are already restructuring the ways in which scholars form collaborations and communicate their results. 10 What used to be called the invisible college of personal scholarly communications is now a vast and highly visible, searchable, and influential infrastructure. These new scholarly social networks, the visible commons, ignite hot topics, accelerate data sharing, and enable rapid refinements to theories in ways that were never before possible. For example, in August 2010, when a researcher claimed to have proven one of the most profound, challenging, and elusive problems in all of mathematics and computer science (P=NP?), blogs (such as http://rjlipton.word- press.com), wikis, and other forms of online communication conveyed active discussion about the proof—and ultimately enabled a form of real-time “peer review” that called into question the researcher’s approach.

Scientists also have begun to use social media to conduct new forms of scientific research. NASA’s use of click-workers to measure Martian craters ( http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov) or the Encyclopedia of Life’s ( http://eol.org) integration of professional scientists with trained citizen scientists and nature enthusiasts are examples of even more potent methods. Scientists can now engage with thousands of peers as in the Gene Wiki (http://genwiki.eva. mpg.de), with serious amateurs as in star surveys ( http://galaxyzoo.org), or with numerous paid workers through services such as Mechanical Turk ( http://mturk.com). Such large-scale collaborations could produce conflict over credit for breakthroughs unless new strategies for supporting trust are created. 10, 15 Other ethical dilemmas come from the appropriateness of existing Institutional Review Board oversight processes or fairness of using low-paid Web-based labor in place of traditional research assistants or experimental participants.

 

Call to action

These topics provoked lively discussions at two National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded workshops held in the past year. The final report12 covers descriptive, explanatory, prescriptive, and predictive theories; opportunities in health care/wellness and e-govern-

the next step will be
paradigm-shifting
methods for
conducting
scholarly research
in the computing
sciences and in
every discipline.

ment; ethical issues for researchers; design strategies for practitioners; motivational challenges for community managers; research infrastructure proposals; and innovative educational reforms ( http://www.tmsp.umd.edu). Some steps in expanding research have already begun with the NSF’s Social Computational Systems program ( http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2010/ nsf10600/ nsf10600.htm) and the National Institutes of Health’s two programs on Social Network Analysis and Health ( http://obssr.od.nih.gov/fund-ing_opportunities/foas/ faqs.aspx).

Researchers from many disciplines can build on the ideas generated at these workshops and summarized here by working with funding agencies to restructure existing programs so that social media research becomes more widely supported. Evaluations of civic social media projects could make them more reliably successful by developing validated design guidelines, effective community management strategies, advanced visual analytic and statistical tools, and broader theories. Academics can spread this new knowledge by introducing segments on social media into existing courses, adding new courses, and planning degree programs for professionals and researchers.

Adventurous researchers are al-
ready using social media to improve or
speed their research, but the next step
will be paradigm-shifting methods for
conducting scholarly research in the
computing sciences and in every dis-
cipline. Faster paths to curing cancer,
tracking climate change, mapping
species distribution, and much more
seem within reach. However, there is
also a risk that social media researchers
will soon confront ethical challenges as
serious as those that the nuclear physi-
cists faced in the 1950s. This time the
concerns will be about inequities in
Internet access, violations of privacy,
vulnerability to attacks, as well as tech-
nical failures and social chaos during
crises. We believe the computing sci-
ences community can rise to these chal-
lenges and find effective solutions.

References

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2. easley, D. and Kleinberg, J. Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World, Cambridge university Press, ny, 2010.

3. golbeck, J. Weaving a web of trust. Science, 321, 5896 (2008), 1640–1641.

4. hansen, D., shneiderman, b., and smith, M.a. Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a Connected World, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, san Francisco, Ca, 2011.

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11. ostrom, e. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge university Press, ny, 1990.

12. Pirolli, P., Preece, J., and shneiderman, b., eds., technology-mediated social participation (cover feature with seven articles). IEEE Computer 43, 11 (nov. 2010), 20–67.

13. Preece, J. and shneiderman, b. the reader-to-leader Framework: Motivating technology-mediated social participation. AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction 1, 1 (Mar. 2009), 13–32; http://aisel.aisnet. org/thci/vol1/iss1/5/

14. shirky, C. Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. Penguin Press, ny, 2010.

15. tapscott, D. and Williams, a.D. Macro Wikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World. Portfolio, ny, 2010.

16. Van alstyne, M. and brynjolfsson, e. global village or cyber-balkans? Modeling and measuring the integration of electronic communities. Management Science 51, 6 (June 2005), 851–868.

 

Ben Shneiderman ( [e-mail]) is a professor in the Department of Computer science, the founding director of the human-Computer interaction laboratory, and a member of the institute for advanced Computer studies at the university of Maryland at College Park. Jennifer Preece ( [e-mail]) is a professor and dean of the information school at the university of Maryland at College Park. Peter Pirolli ( [e-mail]) is a research fellow in the augmented social Cognition area at the Palo alto research Center (ParC).

We appreciate national science Foundation support (iis-0956571) to conduct the two workshops and all the participants in those workshops. We appreciate the comments we received from the reviewers and James hendler.

Copyright held by author.