As I am now starting my path in the Academic world, I can see that social media is a must for the concept of open science and getting the commitment from the Academic society. I have been working outside of the University for 15 years seeing and feeling large-scale company approaches to business processes and IT related development. My main usage of the information sharing and spreading positive atmosphere has been related to the projects and have served the goal of a project.

I am grateful for the possibility to think things from the different angles and widen my perspective.

In the business world, you are promoting your project outcomes, focusing on the things attached to the goal of the work tasks and giving your all to the working community inside of the given task. Now a wind of change is blowing in the sense that I must find my scientific audience. I need to think about how to find it and what is my relevance to the research area.

I need to be bold enough to state my own vision, not the company’s goal or promote work-related tasks. What about my own strategic communication? It can be improved by social media. From the introvert point of view, this might cause some deep sighs about thoughts of starting tweeting about my own achievements and merits, not to mention commenting others. Please don’t take it wrong, I am fully supporting the idea and tools of social media, I just need the time to think about the strategic benefits around it and how to utilize it best possible way possible for me.

Katariina Pulkkinen
PhD student
Computer Science