Paper short abstract:

Social media is rapidly becoming an integral part of research. But what is the actual added value of this new environment? It is the goal of this paper to talk about our experiences with a social medium built to accomodate our research and what happens with this medium in an African setting.

Paper long abstract:

Along with the hype of Social Media and Web 2.0 tools, there is a growing tendency towards the virtualisation of the research field(s). But what is the actual added value of the extra dimension of cyberspace where research is concerned?

In line with the current Research 2.0 trend, our project is building its virtual research environment (VRE). It is a social medium to be used by the project staff as well as by the public. The major added value being that this environment can be reached anywhere anytime by anyone. But can everybody access it?

The major key in setting up our VRE is the permissions you give to individuals or groups. Who is allowed to see what. In this sense, not everybody can access everything. But more importantly and especially in the case of African collaboration, access can be hindered by other factors.

Where paper may perish through the ravages of time, so does the digitised research data and the media on which it is stored perish with each new technological paradigm. Technological innovations follow each other with an ever increasing acceleration. Software programs evolve or disappear and media used for storage become obsolete. How do we cope with the data then? When it becomes a question of available (and compatible) soft- and/or hardware; how accessible is our VRE?

It is the goal of this paper to talk about our experiences when building a social medium in limitless cyberspace and what happens when it is confronted with a bound real life.