A social media how-to for Chinese researchers

Author: Siliva He & Christabell Ndive

Nearly all researchers, both worldwide and within China, use social media in their work*. This means that social media skills are becoming as much a part of the researcher toolkit as lab equipment, or article writing skills.

For Chinese researchers, these skills can come in two parts: How to network and promote your results on social media within China; and then how to network and promote your work globally. In this blog, we’ll look at both, and talk to some Chinese researchers with experience using social media across platforms for research.

We’ll start with the key Chinese social platforms researchers use in their work, and then look at the global picture.

Social media in China 

Social media like the Internet as a whole started out text-based, but has evolved to include pictures, and now sound and video (multimedia). Because working in multimedia is a different process than working mainly in text, it’ll be helpful to address each of these in turn.

Text-based social media: WeChat 

WeChat launched in 2011, and has transformed from a simple messaging app into an indispensable multi-functional platform with a vast user base. And by “vast,” we mean 1.4 billion active monthly users who spend an average of about 80 minutes per day on the platform.  

Chinese researchers use WeChat to discover research content, share research and resources, and communicate and collaborate. According to Springer Nature’s recent social media survey, Chinese researchers are most likely to use WeChat to discover research content (67%); but that implies that, if you want your work to be discovered, sharing it on WeChat is a good way to do that (and 56% of researchers already do).  

A key feature making WeChat particularly powerful for research: Official Accounts. These are ideal for organizations (like businesses, but also institutions) and individuals who want to push regular content updates to their subscribers.  

“I primarily rely on WeChat Official Accounts… Many research groups actively promote their research outcomes through their institutions’ WeChat accounts.”

- Jianning Kang, Ph.D. student at Tsinghua University

“I follow many academic Official Accounts on WeChat, and I browse the content of these accounts [several] times a day.” 

 - Ruimin Li, at Gannan Normal University 

As for how to promote your own work this way, Xiaohui Tan, Ph.D. at Peking University First Hospital, suggests for WeChat, “convert[ing] the core conclusions of your paper into popular science posts, accompanied by flowcharts or data visualization animations.”  

Jianning Kang adds, “For domestic promotion, I recommend prioritizing WeChat official accounts, as their content style better meets the professional and user-friendly requirements of academic dissemination.”

Image-based social media: RedNote

Over 300 million users (especially younger users) are active on RedNote (formerly Xiaohongshu) each month. On RedNote, younger researchers tend to compare their experiences of publishing their work in journals, and share tips and resources for publishing. Because RedNote is an image-oriented platform, you’ll want to lead with an engaging image that concisely conveys a key finding. For example,

“When these problems arise, we… refer to others’ experience posts on RedNote. Sometimes, others’ posts can resolve issues we may not have noticed ourselves, and occasionally, collaborations for device applications can also be established through these platforms.” 

- Lingwei Zeng, Associate Professor at Hunan University of Science and Technology

Video-based social media: Bilibili

According to Jianning Kang, Bilibili has strong interactive features and is suitable for science videos — a format likely to become more common both within China as well as globally.  

Qing-Wei Chen, Ph.D., Associate Professor at South China Normal University, says that “Bilibili has many excellent video tutorials that not only allow you to learn how to use various research software and research techniques (such as literature search, literature management, and research writing), but can also be recommended to your students for learning, which can greatly improve the research progress of new students.” 

(Stay tuned to The Source for a forthcoming blog post on using social video for research communication and networking, coming soon.)

Global social media  

While networking, sharing research and collaborating within China is important, it’s also important to try to connect with the global research community, and this is where good use of global social media platforms comes in.

Global social media for research: How to find you communities 

You’ll find the global research community networking and sharing their work on a variety of global social media platforms, ranging from research-specific (like ResearchGate) to the more general (LinkedIn, Facebook, BlueSky and others).  

There are a few strategies for finding and interacting with like-minded researchers that work across all platforms. These include finding the societies and communities working in your area, and joining and following them. In materials science, for example, this would include the Materials Research Society, the ASM, the TMS, and others. In neuroscience, that would be the Society for Neuroscience. In mathematics, the American Mathematical Society. These societies themselves maintain active social media presences, and you can often connect with like-minded researchers by following them. 

Accurately connect with scholars: check who is interested in similar topics through ResearchGate, and send targeted private messages to discuss technical details; screen researchers in the same field on LinkedIn, and initiate collaboration invitations based on common interests (e.g., “I saw the model design of your XX paper, and we’re solving a similar problem, can we discuss cross-validation solutions? We are working on a similar problem, can we discuss the cross-validation program?”)

- Junya Sun, Professor 

You can also look for researchers who’ve published work that you use or admire, and look for them on the platforms where they’re active, and follow them there. Once you’ve found your niche, you can share your work there, and also reach out to other researchers directly, to network and collaborate.

Global social networking 

Social media was originally called social networking, and for research, that’s one of its superpowers. For research collaboration, it’s less about posting, re-posting, and liking, and more about making connections that you can then take offline and into real life. But it makes finding connections — that you might not be able to make any other way — possible.  

While social media can be a powerful tool for finding collaborators, it’s not the only way to find like-minded researchers working on similar questions to you. You’ll find more advice, tools, and tips on the Author’s Hub on SpringerNature.com.

Related Content

• Promote Your Book: Social Media Strategies for Authors
• Use social media to find collaborators in other countries