'We know that we are reaching people through social media that we weren’t reaching a couple of years ago… That’s helping us to broaden the conversation and awareness of development issues.'

In this interview, Jim Rosenberg - Head of Online and Social Media at The World Bank, Jonathan Tanner – Media and Public Affairs Officer at ODI and Nick Scott, Digital Manager at ODI, discuss the use of social media channels in development and research communications.

The discussants explore the following issues:

• Persuading research orientated staff of the merits of condensing their work for different online platforms – how are you managing to meet that challenge?
• Managing the loss of control over messaging and branding posed by the use of social media by staff, and the potential consequences for reputations.
• Effectively measuring the impact of social media to show that we are really extending our communications reach in a way that makes a difference to people’s behaviour?
• The tension between online or social media and more traditional forms of media