[ecrea] Social Media Research in www.somere.nl

Invitation for communication professionals, researchers and students 
to join our Social Media Research in www.somere.nl.

The use of social media is a rapidly growing 'digital lifestyle'. It 
grows in the number of users, in kind of applications, widgets, and 
apps, in the sizes of its resources, in the number and kind of 
interactions, in the attention it gets, and also in the significance 
of its use in society. We consider social media as media foremost 
appropriate for and shaped by social behavior (browsing around), 
social actions (sending messages), social interactions 
(having  conversations), and social relationships (being connected). 
By this definition social media include media like YouTube, Wikipedia 
and Flickr, and networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. Social media are 
applied in various settings.

These recent developments in social media open an interesting 
position that current digital and non-digital 'educational content 
methods and practices' based on traditional media will become rapidly 
replaced by social knowledge interactions. These knowledge 
interactions are co-created, delivered and maintained by social 
media, and characterized bij interactivity, openness, sociality and 
are personal of nature. Examples of knowledge interactions are 
wiki's, you-tube channels, facebook networks and groups, social 
plugins, social apps, and many more.

In our research, we are involved in various research and education 
projects in 'Learning networks'. In line with existing research on 
'learning organizations' and 'knowledge-steered companies', we are 
interested in learning networks compared to learning organizations 
and cover topics like 'open innovation', 'co-creation', 'knowledge 
communities', and 'regions of knowledge'.

One of our knowledge media design projects is called SoMeRe 
(www.somere.nl). SoMeRe stands for Social Media Research Center. 
SoMeRe as a learning network wants to study the design, 
implementation, use and effects of social media in organizations and 
society. The network consists of master students, alumni's, 
researchers, teachers, and professionals for instance marketeers, and 
communication professionals. Here, we consider our current students 
as junior professionals working continuously on their professional 
development.

SoMeRe as an online environment is designed as a knowledge media 
platform for the support of 'social media' education and research. 
Knowledge Media is about the processes of generating, understanding 
and sharing knowledge using several different media, as well as 
understanding how the use of different media shape these processes 
(www.kmi.open.ac.uk). SoMeRe is set-up by researchers from the 
University of Twente (www.utwente.nl) and senior consultants from 
Sogeti (www.sogeti.nl). One of the main goals for developing and 
using SoMeRe is to explore and study scenario's for future deployment 
of colaborative learning and continuing professionalization. How can 
we develop and apply social knowledge interactions succesful in our 
future academic education and research? Somere as a platform 
contributes to our research and education in Social media. Currently, 
60 to 80 students, researchers and professionals take part in Somere.

We invite communication professionals, researchers and students with 
an interest in Social media research to join us. If you are 
interested, just send an email to Sjoerd de Vries 
((sjoerd.devries /at/ utwente.nl)). Of course, you can visit Somere.nl, but 
there is some translation work needed to develop it as an 
international research center :).


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