Social media for public involvement in research

Twitter handle: @NIHRINVOLVE

Hashtag: #SoMePI

INVOLVE

Definition of Social Media

• Communication among people within virtual communities and networks, for example blogs, Facebook and Twitter

What did we do?

• Scoping exercise

• Call for people to get in touch

• Interviews

• Twitter chat – Storify

• Guidance

Social media currently being used for active public involvement

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Blogs

• Interactive websites

Benefits and challenges

Can you think of some of the benefits and challenges of using social media for active public involvement?

Benefits Challenges1. Increase the diversity and

number of people who get involved in research

1. Exclude people, as it is likely to only involve people who are already using social media

2. Allow people to get involved when it is convenient for them

2. Lead to having to respond to difficult questions in a public forum

3. Be free or relatively cheap to use 3. Be costly and time consuming if you are designing new programmes and/or don’t already have the skills and networks

Managing risk

The guidance goes through managing risks, e.g. privacy and anonymity, people may not behave well, people might talk about medical issues and some people could want to know more about their condition than others, etc.

Guidance

• Top tips– Including useful quotes from interviewees

• Things to think about– Things to consider before using social media

• Useful reading– Guidance on using social media; articles about how

social media has been used to involve people

• Jargon buster– For all of those social media terms that might be

unfamiliar

Thank you!

Please join our tweet chat follow up #SoMePI

Twitter: @NIHRINVOLVE

Email: socialmedia@invo.org.uk