Social Media Guidelines

A major objective of WMMC’19 is to share research among members and with a wider audience. The meeting in Barcelona is open to the media and offers members an opportunity to conduct public outreach about their research. Social media is a powerful tool for scientists to share their findings – and the conservation implications thereof – with the public.

Social media is a reality, but norms around its use in academic/scientific culture have not reached consensus. As a result, we have prepared a best practice guideline for using social media during the conference.

We encourage our members to use social media from their personal accounts to broadcast the content of the conference to a public audience.

WMMC’19 Social Media

The official conference hashtag is #WMMC19

Chat with us online at @wmmc19 and find us on Facebook or Instagram.

Conference Tweet Layout

#WMMC19 @whalelove of @cetacean_uni: New findings reveal seals like water!

Be sure to reference the presenter and their affiliation. List speaker name or handle, affiliation and conference hashtag in tweets. If presenter is not on Twitter, give their first initial and last name. Most universities are on Twitter, so find their handles.

Best Practices

  • Presenters should give out handle and affiliation in title slide/poster. If you want recognition, give tweeters the details.
  • Always ask before posting images. Do not post figures or tables with data without consent and always get permission before posting images of people.
  • Differentiate your opinion from statements by presenter. Separate your own comments/viewpoints on the presenter or their science from the presenter’s own words by using different tweets. One is their statement, follow up is your commentary. If you don’t use quotes and/or attribution, readers will assume it’s your statement.
  • Direct quotes get “quotation marks”. Other people’s words belong to other people. This isn’t just on social media, its professional ethics.
  • Be respectful. If you wouldn’t say it to their face, don’t post about it online
  • Add links often. Allow readers to dive deeper, access presenters’ publications, professional website, etc. Some Twitter tools abbreviate URLs automatically to save space. If yours does not, use tinyurl.com.
  • Live-tweets will be the public access to the conference. Remember that many twitter readers will not be attending the conference, so items you post could easily be taken out of context easily.
  • Be happy that the audience is tweeting! “Sharing is Caring”, plus studies have shown that social media coverage increases citation rates and overall numbers.
  • Please be considerate of presenters’ requests for no social media coverage. Some are presenting very fresh preliminary data, which may not be fully explored or the impacts or conclusions may not be fully developed. They may be sharing them with their scientific peers at this conference to foster discussion and feedback, but feel that the findings are not ready for wider consumption.
  • Have Fun! Social media is meant to be social, fun, and a positive experience for everyone. It’s about engaging people beyond the conference itself and positive community building within the Society.

Options for Limiting Social Media Coverage of your Presentation

Presenters should assume that their talks or posters are being covered by social media. However, we must respect the intellectual property of our presenters. For instance, speakers may be presenting preliminary data, unpublished results, collaborative figures with many authors or data donors, and may not wish to have the contents, figures, results broadcast via social media. As a result, we have created a framework to allow presenters who do not wish to have their content (poster or oral) broadcast via social media to make their preference known to the audience.

  1. Request an embargo on social media until published. 
    • If you are presenting preliminary data, etc. and do not wish the results to be broadcast, please click the link to download and use the “No Social Media Please” logo with your presentation to ask the audience to refrain from posting your material. It should appear on the title slide or poster, as well as all the slides you do not want posted, so that your audience recognizes your request.
  2. Request that instead of posting about your presentation, meet up with them to discuss the findings.
    • This indicates that you are happy that the audience is excited enough about your work that they want to share it – “Sharing is Caring”; but you’d like to talk to them about the work and why your reticent about social media for this particular dataset, result, figure, etc.
  3. Have a prepared tweet (140 characters) in small text at bottom of slide with take home message that you would like tweeted. 
    • #WMMC19 @_pinniped of @flipperorg: New findings reveal whales’ have tails!

If you questions regarding social media at WMMC’19, please contact media@wmmconference.org