Social Media for Every Audience : Student Social Media Showcase and the European Conference on Social Media 2014

The first Student Social Media Showcase (SMSS) and the inaugural European Conference on Social Media 2014 (ECSM2014) were hosted 9th-11th July by the University of Brighton Business E-Learning Research Group and took place in the Huxley Building, Brighton. The two events brought together over 250 academics (from 35 countries), students, school children (years 9-13), teachers and employers with a specific interest in digital marketing and the creative industries. A melting pot of research concepts, student and employer discussion,s presentations and participation via social media created two engaging and exciting events. Over 3 days an online footprint of over 1,400 tweets (sharing the #ECSM2014 hashtag), 656 outgoing links and 200 multimedia contributions (http://epilogger.com/events/ecsm2014) was created.
The events, co-chaired by Asher Rospigliosi and Dr Sue Greener (both University of Brighton) explored a wide range of topic areas including analytics, business and marketing perspectives of social media, e-participation and democracy, and the impacts of social media on learning at all levels of education.

Speakers included the world renowned computer scientist Professor Ben Shneiderman (University of Maryland) who presented his research and development in visualisation of big data.

Dr Farida Vis (University of Sheffield) described and discussed the evolution of social media research, David Gurteen (Gurteen Knowledge Community) spoke about his experiences of mediated conversations and John Traxler (University of Wolverhampton) discussed the issues surrounding taking education into cyberspace.

Students presented their research into social media to a mixed audience of school children and academics. Teachers discussed issues surrounding social media with their pupils. Selected student work can be found on the SSMS blog: http://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/ssms/student-submissions/studentsubmissions2014/

Other Presentations, multimedia and Storify content can be found at:

• http://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/brightsoc/
• https://storify.com/FieryRed1/day-2-ecsm2014-bubbling-in-cyberspace-at-brighton

The conference website and details of the 2015 conference (which will take place in Portugal) can be found at: http://academic-conferences.org/ecsm/ecsm2014/ecsm14-home.htm

Images provided by Sandra Huskinson

Sandra Huskinson, Social Media Manager SSMS and ECSM University of Brighton, sandrahuskinson@yahoo.co.uk

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