Sunday, January 31, 2016

Twitter and What I Found There-


    The sciences, especially physics, have an interesting relationship with various media.  Since a work is often only considered significant if published in a peer reviewed paper, other media are often somewhat unappreciated.  However, the sciences are filled with technically literate people who certainly use social media.

Linforth, Pete No Title December 2015 via Pixabay
Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication

    Twitter is a unique platform for discussion.  It allows for casual public conversations on any topic.  It would seem that people must use it to discuss physics, but I've never met someone who used it for that purpose.
    Much of what I found while searching for accounts about physics on Twitter was simply links to other sites.  It seems that people in the field mostly use Twitter to spread information about items outside of Twitter.  Links to articles from popular science magazines were especial common.  There weren't signs of a robust dialog taking place within Twitter itself.
    I think that people in physics use twitter less than one would expect because the platform isn't well suited to discussing physics.  A 140 character limit can be extremely inhibiting when a conversation gets technical.

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