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Asked by spacenut1982 to Christina, Colin, Jess, Samaneh, Steve on 18 Jun 2013.
Question: Chris Hadfield used a heck of a lot of social media whilst he was in space, how can other scientists do the same?
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Steven Gardner answered on 18 Jun 2013:
His videos were awesome!
I suppose other scientists could do the same thing, not sure many people would tune in to watch me look through a microscope though.
Public engagment things (like this one) are very important though. People pay the government tax which indirectly funds science here, so it’s good for people to know what they are getting for their money, and it’s also just good to educate people throughout life and not just until they finish school. Never ever stop learning!
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Christina Pagel answered on 18 Jun 2013:
Hi spacenut,
a lot of scientists do use social media – there are loads of them on twitter or writing blogs… more and more scientists are also starting to do podcasts and youtube videos (e.g. http://www.brightclub.org/ or UCL’s youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/UCLTV )
but most scientists’ day to day life is not as amazing as being on the space station so don’t attract as much attention 🙂
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Jess Bean answered on 19 Jun 2013:
I completely agree with Steve! I think the best way to educate and interest the public is to spread the word in any means that scientists can! The best (and easiest) way to do this is this – public engagement!
There are already companies out there whose job it is to link scientists up with schools and get them to come into schools. I was in a school yesterday and the students were really interested in using all the science they had learnt about in the classroom. I think social media has its benefits, as it is still a way of talking to people in a (semi) 1-to-1 level – it’s communicating directly to students that I think is the most effective way of getting people interested.
Comments
spacenut1982 commented on :
Wow! I never knew that tax went into that!! Is that something that scientists are working on?
Jess commented on :
Going back to your comment Spacenut (I hadn’t seen earlier), taxes from the government fund both me (and most postgraduates in the department) and the companies that coordinate scientists going into schools.