Fleur Schinning, a graduate student in Heritage Management at Leiden University, is conducting research on how social media and blogs contribute to the accessibility of archaeology in the Netherlands and seeks readers of blogs to help fill in a quick questionnaire. The research is focused on investigating how often, and why, readers access the social media range (with a strong focus on blogs) access and read about archaeological projects and news in order to ascertain their use as methods for education outreach and improving the accessibility of archaeology.
The readers questionnaire focuses on the motives and takes only a few minutes to fill in and can be accessed here. It is well worth it as participants are automatically offered the chance to win 6 copies of the Archaeology magazine for free. The questionnaire close at the end of July 2015 in order for Fleur to analyse the data and allow her to conclude her research.
As long time readers of this blog may know that I’m a keen advocate of blogging as a method of educational outreach, and as an interactive use of reaching a wide and diverse audience. Blogging archaeology has never been more popular, both as a topic of academic research and as an actual activity.
A few quick highlights of this for me include Doug’s Archaeology blogging carnival from 2013-2014 (and the subsequent published Blogging Archaeology edited volume), where over 70 archaeology bloggers gathered every month over a 5 month period to discuss the questions that Doug posed. This brought together a lively bunch of people and posts from all over the world, allowing for a range of fully fleshed out thoughts on a wide variety of blogging archaeology topics (you can see all of my replies here!). Further to this is the ever expanding and growing Day of Archaeology project, held each July (I’m slowly cooking up an entry for this year), which brings together archaeological bloggers and social media users to show the diversity of a day in an archaeologists life. This is a lovely event which really indicates just how wide a subject archaeology is and can be, with entries piling in each year from every aspect of the discipline you can think of. Be sure to check out their website on the 24th July this year, or better yet join in.
On a quick bioarchaeology point I’m always impressed by Kristina Killgrove’s work over at Powered by Osteons and now as a bioarchaeology writer at the Forbes website (check out this interactive map of her coverage at the company). Her work on the blogging site is really linking the academic research with public communication and engagement by making her teaching and research methods open to public access and engagement (and making it fun!). One of the latest posts promotes the publication of her human osteology laboratory workbook for interested members of the public and specialists alike. It is the product of the classes in human osteology that she has taught, and continues to teach, in her role as an associate professor.
Blogging archaeology and bioarchaeology has, for me, opened up so many new doors and has introduced to me wonderful people and fantastic opportunities that I could only of dreamed of before I started blogging back in 2011. If you value reading about archaeology across social media and blogging sites, such as this one, that help a researcher and indicate how you interact with archaeology online.
Replies to Fleur Shinnings questionnaires are greatly received and, on behalf of this blog, I wish her the best of luck in her research!
These Bones Of Mine 