Using Twitter in Research

As ‘PolishNewcastle’ I’ve just posted my 100th ‘tweet’ on Twitter. To celebrate I’m posting 10 examples of my information tweets here:

*Article about Geordie bus driver who moved to Zywiec in Poland: 'Taking Poles to Newcastle http://t.co/Khgb6fC @ The Evening Chronicle.

*PRI news article about how Polish parenting patterns are changing: http://www.theworld.org/2010/10/05/rethinking-parenting-in-poland

*Financial advice for enterprising Poles based in the UK: www.thisismoney.co.uk/savings-and-banking/polski/article.html (articles in Polish).

*Article about Geordie bus driver who moved to Zywiec in Poland: 'Taking Poles to Newcastle'- http://t.co/Khgb6fC @ The Evening Chronicle.

*Found this excellent site where you can source English-Polish children's books: http://www.little-linguist.co.uk/polish-for-children.html

*Good online article considering the outcomes of EU enlargement on Poland: http://www.migrationinformation.org/Profiles/display.cfm?ID=800

*North East pupil talks about her trip to Poland in the world's biggest storytelling project: http://www.cultureshock.org.uk/stories/poland

*Download a free reading and writing wall chart specially designed to help Polish children: http://www.thrass-downloads.com/ccdemo/Polish.swf

*This may be of use to all UK Polish parents considering sending a child to University: http://www.northumbria.ac.uk/brochure/prospar/polishparents

*Tesco have a dedicated website to promote the 250 Polish products they sell. Go to http://www.tesco.com/polski

*Online article from Emilia Lewandowska,Warsaw University, about Polish British identity: http://ebooks.iaccp.org/xian/PDFs/4_5Lewandowska.pdf

I use Twitter as a public space in which to share my research findings, interests and readings. It is also a way to promote my project, my work, and hopefully increase participation in my study. My research interviews are highlighting a lack of access points to specific information for Polish parents; information about child care vouchers or Polish-English language provision for example, so recently I have been using Twitter as means of passing on links to information I come across.
University-led research has long been criticised for failing to challenge issues of knowledge transfer. Poor knowledge management fails to address how information can cross from the private to the public domain. I hope to show that embracing social networking and microblogging such as Twitter allows researchers to be actively engaged players in the knowledge transfer process.

Jeśli chodzi o Twitterze: na Twitterze mam na imię ‘Polish Newcastle’. Używam Twitter jako miejsce do wymiany informacji i promować moją pracę.