School of Teaching and Learning, College of Education, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2019 Jul 30;14(7):e0219688. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0219688. eCollection 2019.
The field of paleontology, which is based principally on observations of the natural world, includes an active community that is engaged across multiple social media platforms, consisting of museums, academic researchers, amateur fossil collectors, paleontological artists, and commercial fossil dealers. As such, it represents an ideal environment for examining the people, interactions, and flow of scientific information. Using interactions involving the four most popular Twitter hashtags for paleontology, this embedded mixed methods study defined the members of this social world and investigated how they influenced and controlled the flow of information, as well as how their expression of scientific practice was related to their identity. Results provide further evidence for the diversity of people and practice involved in this domain of science and indicate that the magnitude and breadth of the public's impact may be larger than previously projected. Certain types of messages were shown to be effective for different segments of the community, but news posts, essentially media outlet stories, were ineffective for generating any form of engagement. This study adds to our understanding of the important scientific contribution being made by members of the public as they interact with professional scientists and educators as peers in an open social media platform that supports a diverse and active community.
古生物学领域主要基于对自然界的观察，其包含一个活跃的社群，他们跨越多社交媒体平台进行互动，其中包括博物馆、学术研究人员、业余化石收藏者、古生物艺术家和商业化石交易商。因此，它代表了一个理想的环境，可以研究人员、互动和科学信息的流动。本嵌入式混合方法研究使用了古生物学中最流行的四个 Twitter 标签的互动，定义了这个社交世界的成员，并调查了他们如何影响和控制信息的流动，以及他们对科学实践的表达如何与其身份相关。研究结果进一步证明了该科学领域涉及的人员和实践的多样性，并表明公众的影响规模和广度可能比之前预期的要大。某些类型的消息对社区的不同部分是有效的，但新闻帖子，本质上是媒体机构的报道，对于产生任何形式的参与都是无效的。这项研究增加了我们对公众在开放的社交媒体平台上与专业科学家和教育工作者作为同行互动时所做出的重要科学贡献的理解，该平台支持多样化和活跃的社区。
