to people at the conference using twitter there, as the tweet was geo-tagged and is primarily shown to people near-by with a matching interests profile. This tweet exemplifies how vibrant social media can be.

Another typical project activity is the organisation of workshops. These workshops are visible to the SEA-EU-NET community prior and after the workshop through dissemination channels such as newsletter etc. For those participating in person or via webinar, the workshop is most present, of course. However, using twitter on a smart- phone on location, it is possible to reach out to the interested research community and present workshop activities in a live ticker style. Such workshops can be “live tickered” throughout the day presenting the most interesting results and findings.

Figures A.2 on page 36, A.3 on page 37, and A.4 on page 38 show live tweets with a lot of spontaneous photographs from a SUSTAIN EU-ASEAN workshop illustrating the work in progress.

Webinars are yet another way to reach out to the SEA-EU-NET science community and make participation in SEA-EU-NET events possible without too many financial and time constraints. SEA-EU-NET 2 started a webinar series in autumn 2013 with the first webinar taking place being connected to one of the sessions of the 2014 ASEAN-

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Figure 5.8.: Example Tweet: Dissemination of Conference Participation

EU STI Days. Session guests were not only the people present but because the webinar moderator was present in the room, webinar guests could ask questions to the experts in the room via the webinar moderator. Twitter was also used to promote the webinar on the fly while taking place and had the success of two more webinar participants joining live. Figures A.5 on page 39 and A.6 on page 40 show the use of a conference hashtag to interact with conference visitors and webinar participants, also making use of a channel for live conference updates. The good experience from the twitter activities around the 2014 ASEAN-EU STI Days led to a completely revised concept for social media dissemination in the 2015 ASEAN-EU STI Days, as explained in section 5.1.3 on page 25.

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Figure A.1.: Favorited Tweets of @SEAEUNET from 2010 to 2015

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A. More Screenshots and Images

Figure A.2.: Example Live Tweets: Workshop in Progress 1

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Figure A.5.: Example Tweets: Live Conference Webcasting 1

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Figure A.7.: Use of SUSTAIN EU-ASEAN Hashtag

Interactive Stakeholder Communication and Online Science & Research Communities in SEA-EU-NET 2

and Online Science & Research Communities in SEA-EU-NET 2

by the SEA-EU-NET 2 Work Package 5 Team

written from November 2014 to January 2015

Contents

List of Figures

1. Introduction

2.1. SEA-EU-NET 2

2.2. SUSTAIN EU-ASEAN

3.1. Push-Type Dissemination

3.2. Social Media Dissemination

4. Social Media Usage in Southeast Asia

4.1. General Findings

4.2. Analyses of Social Media Accounts of Southeast Asian Science and Research Stakeholders

SEA-EU-NET

5.1. The Social Media Communication Strategy in SEA-EU-NET 2

5.2. Examples of twitter-Posts from SEA-EU-NET 2