While
it may be April, there are always things we can learn from evaluating
past years, so we’ve decided to have a look over the most popular news,
features and public lectures were on the University website in 2012.
Press releases
The
University’s Press Office published over 200 press releases in 2012,
resulting in media coverage around the world. The top stories on the
University website were as follows.
Published
mid-August, this story of the UK’s largest study of the health benefits
of yoga describes how specialised classes could be a cost-effective way
of treating back pain. The story had a second spike in visits in
mid-Autumn as interest picked up again on Facebook.
This
article from August announces the University’s joining of the Russell
Group, following its acceptance to the organisation earlier in the year.
Graduation was in the second week of July. A lot of traffic here came from Google, Twitter and Facebook.
For its fiftieth anniversary, the University appointed sixteen new professors, as detailed in this article from July 4th.
Published
in January, this story describes a process which hints at how life on
Earth first formed. Almost a quarter of the article’s traffic came
through the University’s RSS feed.
On February 24th the Queen presented the University with an award for its archaeological research.
This
article from September covers a study from the Department of Psychology
on how increased gender equality has reduced gender differences in mate
selection.
Almost
three quarters of the hits on this piece from November 21st are
attributable to links from archaeological news aggregator
archaeologica.org. It covers research by the Department of Archaeology
which suggested that paleolithic handaxes showed bonds of trust between
specimens of homo erectus, challenging earlier theories of dominance and aggression.
Our
most-visited science article for the year was this one, detailing how
physicists at the University were able to use magnets in a way which
could potentially have big impacts on hard drive transfer speeds. The
discovery was cited on tech news website engadget.com, where it inspired a spirited exchange in the comments thread.
The
University’s invitation to join the Russell Group in March 2012 was by
far the most viewed news story of the year, receiving almost three times
as much traffic as the second place story (see the huge spike in the
chart above). Over 10% of viewers came from Facebook.
Features
In
addition to press release stories, we also publish feature articles
which either delve deeper into academic work taking place at the
University and tell other interesting stories. These were the most
visited last year:
After fitting one thousand ants with radio receivers, scientists at York tracked them to discover how they network and live.
While
the article concerns the Times Higher Education Awards 2011 and was
published in November that year, this article continued to receive
significant numbers of visitors throughout the first half of 2012
8. You@York
Applicants
who received an offer to study at York gain access to You@York, a
personalised site providing information from the University and
departments. The traffic patterns are interesting here, declining slowly
over the year and spiking on A-level results day in August.
The
University won the award mentioned above, while several departments
were shortlisted for other awards. The feature detailed the steps the
University has taken in order to qualify, as well as information on the
awards ceremony itself.
The annual York Festival of Ideas provided many experiences and exhibitions under the theme of “Metamorphosis”.
HRH Princess Anne visited York to open the Diamond Wood at Heslington East in September 2012
An
interesting entry on the history of pantomime, this was originally
published in January 2011 and saw consistent hits throughout the year
followed by a significant boost in the run-up to Christmas. Almost all
hits were directly from Google, where the page ranks highly in searches for “pantomime history”.
This
feature provided links to resources that new students at the University
would find useful. Most of its attention was focussed very clearly on
the week running up to Welcome Week.
The
£9m York Sport Village opened in August, featuring a swimming pool for
both students and the public. The opening of such a large development
generated a lot of interest, with the bulk of traffic coming directly
from Google searches.
When the University was named one of the top ten “young” Universities in the world in May 2012, this feature summarised our achievement and the areas in which University
excels. The page received almost eight times as many hits as our number
two feature, including a large spike on first publication but then a
steady stream of additional visits throughout the year (the page was
linked prominently from most web pages using our standard design).
Public lectures
The
University puts on a large number of free public lectures each year,
attracting many people from both within the University and from the
local community. The lectures cover all sorts of topics and are well
worth attending - look out for the summer programme for this year coming
soon.
In 2012, the most visited public lecture web pages were:
Professor
David Howard from the Department of Electronics gave this lecture on
the compression techniques used to shrink MP3 files.
As
part of the Athena Swan programme, Dr Sue Black from University College
London delivered this lecture on the efforts to save the World War Two
codebreaking headquarters at Bletchley Park from decay.
Professor
Peter Main from the Department of Physics gave this lecture on the
intermeshing of science and art, receiving a lot of attention in
February.
On
the theme of economic trouble, former Director-General of the Council
for British Industry, Sir Richard Lambert delivered this lecture on the
causes and consequences of the wealth gap in the UK. Interestingly for a
lecture, this received fairly consistent traffic throughout October and
November, instead of a large rise then fall.
York’s own Dr Jane Grenville delivered this lecture as a part of the events surrounding Holocaust Memorial Day
Royal
Holloway College’s Professor Robert Eaglestone delivered this lecture
about public awareness of genocide as a part of Holocaust Memorial day.
This
economics lecture was delivered by journalist Nicholas Wapshott and
discussed how modern economic theories impact the global economy.
Traffic to the page gradually rose before the event itself, before
falling once it was over.
This
Royal Institute of Philosophy lecture was delivered by Cambridge’s
Professor Tim Crane and focussed on questions of consciousness and
existence.
This
topical lecture from Professor Christopher Pissarides of LSE covered
modern thoughts on unemployment and its causes. Traffic followed a
U-shape, peaking both when tickets became available and on the day of
the talk itself.
Professor
Jim Al-Khalili of the University of Surrey delivered this lecture on
mysteries and questions that people have about science. As expected for a
popular figure in science education, demand for tickets drove traffic
particularly high in the weeks preceding the talk.
