The Institute of Technology Assessment (ITA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences just published a research report on the potential of microblogging for science, with a focus on Twitter, in the framework of the project "Interactive Science":

Herwig, J., Kittenberger, A., Nentwich, M. und Schmirmund, J., 2009, Microblogging und die Wissenschaft. Das Beispiel Twitter. Steckbrief 4 im Rahmen des Projekts "Interactive Science". ITA-Reports, Nr. a52-4 hrsg. v. Institut für Technikfolgen-Abschätzung, Wien: ITA
http://epub.oeaw.ac.at/ita/ita-projektberichte/d2-2a52-4.pdf

The report is in German language - here is the abstract in English:

This report investigates the potentials of microblogging in an academic context, drawing on the example of Twitter. In the introductory chapter we present the basics of Twitter in connection with the principles of blogs and social network services (SNS). As a sort of condensed form of blogging Twitter allows the writing of public, log-like entries; as a variation of a SNS it enables the communication between users and maps their relationships. Apart from introducing the basic functions with relation to communication, interaction, publication and archiving, we discuss the demographics and growth tendencies as well as alternative platforms.

In the main part we ask the question how microblogging is already being used in the academic realm and what the potential is for its use. Twitter is not only used for answering the question given by Twitter, namely what one is doing or what is just happening, but for a number of further communicative purposes. In particular, researchers refer to scientific events and publications, ask questions and coordinate their activities. Furthermore, Twitter shows a potential for informal communication and hence as a substitute for the “Café” among scientists who are not co-present. In the framework of scientific conferences, microblogging is used both as a feedback channel and as an organizational tool, hence establishing an additional informal communication layer among those participating locally or at distance at the conference. With a view to external science communication or public relations we need to consider whether microblogging is only one more publication channel or whether it should serve as a means to enter into dialogue with the public. In the latter case, separation between the professional and personal spheres is non-trivial, if individual scholars act for their research institutions or if this is expected. In a digression we present the preliminary results of an empirical study of current Twitter activities of a few researchers. Inter alia, these results confirm the difficulty of the above-mentioned separation and show that professional exceeds non-professional content. Finally, we illustrate the individual attempts to adopt Twitter in teaching. This shows that one needs to be aware of the sensitive change between a non-public and a more or less public communication situation.

Finally, we ask what microblogging is able to deliver for scientific practices and what major application opportunities there are, and conclude with a forecast. The major results of this study are: Microblogging is used by a growing number of scientists for a growing diversity of purposes. As far as one can tell at this early stage, it seems to be used for academic practices, whereby individual usage patterns and cultural (e.g. subject-related) factors play an important role. So far there are no classical incentive systems for using microblogging, but a number of indirect factors, e.g. that users may potentially acquire reputation or that the information exchange is extremely easy and swift. The main application fields for microblogging in science are consequently in the field of context-augmented searching and publishing and with a view to reputation management; also in teaching and at conferences, microblogging may become established as a parallel communication channel; and the social components of open and informal communication may gain importance. In the end we conclude that microblogging is still a dynamic and fast developing new communication medium, which is not only offered by the market champion Twitter but is also increasingly embedded in other social media platforms. Consequently we reckon that microblogging will continue to function as a platform-independent communication principle, not least in academia.

Further blogposts:

• digiom: Unsert Twitter-Steckbrief ist da!

• J_SCH: Microblogging und die Wissenschaft und Glossar

• axkibe: Microblogging und die Wissenschaft
• textundblog: Wann erkennt die Wissenschaft die Bedeutung der Digitalen Medien?