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   Social Media for Acoustics Professionals Kathi Mestayer, Andrew Morrison, and Edward Richards    Introduction Social media has begun to play a large enough role in our everyday lives that readers will probably have an opinion about its use. Although we realize that not all members of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) use social media, we want to encourage everyone to consider its use for promoting acoustics research. The use of social media has grown in the Society since the first Acoustics Today article promoting its use (Farrell and Jones, 2017). Many of the benefits predicted by this first article are beginning to be realized by a small community of members, with many examples produced by the active participation of members of the Animal Bioacoustics Technical Com- mittee. Society members use social media to promote and enhance research, teaching, and work programs in ways that are interesting, and we use examples to dem- onstrate some successes, with the hope of encouraging more participation. In a world where we are constantly online, it is easy to just say “Is this worth doing? I mean, who has time for this?” However, although social media interactions may seem trivial, this engagement increases the camaraderie among researchers, especially in far-flung institutions, and increases the visibility of acoustics to the larger public. Increasingly, social media engagement provides a proxy for the interactions in scientific workplaces and conferences, providing a more continual engagement of a broader and more inclusive audience (Foell, 2021). Social media is emerging as an effective tool for promoting published content, answering acoustics questions, and conducting scientific outreach. Acoustical Society of America Online Presence The acoustical community has already begun to partici- pate in social media. By far, the largest online community in acoustics is on Twitter (see twitter.com). The ASA has an active account on Twitter (@acousticsorg) with over 6,100 followers. Many of ASA’s publications have Twitter ©2022 Acoustical Society of America. All rights reserved. https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2022.18.2.79 accounts. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA), The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America Express Letters (JASA-EL), and Proceedings on Meetings on Acoustics (POMA) are all well followed. In addition to its Twitter presence, the ASA has a public group on Facebook, with over 2,400 members, as well as a presence on LinkedIn and YouTube. The simplest way to begin a new Twitter community is to build on lists of users interested in acoustics. A few examples of Twitter lists include a bioacoustics list (see tinyurl.com/4uhx5486), an applied acoustics list (see tinyurl.com/mpcjt46h), a list of acousticians (see twitter.com/i/lists/199306046), and another list of people and organizations who use acoustics in their work (see twitter.com/i/lists/195934686). Utility of Social Media The distinct formats of each social media platform help make scientific research accessible to broad audiences fol- lowing different proven communication patterns. Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook promote short posts that allow sharing of multimedia, such as videos, web page links, and written text. Comments on these posts then create an open conversation, allowing fellow scientists and the public to participate in the conversation. For example, the JASA, JASA-EL, and POMA accounts of the ASA tweet links to recently published journal articles daily, introducing new work to potential read- ers. Author participation magnifies the impact of these posts, which can be by either retweeting the ASA tweet with their own message or beginning another a new conversation. Such promotion creates additional opportunities for authors to provide plain language descriptions of their work, overview their methodol- ogy, discuss why their research is exciting, and even offer self-critique (Holmes, 2021). Persistence and repetition also play a key role in increasing the wider visibility of publication posts. One recommendation      Volume 18, issue 2 | Summer 2022 • Acoustics Today 79 


































































































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