ASM Is Using New Media in Many Different Ways

ASM Communications took advantage of new media in another way during the 2010 ASM General Meeting, held in San Diego last May. Instead of holding conventional press conferences, microbiologists with newsworthy findings were invited to participate in "ASM Live," a series of interviews in television talk-show format that were streamed live to the public over the Internet. These sessions enabled ASM members, journalists, and other science writers and bloggers who could not travel to San Diego to cover the meeting from afar. One important upshot, according to Hyde, there was more traditional press coverage from the 2010 meeting than there had been in the previous decade.

As social media editor for the newASMjournal, Buckley maintains the mBio Facebook fan page and writes a blog, "mBiosphere," that explains contents of some mBio reports to nonscientists and other lay readers. Her blog also features input from editors about the implications of the science. This approach is proving successful at getting the word out about breaking developments in microbiology, she says.

"I see it primarily as a service to authors," says Buckley, who also tweets information about recent research reports and provides links to them from her blog. Those actions help to alert researchers and the general public very quickly to the appearance of new research findings. "Usually when you send a paper out into the world, you don't hear anything about it until other people start citing it in their own papers. With social media, authors can get fresh insight into their work."

The major users who keep pace with research developments via social media are under 34 years of age, according to Buckley. But she urges editors of research journals and authors of papers being published in those journals, who generally are older, to learn more about the technology and how to use it. "These are important ways that science is going to be conveyed in the future," she says. "To ignore it or fail to participate will be missing chances to interact with the next generation." Even Microbe, formerly ASM News, which began publishing soon after the Society was formed, now offers monthly audio interviews with scientists whose research is described in the Current Topics section. These 15-minute interviews by Microbe Current Topics and Features Editor Jeff Fox are posted on the Microbe website, and provide listeners with an in-depth and personalized account of that research in the scientists' own words.

Small Things Blogged

Like microbiology itself, the basis of new media is experimental. Its developers and users are repeatedly puzzled and amazed over why some approaches prove wildly successful and others fail. One popular dogma-that you need to be on the younger end of the age spectrum to participate fully-fails to account for the Moselio Schaechter phenomenon. An adjunct professor emeritus at San Diego State University, he eschews Twitter and Facebook, perhaps his partial concession to age trends. However, he breaks from those trends altogether as the creator and continuing coauthor of one of the most popular blogs in microbiology, "Small Things Considered."

"I was as virginal as can be," says Schaechter, slyly referring to his electronic media disposition when he started the blog in 2006. His first posting to the blog, "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing," was a brief tract about the circadian rhythm of cyanobacteria. "It was not a headline I would have ever used before," he says, noting that he grew more comfortable with being creative and personal in his writing for the blog. Shortly after the blog launched, a scientist and early fan of the blog, Merry Youle, contacted Schaechter from her home onHilo, also called the Big Island of Hawaii. Youle is now the design chief and technology guru for the blog. The two continue to feel equally old-fashioned and awkward about new electronic media, or so they say. However, they spend about half their days writing and assembling materials for the blog, which typically posts new items twice each week.

"Small Things Considered," which was recognized in an article about science journalism in the Columbia Journalism Review early this year, does not generate as many comments from readers as Schaechter would like. Nonetheless, on average, 700 visitors open the blog each day on weekdays. It also is rare for him to go to anASMmeeting and find someone who remains unaware of the blog. In an odd new media twist, Microbe includes one of the blog posts in each issue, which certainly promotes its popularity. But it is also widely read because Schaechter, who is not paid for this work, takes time to carefully plan each topic and often considers a half-dozen headlines for each piece before settling on one.

"It's informal," says Schaechter, who tells graduate students to write blogs in the same way that they explain what they are doing to their nonscientist parents or other relatives. "But the process is far from informal," he says. For example, understanding the science that he writes about generally requires a year of college biology, if not more. Even so, he and Youle receive e-mails and letters from grade school teachers who are using material from the blog in their classrooms.

"Blogs are changing the waywe communicate," Schaechter says. "Instead of big heavy scientific narratives, it humanizes the science and makes it possible for people to open up their heads."

Small Things Twittered—and Blogged

Using new media "will make science less of a closed, conservative, old boys' network," says Jonathan Eisen, another scientist who blogs and Twitters. An evolutionary biologist with a focus on microbial genomics, Eisen has a faculty post at the University of California, Davis, and is also affiliated with the nearby Joint Genome Institute, a Department of Energy facility.

Eisen calls his blog, "The Tree of Life," while his Twitter feed could be called exuberant. "I always try to make sure it makes sense to someone who is not an active scientist," he says. A central goal, he says, is to communicate in a way that makes developments in genomics, microbiology, and other specialty areas that strike his fancy accessible to everyone. "With [Twitter], I'm learning all sorts of tricks for saying the exact same thing in one 10th of the length. Scientists are not always good at being concise."

An avid supporter of "open" science, Eisen says that he feels obliged to spread scientific information. He does this not only through publishing reports describing his research but also by actively tweeting information from scientific meetings that he attends. "I have many [followers] on Twitter," he says. "[Some] say if they know I'm going to a meeting they know they don't have to go because I just post my notes. The meeting people probably hate that, but sharing the notes allows graduate students and poorly funded faculty to participate as though they were at the conference." Meetings that ban tweeting-such as those held at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island in New York-are meetings that Eisen refuses to attend. Likewise, he tends to avoid writing about non-open- access papers on his blog.

Eisen cut his own travel to meetings in this new media era to spend more time with his young children, but also because he now substitutes his blog and Twitter for some of the face-to-face interactions he no longer considers necessary. Instead, new media provide an important vehicle through which he connects with stakeholders- whether they are reporters, program officers, or funders, he says.

These blog and Twitter efforts are now a recognized part of his professional portfolio. For example, the Sloan Foundation recently funded him to develop several new media platforms, including podcasts, websites, and blogs, around its "Microbiology of the Indoor Environment" program. Eisen welcomes additional blogging opportunities. He calls it his favorite type of work these days. "The challenge is doing my other work," he says. "I love teaching and research, but there's something about blogging and tweeting that's a hybrid between the two."

The Micro Community

The new media foster niche communities. In microbiology, where each finding raises new questions, having ready access to a diverse and knowledgeable group of experts is a valuable asset. For instance, Eisen uses "crowd sourcing" on Twitter to pose questions about his research interests. Recently, he sought input about evolutionary trees based on DNA sequence data from a series of metagenomic projects. "I know many evolutionary biologists have worked on this type of data previously, and I wanted to write a blog on it," he says. On Twitter, he queried, "Anyone out there know if anyone has solved this problem?" He was soon peppered with references to papers and links to relevant materials. Some researchers replied to his query, writing, "Yeah, we're working the same problem."

"You now have a set of people you trust or who work in similar areas, and they can provide very useful feedback, whether it's informatics or finding sources," Eisen says. "It's very powerful."

Sometimes after users post questions on MicrobeWorld, someone following the site answers them before anyone at ASM headquarters has a chance, Condayan says. "It makes them feel like they're part of a community," he says. "Until social networking came along, you could only do that at meetings, and all the information and news was top-down. Now it's more horizontal, and your participation determines your status in a community. If you're contributing, people know who you are." Website managers cannot possibly control all the messages. "If you're smart, you become a facilitator, and that allows you to keep the pulse of your members," he says. "If you don't, you could be hit by something from left field."

Speaking of left field, Racaniello says he is surprised to find angry people among those following his TWiV and TWiP podcasts. "In my career, I haven't had to deal with that," he says. "Online you always run into people who are angry with you, or don't believe in viruses, or don't trust scientists, or they're ill and want answers." He says topics such as chronic fatigue syndrome and autism seem to rouse the most anger among his listeners. Yet this not-so-pleasant feedback is good for him to hear, he says. "It's uncomfortable, but it's good to get out of your lab, away from your research and see it. I think part of it is that people don't understand the science. And that's why we do this."

Zimmer, who writes "Loom," his Discover Magazine blog, in addition to hosting "Meet the Scientist" for ASM, sometimes receives immature or mean-spirited comments from readers. However, most comments are insightful, he says. Moreover, instead of spending six months with a story- researching, writing, and producing it-and maybe getting a handful of letters, he now posts quickly and sometimes receives responses within minutes. "In my line of work, you're writing and trying to reach people with your writing," he says. "So you have to go to the places where people are reading to be a part of the discussions that are going on in these places. Right now, Facebook and Twitter are the places to be."

So what's next? Mobile is one answer. Recently, ASM partnered with Wizzard Software to create an iPhone application to stream MicrobeWorld audio and video content over Wi-Fi and the AT&T 3G network. "Mobile has to figure into our considerations now," says Hyde. "In a way, we don't have a choice, because this is the way the world is going."

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