Social media for fisheries science and management professionals: How to use Bluesky and Instagram, and why you should

ABSTRACT

Social media tools have revolutionized how people communicate with one another. A 2018 paper in Fisheries summarized the use of Twitter, Facebook, and blogs for fisheries science and management professionals. Since that time, there have been many changes in the social media landscape. These changes include the decline in usefulness and professional use of Twitter, longstanding tools like Instagram becoming more widely used in the professional community, and the emergence of new tools like Bluesky. The goal of this paper is to summarize the professional benefits of social media usage that are applicable for fisheries science and management professionals, and to provide a detailed guide for those who wish to use Instagram and Bluesky. When properly used, these tools can help fisheries scientists and professionals with stakeholder outreach, professional networking, and research.

INTRODUCTION

Social media tools have transformed communications, making it easier than ever before in history to share information with colleagues, stakeholders, managers, or the interested public. This has important implications for fisheries science and management professionals, and in 2018, Fisheries invited a paper to explain the professional use of social media tools (Shiffman, 2018). That paper focused on the use of Twitter, Facebook (fan pages and groups, ) and blogs.

Social media tools have implications for stakeholder outreach (Crandall et al., 2020; Evans & Cvitanovic, 2018; Shiffman, 2020), research on fishing practices (Allison et al., 2023), gathering landing and sightings data (Giovos et al., 2020; McDavitt & Kyne, 2020) and both sharing technical information with and learning from fellow professionals (Peoples et al., 2016). However, there have been many changes in the social media landscape since 2018, and accordingly, Fisheries invited this follow up paper, which aims to summarize changes to the social media landscape since 2018 and introduce readers to Bluesky and Instagram.

THE DECLINE OF TWITTER

The first iteration of this paper (Shiffman, 2018) recommended that fisheries scientists and management professionals join and use Twitter. Science Twitter (e.g., an online community of researchers, practitioners, and communicators) was a vibrant place for a decade (approximately 2010–2020, ) but Twitter has been declining in professional usefulness, and accordingly, has been declining in use among professional scientists since dramatic changes to the user experience were introduced by new ownership (Insall, 2023; Kupferschmidt, 2022; Shiffman, 2022; Valero, 2023). Among other things, new leadership renamed Twitter as “X,” a terminological change that we do not recognize here because it is needless, to say the least…

Though the spread of pseudoscience, misinformation, and disinformation (i.e., deliberately misleading or false information), including on topics related to fisheries management and ocean conservation (Ford et al., 2021; Shiffman, 2024a) have long been a problem, these have dramatically worsened, as has the harassment of scientists, especially of minorities, (Levy, 2023). Scientific conferences that once used Twitter extensively are reporting that they’re not seeing the value or engagement that they once saw, and are advising that other conferences switch to another social media platform (Cusick et al., 2024).

Put simply: Science Twitter used to be both fun and professionally valuable, and now is neither. It is also important to note that Meta, which owns both Facebook and Instagram, has eliminated their fact checking teams and rules, which means a similar fate may befall these tools. Accordingly, the second iteration of this paper no longer recommends the use of Twitter for fisheries scientists and management professionals, or, frankly, anyone. Though this once-beneficial tool is no longer useful, this does not mean that social media in general is no longer useful.

BLUESKY

Bluesky experienced enormous growth in the later part of 2024 and has become the landing point for many scientists and environmentalists who are fleeing Twitter, who have described it as “like old Science Twitter” and “a place of joy” (Kupferschmidt, 2024; Mallapaty, 2024). It has been suggested as a new home for those who abandoned Science Twitter (Shiffman, 2024b). This occurred both organically and as part of a large-scale informal recruiting effort by scientists already using the platform (i.e., reaching out to colleagues using other platforms and encouraging them to try Bluesky). Anyone, not only scientists or professionals, can join Bluesky and, as of this writing, 32 ­million users have.

Bluesky strongly resembles Twitter’s interface, but it has several key differences. One important difference is dramatically improved moderation tools, which will be a breath of fresh air to any professional who left Twitter due to harassment (Kleppmann et al., 2024). Other differences are described throughout this section.

Creating an account is free, quick, and easy—though it is strongly recommended to add a photo and a brief biography so that people you interact with know that you are a professional in this field. The similarities to Twitter’s interface should make it easier for new Bluesky users with Twitter experience to get started, but if one just does exactly what they did with Twitter, it will not work nearly as well. For those unfamiliar with Twitter wanting to try Bluesky, see Shiffman (2024b).

Who should you follow on Bluesky, and how do you find them?

Another key difference from Twitter is that Bluesky has no central algorithm, and instead your user experience is defined entirely by who you follow. The enormous benefit of this is less spam and rage bait nonsense designed to game the algorithm, but the downside is that it means that you need to follow more accounts (which can be accounts representing individuals or institutions, including government, academic, or nongovernmental organizations) or your feed will appear empty.

There are free online tools like Sky Follower Bridge (https://www.sky-follower-bridge.dev/) that allow you to find everyone who you followed on Twitter who now has a Bluesky account, or you can start from scratch. This can be done via Bluesky’s built-in “search” feature—for example, a search of “fisheries” reveals everyone who has this term in their bio. You can also find people as they reply to your posts, or as other people share their posts, and follow them one by one.

One of Bluesky’s biggest innovations is the “starter pack,” which are user-created lists of other users. One can follow all users included in a starter pack or read their bios and pick and choose. New starter packs are being created all the time, but at the time of this writing exist for many fisheries science and management related topics (Table 1).

There are also countless more starter packs focusing on broader marine biology, ecology, and conservation, which are linked in a constantly updated science starter packs Google Doc (https://bit.ly/41kMTy9).

Another big innovation of Bluesky is the ability to create, share, and use custom “feeds” quickly and easily. These allow you to see everyone posting about a given topic or topics or interest even if you don’t follow these people (and don’t want to see other things they post about). Some are designed so that they catch any post from any user using a particular keyword in their post, while others rely on a screened list of users, or require users to add an emoji to signal “please include this post in this feed.” As of this writing, there are currently feeds for marine life (https://bit.ly/3F4fe4n), fishes (https://bit.ly/4ijvXyQ), fish biology and fisheries (https://bit.ly/4h05rcM), fisheries science research (https://bit.ly/41EI4B4), and many more, with new ones created all the time. To search for feeds of interest, use GoodFeeds.co or the native search feature within BlueSky, or examine this constantly-updated list of science feeds on Bluesky (https://bit.ly/41r4Nzc). To create your own using any topical keywords of interest, see a guide by Thaler (2024).

What should you post on Bluesky

Bluesky allows people to post in units of up to 300 characters of text. Multiple posts can be strung together into a “thread.” You can also add images, such as a photo of a field research adventure or a figure from your paper, or a link to a paper or news article (Figure 1). Adding descriptive “alt text” (i.e., user-provided descriptive text summaries of what is in an image for the visually impaired) to images is considered a best practice, and, indeed, the main science feed requires it. Alt-text allows images to be accessible for users with visual impairments who use screen-readers, and also makes posts searchable. The limit of 300 characters is plenty of space for asking a question, advertising a job or grant, introducing a new paper, sharing a deadline to submit a public comment about a management issue, or any of countless more professional topics (Figure 2). Replies and conversations are common and encouraged.

Just remember that on Bluesky and, indeed across social media, it is considered best practice to share other peoples’ work much more often than you share your own—the first word is “social,” after all. Social media is much more interesting (and professionally useful) for everyone when it’s more than a bunch of people shouting, “Hey pay attention to me.” See Nisbet and Scheufele (2009) for an excellent discussion of the dialogue model of public science engagement.

INSTAGRAM

Instagram is a social media service that focuses on sharing images and short videos (called “Reels”). Instagram is widely used in some fields of science, including by scientific organizations, such as museums, zoos, and aquariums (e.g., Rowan, 2021)—in part because of the highly visual nature of these organizations and their exhibits. It’s also widely used by the recreational angling community and the recreational scuba community and has been used as a data source for research papers (e.g., Kroetz et al., 2021). It can lend itself well to fisheries science and management professional uses. Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn, Bluesky, and the formerly useful Twitter, Instagram does not easily allow the sharing of links, which potentially limits many professional uses (e.g., sharing a paper, job ad, funding opportunity). Though many people do include the text of a link in their photo captions, it does not display as a hyperlink and, therefore, cannot simply be clicked to take a follower to that link’s destination. Instagram allows users to easily display one link at a time in their biography section, so users may see “Link in Bio” in posts frequently. Assuming that one does not wish to update the one link in their bio every time they have a new paper or job ad to promote, one work-around is a third-party service called LinkTree (https://linktr.ee/). LinkTree is essentially a secondary landing page—link to your LinkTree as your own “Link in Bio,” and anyone who clicks it will be taken to your landing page, which can contain many links. You can also display a link in your Instagram “story,” which is a temporary 24-h post, and you can also share other peoples’ posts in your stories (and they can share yours).

Who should you follow on Instagram, and how do you find them?

Unlike Bluesky, Instagram does have a central algorithm that influences whether or not users see a post. Many users report seeing more posts shared from the algorithm as “suggested for you” than posts from users they follow. Because of this, who you follow is perhaps less vital here than on Bluesky, but a mix of individual scientists and institutional accounts (e.g., the National Marine Fisheries Service) can provide a balanced feed. While perhaps less useful for professional tasks, following some of Instagram’s incredible underwater photographers can certainly brighten your feed. To find people, search for keywords that might appear in their bio, or search for topics that they might post about, either as individual words (e.g., “Sustainable Fisheries,” or as hashtags (e.g., #SustainableFisheries)—either or both may appear in a user’s bio or post captions.

What should you post on Instagram?

Posts should include detailed captions—people need to know what they’re looking at and why you thought it was worth sharing, as well as any key take-home information. These captions should include photo credits and/or a source of the information (e.g., what paper your figure is from) if it’s not obvious. Captions should also include hashtags (Figure 3)—an Instagram-internal set of search terms that can be thought of as similar to journal keywords. Generally, I advise a mix of general hashtags (#science has about 25,000,000 posts) and specific hashtags related to your study species or region (e.g., #SandbarShark has about 10,000 posts, #BiscayneBayFishing has about 500). Using a mix of hashtags can attract both your specific target audience (e.g., South Florida anglers who might see Sandbar Sharks Carcharhinus plumbeus) and a wider audience that will drive up your overall followers and engagement (e.g., anyone interested in science). You can search either Instagram itself or external sites to see what potentially relevant hashtags are popular recently.

A post can include multiple photos, which users can scroll between—a combination that can work well is a screenshot of the title of a scientific paper, a key figure from the paper, and a photo of you in the field or lab.

Some professional fisheries science and management updates lend themselves well to this visual-first format, such as photos of study organisms, field research adventures, or key figures from papers or reports (Figure 4). Turning some scientific stories and news updates into something that’s possible to share on Instagram can require a little creativity and flexibility, unlike on Bluesky, where one can simply share a link (Verstappen & Opgenhaffen, 2024). If a paper’s figure doesn’t lend itself well to sharing as a standalone image on Instagram, a user can make an infographic just for sharing their paper on social media, or use free services like Canva (https://www.canva.com/) to create striking imagery that will help to share information about their paper. Depending on your type of employment and your personality, it should be noted that some scientists prefer to post more about their research and less about themselves, but more personal perspectives (such as photos that feature the actual scientist in question) have been shown to contribute to increased public trust in science and increased social media engagement (Jarreau et al., 2019). Though, as noted above, please be aware that recent changes to Meta’s fact-checking and harassment policies may make Instagram an unpleasant or unproductive experience—as of this writing, it’s too early to tell.

CONCLUSIONS

Since the first iteration of this paper, one of the main platforms used by scientists for public science engagement and professional networking has become nearly unusable, while other platforms have come into existence or increased in popularity. That is unsurprising, as we wrote more than a decade ago, “It is important to remember that the medium is not the message…in an ecosystem as dynamic as the internet, becoming entrenched in one of two platforms is a guaranteed way to be left behind” (Thaler et al., 2012). Who knows what will be popular when a third version of this paper comes out?

Even though preferred platforms may be changing, social media remains a powerful tool for fisheries science and management professionals. Mastery of this will lead to improved public science engagement, professional networking, and development opportunities, and being better informed about key developments in the field. It can also be an enormous amount of fun!

While this introductory guide is no substitute for formal training in these tools, it should be more than enough to get you started.

FUNDING

None declared.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank Fisheries Editor in Chief, Steven Cooke, for the invitation to contribute this manuscript. Thanks to Sarah McAnulty and Andrew Thaler for guidance on early versions of this manuscript, and Glendon Mellow for inviting the author to try Bluesky in time to be one of the first 50,000 users. The author invites readers to follow him @WhySharksMatter on all social media platforms.

REFERENCES

Author notes