Let’s first state the obvious: social media is how humans communicate in the 21st century. Period.
We use social media to convey personal news and information among friends and family, we use it for business and pleasure, and of course we use it in our politics.
Social media is now a major part of how we communicate science. Nearly every time I present a lecture at a conference, audience members are tweeting in real time. Indeed, I often find out about new scientific papers from twitter or email. Whereas a generation ago it would take months before an important journal article would get any attention, now it takes only a few days.
New platforms are also changing things, hopefully for the better. For example, TikTok was originally used primarily for entertainment. But according to this post on the Massive Science website, TikTok is now widely used to communicate science.
I am sure there are plenty of other examples of apps (like these), Facebook pages, websites, blogs (like this one!), or other forms of social media being use to communicate science. I would be interested to hear about those.
Image courtesy of barfblog, Doug Powell’s terrific food safety blog.