News & Media
Unisa's science initiative makes front page of Reddit
Unisa’s work on Waste-to-Energy technology has made the front page of Reddit.com, which is the 25th most visited page on the internet and viewed by tens of millions of people every day. This is a feat because science rarely gets recognised first on this social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website.
Unisa’s Material and Process Synthesis (MaPS) research unit team
Dr Neil Stacey (postdoctoral fellow at Unisa’s MaPS research unit) identified Reddit as a medium to take Unisa’s research to a wider audience.
Dr Neil Stacey, who started at Unisa’s Material and Process Synthesis (MaPS) research unit as a post-doctoral fellow this year, had set out to find ways to take Unisa’s research to a wider audience. Identifying Reddit.com as a platform for broad engagement, Stacey tested the waters by applying to participate in the Science Ask Me Anything (AMA) series, an initiative that allows scientists to engage with the 13 million subscribers to the r/Science subreddit by fielding questions about their research.
In October Stacey fielded questions about an innovative bioethanol production process he developed during his PhD research, and, after an overwhelming response, he scheduled another AMA for the Directors of MaPS, Professors David Glasser and Diane Hildebrandt.
Global exposure on an enormous scale
In November, Glasser and Hildebrandt fielded questions on a MaPS technology that converts waste biomass into liquid fuels, assisted by Stacey and a team of experts from MaPS. This discussion reached Reddit.com’s front page, giving Unisa’s top research global exposure on an enormous scale. They also had over 200 comments and questions.
Because of this success and the exposure that comes with it, the MaPS team are keen to do a monthly contribution and welcome Unisans to send through their ideas.
The MaPS unit is focused on the commercialisation of the Waste-to-Energy technology, along with its ongoing scientific development. However, the unit has a diverse portfolio of technologies, some mature and ready for commercial application, and others in the first stages of development.
Reddit is a social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website. Reddit’s registered community members can submit content, such as text posts or direct links. Registered users can then vote submissions up or down to organise the posts and determine their position on the site’s pages. The submissions with the most positive votes appear on the front page or the top of a category. Content entries are organised by areas of interest called “subreddits”. The subreddit topics include news, science, gaming, movies, music, books, fitness, food, and image-sharing, among many others. As of 2016, Reddit had 542 million monthly visitors (234 million unique users), ranking #11 most visited web-site in US and #25 in the world. Across 2015, Reddit saw 82.54 billion pageviews, 73.15 million submissions, 725.85 million comments, and 6.89 billion upvotes from its users.
*By Kirosha Naicker and Dr Neil Stacey
Publish date: 2016-12-06 00:00:00.0
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