The future of YouTube is focus of a new co-created paper by Dr John Oliver (FMC) and Emma Parrett, Strategic Partnerships Director at OMD UK. Published in the US based journal, Business Horizons, the paper presents theoretical and empirical findings on how Scenario Planning was used to enable media executives to strategize and prepare YouTube for multiple futures, with multiple strategies.
The paper combines imaginative and systematic thinking in a way that provides a unique insight into future media environments and how YouTube could compete in each scenario.
Dr Oliver commented that “this co-created paper illustrates the benefits of academics working with industry professionals to create knowledge and impact with multiple stakeholders”.
The full article can accessed from: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Wbaj1lnoC6sq
Few weeks after Café Scientific (details here: http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/?p=64189), I received an email from Devon Biddle and Sacha Gardener regarding the opportunity to be interviewed on the importance of public engagement activities and how my projects had benefited from them, not only during the recruiting process but also in expanding my research horizon and raising awareness on what I am doing (details here: http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/?p=53295 )
Therefore, in just a couple of days, thanks to the staff of the Orthopedic Research Institute who provided the location, we started shooting, and here is part of the interview:
I would like to thank Davon, Sacha and all the BU staff for this interview, it was great, and I really hope that helps to have more people involved in public engagement activities.
Following the full script of the interview.
Could you tell us a little bit of your self
My name is Francesco Ferraro, and I am a PhD Student here at Bournemouth University. Currently, I am working on a project which aims to understand the effects of inspiratory muscles training on balance and functional mobility for healthy older adults. The goal is to develop an innovative and effective training for falls prevention.
Before arriving here at BU, I obtained a Bachelor Degree in sports science from University of Rome Foro Italico while in the meantime I was working as a football coach and after I moved to Naples for complete my Master Degree in sports science prevention and wellness. There I worked on motion analysis in young adults, while in the meantime I was a trainer of the Italian Federation of Weightlifting.
Could you tell us your favourite public engagement opportunity at BU?
It is hard to tell, I have enjoyed all the events in which I took part including Pint of Science, Café Scientific, The Festival of Learning, lecturing at University of Third Age and others.I gained something from each of them, and I gave something at each of them. But if I have to pick one, and only one I would say the Festival of Learning. Among all the events FOL is the one who gives you the opportunity to meet all kind of people.
You have the opportunity to explain your research to a very young audience, as well as people with excellent knowledge in your field, while surrounded by members of the BU Staff, BU students and colleagues that are there to help you and motived you.
Why do you find public engagement a good asset to both your research and the community?
My study aims to understand the effect of inspiratory muscle training on balance and functional mobility. My final purpose is to develop a strategy to prevent falls accidents in people over 65.
Therefore it is a research for the community as any other research, especially in health and social science, is done for the people. Hence what would be the point to work for the community and do not explain to them what you are doing? As researchers we have the opportunity to share with others much more than a picture on Twitter, or Instagram, we have the opportunity to share knowledge, ideas and instead of likes, we will have more questions, more curiosity and the chance to give to the audience our ideas.
At Café Scientifique, the public was really engaging in the fact your research was trying to better the wellbeing of the older generation. Why do you think people are so engaged in your research?
At Café Scientifique I was able to give to them my idea. Instead of explaining right away what my research does I told them the idea behind it and why is important to research on it. The reason why we had a great respond must be sought in my past years of work in the public engagement.
Any research is fascinating in is way, but is crucial to share it with others, not only peers and experts but also with the people for which the research is done.
You use your public engagement to advertise the need for participants in your current research, is this an effective way of getting the participants you need?
Yes, it is. But it is not the reason why I do public engagement. I have been introduced to public engagement by my supervisors: Alison McConnell, James Gavin and Thomas Wainwright with the aim to share what learned and discuss it with others.
If you were to advice new researchers about public engagement, what would you say to them?
Do it if you want to do it.
Public engagement is not easy especially if you do it because you “have to”. Do it if you want to share your research if you want to challenge yourself, if you want to meet the community then you will make a great event. You must have the right motivation if you do it just to “hunting” participants it won’t be neither correct or fun, and people will understand, with the result that you and your research will lose trust.
What do you gain most from public engagement?
Motivation – to work more for the community, to help people to learn and understand what we are doing here at the BU and how it helps their wellbeing.
Confidence – have the opportunity to talk to 50, 100 or even 200 people at each event, has grown my confidence inside and outside the University.
Knowledge – I do believe that everyone has a story to tell and you can learn a lot from it. I am always surprised at the questions that I receive.
People curiosity drives my curiosity as well and helps me to think and re-think at my research.
What are you going to do next?
I do have a couple of projects going on, but I will take part in the next Festival of Learning (third year in a row), and I will see what other opportunities the public engagement team will give to us.
The Nuffield Research Placement (NRP) provides students each year with the opportunity to work alongside professional scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians.
It aims to enable students to experience authentic research in a real scientific environment and is available across the UK, in universities, commercial companies, voluntary organisations and research institutions.
NRP is now celebrating its 20 years and last Wednesday at the Fusion Building, the students who took part in the placement, presented their posters.
As in the past year, also this year under the supervision Alison McConnell, James Gavin, Tom Wainwright and mine we hosted a student Holly Combes, who in a month not only collaborate in setting up research protocols but also wrote a dissertation about the Time-Up-and-Go, which was submitted to the Young Scientific Journal for publication.
Personally, I was inspired by all the fascinating research that the students have done, and I was glad to have the opportunity to give a small speech:
To my colleagues that are thinking to apply for next year placement, I will say do it. There is nothing more pleasing than help young minds, full of motivation and curiosity. You and your research will gain a lot from this experience.
Twitter – Twitter is a micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as ‘tweets’. Academics are increasingly promoting their research papers via Twitter, which are then picked up by other researchers and practitioners. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Twitter allows you to set up search terms to enable you to monitor what is being talked about in your areas of interest. You can then comment on the relevant conversations. The more you engage, the more people will follow you to listen to your comments and recommendations. As followers come to you, rather than you approaching them, Twitter is an ideal way to reach new audiences.
Research indicates that highly tweeted articles were 11 times more likely to be highly cited than less-tweeted articles. Top-cited articles can be predicted from top-tweeted articles, with 93% specificity and 75% sensitivity (Eysenbach, 2011).
There are some excellent guides available on how to use Twitter for research projects, such as:
Blogs – Academics who blog about their research regularly report positive outcomes, such as networking and collaboration, finding new audiences and opportunities, disseminating research more widely, increasing citations and downloads, and building reputation. Bloggers argue that far from diluting scholarly success (as has been suggested by some academics), online writing can be a serious tool for academic practice. Blogging should be seen as part of a programme of dissemination and collaboration, and is best used alongside traditional academic outlets (such as journals) as a means of amplifying the reach, and potentially the significance and future direction, of the research. Research indicates that blogging about a research paper causes a large increase in the number of abstract views and downloads in the same month (McKenzie and Ozler, 2011).
Rather than setting up a personal blog, BU academics can add posts about their research to the BU Research Blog. The BU Research Blog is visible to a global audience and is searchable by search engines, such as Google. Good post topics could include:
Your area of research and papers that you have published – and/or other related papers in your field of research. Link to the full-text article/DOI for maximum impact.
Conferences and training events that you’re due to speak at.
Your last conference – were there any interesting questions that came up?
Your opinions about any recent press coverage of your subject area.
You can also ask your colleagues and co-researchers to add posts to the Blog and comment on your own posts to stimulate debate.
All staff at BU can have access to add their own posts to the Research Blog. Just email me and I will set you up with access.
YouTube – Visual content accessed on sites such as YouTube is increasingly popular, particularly with students. The publisher Sage reports seeing an increasing amount of traffic to their journal sites via YouTube as students use video as an initial way of researching a topic. Many publishers are now embracing YouTube, for example the Sage YouTube channel is a collection of videos, primarily by academics, about Sage journal articles. BU has a YouTube channel and M&C are able to film short videos of academics discussing their research. These videos can then be used in multiple places to maximise impact. Watch Alan Fyall’s video below as an example:
httpv://youtu.be/RvR3fFDrTLQ
Join academic social networking sites – Academics are increasingly using social networking sites to meet and converse with people who share similar research interests. Examples include: MyNetResearch, Academia and Academici. On these sites you can see what other people are discussing and what issues are pertinent in your field of research. If you have undertaken research in these areas then you can contribute and share your research findings, which in turn should increase the citations/downloads of your work.
BU staff can login below:
Other services
Don’t miss a post!
Subscribe for the BU Research Digest, delivered freshly every day.
New weight change BU paper
One week to go! | The 16th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference
Geography and Environmental Studies academics – would you like to get more involved in preparing our next REF submission?
Congratulations to three former BU staff
MSCA Staff Exchanges 2024 Call – internal deadline
Applications are now open for 2025 ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowships!
Horizon Europe – ERC CoG and MSCA SE webinars
MaGMap: Mass Grave Mapping
ERC grants – series of webinars