[Asis-l] Environmental Twitter

[gerrymck]

Colleagues/

 !!! A Most Excellent Article / A Model For Other Subject Twitter Articles  !!!

/Gerry

Bytes of Note - Environmental Twitter / George E. Clark / Environment
/ September-October / 2009

 Twitter, the microblogging Web site that enables users to post
unlimited messages of 140 characters or less, became the
fastest-growing Internet communication tool earlier this year,
according to Nielsen Online. [snip] As with any general broadcast
communication tool, Twitter can provide a helpful service to those
with an interest in environmental and sustainability issues.

[snip] Any individual or organization representative can sign up for a
free account. However, no account is needed to search all public
Twitter streams ...  A search can provide realtime insight into a
mixture of both public opinion and public relations spin on
environmental issues. The advanced search features of these sites can
be used to search specific Twitter fields, such as location, bio, and
names mentioned. The usefulness of analyzing real-time data of this
kind may be hard to imagine for those new to Twitter and may not yet
be realized for environment-specific uses. [snip]

[snip]

While few Twitter searchers may be interested in conducting
sophisticated analyses of tweets, many will want to see what specific
individuals or organizations are saying. [snip]

 When starting out as an active Twitter user, or when beginning to
decipher tweets as a passive Twitter searcher or follower, it helps to
develop a basic Twitter vocabulary. Writer and social media consultant
Greg Pincus presents a simple and useful list ... .

[snip]

Besides the EPA, environment- and sustainability-related U.S. agencies
on Twitter include the National Park Service (@NatlParkService), the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (@CDCemergency), and FEMA
(@femainfocus). The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric
Administration uses Twitter for a number of applications, including
educating students about oceans (@oceanexplorer). Govtwit.com is a
directory of government and related Twitter users. Internationally,
the United Nations Environmental Programme has begun an active Twitter
program, @UNEPandYou, as has the World Health Organization, @whonews.

 Environmental nongovernmental organizations using Twitter include the
International Union for Conservation of Nature (@IUCN), Earthwatch
(@tweettheheat), Greenpeace (@greenpeaceusa), The Nature Conservancy
(@nature_org), the World Resources Institute (@worldresources), and
the World Wildlife Fund (@WWFUS).

 Twitter also provides a forum for practitioners in particular
academic and policy fields and news organizations covering specialized
topics. In climate, for example, Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric
scientist and lead author of the U.S. Global Change Research Program
report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, tweets as
@KatharineHayhoe. Richard Klein, a climate policy analyst for the
Stockholm Environment Institute and a coordinating lead author for the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has begun tweeting as
@rjtklein. Earth Negotiations Bulletin, a news service on multilateral
environmental negotiations, used Twitter to post news from the recent
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change talks in Bonn,
Germany, as @enbclimate.

[snip]

 Twitter is but one of a number of emerging social media, many of
which already affect environmental work. Terri Willard (@taikod) of
the International Institute for Sustainable Development has written a
briefing paper, “Social Networking and Governance for Sustainable
Development” that places Twitter inside a much larger context. Willard
posits three key technologies that enable the “social web” and make it
a potential force for sustainability: the prevalence of handheld
computing and communication devices; the ease with which individuals
can post, find, and comment on each other’s videos, images, words, and
other content; and the potential of social networking sites, including
Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn.

Environmental subject librarians are a good starting point for new
resources to explore on the Web, in Twitter, and in the evolving
social information setting more broadly. Some use Twitter to connect
with a broad constituency. Anne Less, a librarian with the U.S. Green
Building Council, tweets using the handle @alessismore. Lenora A.
Oftedahl, a librarian with the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish
Commission, tweets as @StreamNetLib. Anne Moser is head librarian and
head Tweeter at Wisconsin’s Water Library (@WiscWaterLib).

Link To Full Article Available At

 [ http://tinyurl.com/yhjsg2f  ]

 !! Thanks To George E. Clark / Environmental Research Librarian /
Harvard College Library For The HeadsUp !!!

 Regards,

 /Gerry

Gerry McKiernan
Associate Professor
Science and Technology Librarian
Iowa State University Library
Ames IA 50011

Follow Me On Twitter > http://twitter.com/GMcKBlogs

There Is No Answer, Only Solutions / Olde Irish Saying

The Future Is Already Here, It's Just Not Evenly Distributed
Attributed To William Gibson, SciFi Author / Coined 'Cyberspace