Benefits and drawbacks of social networking
Drawbacks:
- Social networking tools rely on personal and professional disclosure. This has led to concerns about the misuse or misappropriation of research data.
- Researchers can also feel exposed as a result of putting opinions or ideas up that have not been subject to the process of peer review.
- Many researchers do not engage with social networking tools as they still view them as being peripheral in research.
- A large number of social networking tools are based on the exchange of snippets of information and therefore may not be appropriate for serious research.
- Social networking tools enable anyone to publish anything they want to say. This can make it more difficult to identify the valuable contributions.
- A social networking site is easy to start but hard to maintain. If you don't provide regular updates, and write to a high academic standard, your reputation may be damaged rather than enhanced.

PILOT - New Technologies by Marion Kelt, GCU, Imperial College, London and East Midlands Research Group is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://cuba.coventry.ac.uk/emrsg/units/dissemination/