ScienceBlogsIsa,High,School,Clique,, Nature,Network,Isa ... · interaction, analogous to a! high...

CJMS Special issue Fall 2012 / RCÉM numéro thématique automne 2012 240

"ScienceBlogs Is a High School Clique, Nature Network Is a Private Club": Imagining the Communities of Online Science Alice Bell, Imperial College London Abstract This paper is the result of preliminary research on people who blog about the brain. Situated in science studies’ ongoing interest in the forming and articulating of professional boundaries in the mediation of science, this research has a particular interest in how science bloggers view their audiences, the community they sit within and their personal social identity within that. The paper starts with some broad background on science blogging, in particular the ways in which science bloggers seem to congregate around networks, their concerns over seeming exclusive, and they ways they may actively attempt to either maintain or blur boundaries around the social identity of scientist, journalist and blogger. It then offers some rough work-‐in-‐progress results of a small survey study. From this early analysis, it seems that an idea of an audience is important to science bloggers, although they are not necessarily all that sure of the specific make up of this audience. Moreover, it seems that science bloggers see their audiences not simply seen a recipient of scientific knowledge, but a potential resource, and as blogging as being part of an ongoing diverse conversation. Keywords: Blogging, science writing, professional identities. Introduction Who speaks for science in science media has always been a contentious issue, with scholars of science in the media traditionally on the watch out for ways in which the scientific community may aim to control science reporting (e.g. Nelkin


1995). Members of the scientific community have even openly and proudly defended their right to act as gatekeepers over science news, pleading a “special case” against a defense of the independent critical role of journalists as watchdogs of scientific institutions (Sumner et al 2011, Bhattacharya 2011). Perhaps the scientific community should not be so worried though. Empirical studies of science media content suggest that journalists tend draw on the voices of scientists for science news as opposed to celebrities, explicitly “lay” voices or, perhaps most importantly in terms of furthering public debate on science policy issues, politicians (see, for example, Mellor et al. 2011, 44-‐57. Also Hargreaves et al, 2003, 16-‐17). The ease of publishing provided by recent advances in communication technology has, potentially at least, facilitated a breaking of a restrictive expert to media to audience model, fostering in its wave spaces where interesting and interested peoples may meet to share ideas and knowledge online. A recent special edition of Journalism devoted to digital science reporting reflected extensively on a potential blurring of traditional professional roles and divides between scientist, mediator and public (especially Shanahan 2011, Fahy & Nisbet 2011). This reflects science studies’ long-‐standing obsession with the way in which professional boundaries are formed and articulated through the popularization of science, often in ways that may act to serve the status quo of the more powerful nexus of the scientific community (Hilgartner 1990, Bucchi 1998, Gieryn 1999). Many in science communication studies have therefore attempted to critique/ disrupt such boundaries, part of a movement away from top-‐down declaration of scientific authority and towards more discursive models of public participation. Arguably the more participatory moments of online communication offer some opportunity for developing such work. It also offers more opportunities for boundary articulation too. Some members of the online science community talk hopefully of new ecosystems where professionals and hobbyists of many types co-‐operate, learn from and respectfully critique each other (e.g. Yong 2010ab, Zivkovic 2010b). Others find the new closeness and overlaps uncomfortable, arguing for retained sense of separate science journalism aside from blogging (Fox 2010) and calling out


http://futurity.org/ – an aggregator of university communications releases – as ‘propaganda’ (see Learner 2009). The quote in my title – from a post on the Society for Scholarly Publishing’s blog (Crotty 2010) – takes a similarly cynical view, suggesting science blogs only offer rather closed spaces for interaction, analogous to a high school clique or private club. Crotty’s blogpost was inspired by a small research project that had just been published in the open access Journal of Science Communication and had argued that science blogging can be seen to reinforce a traditional top-‐down model of science communication rather than reach out as public engagement (Kouper 2010). This research had caused rather a lot of (negative) responses from the community it aimed to talk about, including from a blogger who had been part of the peer review process (Zivkovic 2010a). It’s hard to tell who is right or wrong here, with a lot of anecdote and broad assumptions about audiences being swapped in cases for or against blogging’s ability to broaden the public discussion of science. This paper aims learn a bit more about the ways in which bloggers themselves see the community they sit within. It may be an imagined or partial view of their audience, but it is their imagined/ partial audience, and so interesting in its own right. I start with some broad background on science blogging, in particular the way it seems to congregate around networks as this sheds some useful light on the make up of science blogging. I then move onto more specific work on people who blog about a topic I chose as a case study, the brain, with some rough early data based on a small survey. From this early analysis, it seems to me that an idea of an audience is important to many science bloggers, although bloggers are not that sure of this audience. Moreover, it seems that science bloggers see their audiences not simply seen as a simply a recipient of scientific knowledge, but a potential resource. The nature and networks of science blogging Networks Although word “networking” is a familiar one to any interested in online communication, one of the striking things about science bloggers is the way they congregate around networks. The quote


used in my title reflects two such networks, and some of the social tension this causes. It is worth describing these two networks briefly, and sketching their history as it provides some texture of the field as it currently stands by way of introduction to my more specific study of brain bloggers. The network ScienceBlogs was launched in January 2006 by the Seed media group. It recruited previously-‐established science bloggers, who were given small amount of payment from adverts placed on the site (Robbins 2011, Mims 2011). The early players in Nature Network have been, so far, less open about describing their history. From what I can discern from personal correspondence, it started around the same time, as a set of local hubs in Boston and London, with the aim of growing into an international network. There were events linked to online community building (Brown 2011), and they would often invite people to start blogging with them, rather than bringing in ready-‐made blogs, so can be credited with inspiring people, especially scientists, to blog. It is also worth noting that anyone wanting to comment on a Nature Network blog had to go through a reasonably lengthy registration process At time of writing, both ScienceBlogs and Nature Network still exist, but there is a reason for my slip into past tense. Since Crotty’s post, there has been a large exodus from ScienceBlogs, and a smaller one from Nature Network. They do not dominate the field in the same way. In the wake, new networks have been set up. There are independent networks; notably Scientopia1, mainly comprised of ex-‐ScienceBlog members, and Occam’s Typewriter2, largely built by a small group leaving Nature Network. There are also networks housed on mainstream media websites including Wired, the Guardian and, most recently, Scientific American. For all that science bloggers wanted to free themselves from ScienceBlogs or Nature Network, they still seemed to like the idea of network. There are also looser networks of affiliation that bloggers, both on and off the more formal networks, connect to and be aggregated by, notably ResearchBlogging3, and BadScienceBlogs4 as well as 1 http://scientopia.org/ 2 http://occamstypewriter.org/ 3 http://researchblogging.org/ 4 http://www.badscienceblogs.net/


regular ‘blog carnivals’ (posts curating posts around a particular theme). It is also worth noting the impact of the large international Science Online conference run in North Carolina since 20065, as well as other meetups/ conferences which cement connections and relationships amongst bloggers. There seems, at least to my reading, to be some sense of a science blogging community, albeit with one with many sub-‐sections and apparently exclusive cliques, which exists more broadly and more long-‐standing than Nature Network or Science Blogs. In some respects, the networked nature of science blogging could be seen as a surprise. Other genres of blogging do not express their networked nature in quite the same degree. Bloggers may express aspects of their personal identity and membership of small subgroups with badges or lists of other bloggers they read. Political bloggers in particular will often articulate a connection to particular political party or issue, and there are several blogger networks but science bloggers seem to take it a step further. Talking to science bloggers who use networks, the network seems to be seen to provide writers with a chance to link to each other, thus potentially driving traffic to each other. They also provide a sense of community and core audience if bloggers assume their co-‐bloggers read each others’ posts, and network members often provide technical support for each other. In the case of Nature Network bloggers, the idea of a network gave a reason to blog in the first place, and some were surprised to discover, on leaving, that it was so easy to blog independently, easier even. With ScienceBlogs, an invite to join the network meant some payment, as it does with some (though not all) of the other networks. Although rarely enough to live on, there is perhaps a sense of professionalism as well as signifier of worth/ esteem from peers for bloggers, as well as an incentive. I suspect there also is trust issue behind the popularity of networks, as science writers are especially worried about signifying authority. This is perhaps particularly the case when it comes to a possibly connection to the Nature brand, but could be said for smaller independent networks as a group at least implies

5 http://scienceonline2011.com/about/


that others are happy to be associated with their ideas. A diluted, though still powerful expression of scientific consensus perhaps. Relationship with mainstream media Arguably, blogging could be considered a chance to cultivate something very different from the traditional patterns of mainstream media. Indeed, sections of science blogging, particularly those associated with skeptic communities (both “skeptics” who support scientific consensus and “climate skeptics”) are rooted in frustrations with mainstream media covers science (some discussion in Colson 2011). The issue of bloggers verses journalists comes up here as it does outside of science-‐specific worries, something which many science bloggers themselves dislike, especially those who are cultivating careers in mainstream journalism, or have a background in the field already (e.g. Yong 2010ab, see also discussion in Bell, forthcoming). Christopher Mims, who was key in setting up ScienceBlogs, recently reminisced (via twitter, hence style of language):

Anarchy was built into the site from day 1. No one would have signed up if we hadn't given them free reign to say anything’ Editorially it ‘ran itself […] The upside of no oversight was... no work for editors. Thus was born the term "cat herding". It was an education in the 'future' of journalism -‐-‐ no control, no hierarchy, just... self organization. […] I was just their chief enabler. ;) (see Robbins 2011).

A similar sense of independence was built into the Guardian network, as the journalist who spearheaded the project, Alok Jha told the Neiman Lab blog, the Guardian science desk (or at least its webpage) would ‘essentially become a channel for these guys to report from their worlds they’re all seeing’. The bloggers would ‘lend a bit of their stardust to us’, and in return, they’ll get exposure not just to a broader readership, but a potentially more diverse one, as well (see Garber 2010). Still, we should not imagine the inclusion of blogging within mainstream media is somehow an example of power to the people; a sign of news organizations relinquishing traditional patterns of communication


to be ‘audience-‐led’. The ‘stardust’ of the Guardian network includes an ex-‐MP and a Professor of Physics from a top UK university; these are the sorts of sources and expert views a journalist would go to in writing a story anyway; they do not necessarily amount to new voices. He also told Neiman: ‘it’s good to have criticism from scientists when we do things wrong […] but it’s also good to have them understand how we write things -‐ and give them a chance to do it’. Bringing bloggers into mainstream media may mean some of their critique of mainstream media gets fed into the beast itself, making science journalism more reflexive (Bell, forthcoming), but it also means bloggers learn a bit more about the pressures of professional journalism. Interestingly, Mims also told me in interview that one thing he regretted was allowing bloggers to see data on how many hits their blogposts got, as he felt it led to slightly more sensationalised writing, echoing problems in online mainstream media which science bloggers themselves are often very critical of (Mims 2011). The pseudonymous blogger ‘Gimpy’ wrote calling for independence of bloggers in the wake of the Guardian network opening (Gimpy 2010). It is also worth noting that Gimpy is a professional scientist, and a member of the Bad Science community, which has a history of producing critique of professional journalism, largely inspired by the work of Ben Goldacre (see Riesch & Mendel 2010), often wearing non-‐professionalism as a badge of quality, or at least as a sign that they can escape the various constraints of professionalised mainstream media. The idea of blogging as somehow outside of mainstream media remains at least in parts of science blogging, for all the glitzy networks. Who are science blog writers and readers? The question of who blogs exactly is one of the many surrounding this topic I am not sure we can have a decent answer to, or at least we do not know how to go about answering it; the nature of blogging being too large, diffuse and unruly to get an easy empirical grasp upon. There are some attempts at a blogger-‐initiated ‘census’ of science blogging (Edward 2011), which may paint some picture but relies on bloggers not only wanting to and bothering to self-‐identify themselves, but also finding the census


in the first place (although sharing nature of contemporary web culture does facilitate this; the census has been ‘tweeted around’). One very blunt approach is to look at the major networks, which are made up largely of a mix of professional scientists and science writers. They are not all big name scientists though, suggesting blogging can provide diverse voice to science especially when it comes to post-‐doctorial researchers, and some professional writers, notably Ed Yong and Brian Switek, have built much of their careers through blogging. Research on the Bad Science community of bloggers by Riesch and Mendel (2010) suggests that many, but by no means all, bloggers have scientific training. Bad Science in particular but science blogging in general is also interesting for its use of pseudonyms. This is sometimes for the usual pseudonymous blogger reasons of wanting to keep other professional and personal identities separate, including sometimes the freedom to complain about work/ home life, but science bloggers may also be careful of their identity because they work with animals or, especially in skeptic blogging, because they are worried about being sued for libel by alternative medicine community. Some Bad Science bloggers, perhaps due to influence of evidence based medicine movement on the community, are especially keen to break connections with traditional badges of authority through their pseudonymity though. There has been some debate over the lack of women in science blogging (see Munger 2010) the problems in discerning the extent of this and reasons for it are very complex though, requiring nuanced and in depth research6. Who reads science blogs is an even harder question to discern. As I will discuss later, it was a fascinating question to ask bloggers, but more in terms of the way they addressed the question than the answers they could provide. Concerns over science blogging not managing to reach the public were not only prompted by the fallout of Kouper‘s paper, but a much discussed topic during the 2011 Science Online conference (e.g. Anthes 2011). This reflects something else we might see as an odd characteristic of science blogging: an expressed desire to connect with outside groups. I 6 See discussion under Robbins (2010), especially lengthy comment by David Dobbs. Mendick and Moreau (2010) have some much more developed research on women and online science media, although it was a small and limited project (see also Bell, 2011, for some critique and overview of this).


say odd, because in many ways we might see the practice of science blogging as an opportunity to talk to like-‐minded people about niche topics. As one science journalist and science blogger put it in an interview with me, blogging ‘lowers the activation energy’ of whether to publish on any given topic, as you do not need to assume a huge audience to excuse running a printing press (Oransky 2011). Blogging therefore perhaps allows science writers to escape the mass interests of mass media. I should stress that not all science bloggers feel the same way about their audiences, although it is interesting to note that they feel they are raising an ‘elephant in the room’ to go against the idea that managing to attract a broad audience is a good thing. To quote geologist/ blogger Chris Rowan:

some of us are scientists first, and science writers second. There is a fundamental difference between writing for your day job and writing about your day job […] we lose sight of the fact that science blogging is most valuable when it spans the entire continuum between scientific journals and popular exposition. Good writing can sometimes be technical, and aimed at a narrow audience. (Rowan 2011)

Arguably, a desire to spread science to a large audience fits within the long history of drives to the popularization of science and concerns over the public understanding of science (Broks 2006), as well as a culture of openness and inclusivity often associated with web culture. To put this in the more recent history of the public understanding of science movement and calls for greater scientific literacy (c.1985 onwards), it is worth noting the criticism of the scientific community’s rather uni-‐directional approach to communication, which defines the public as ignorant and in need of simple dissemination of science. This critique formed the basis of what is now more commonly called ‘public engagement with science and technology’ which stresses mutual learning; science’s need to listening to the public and a sense that expertise outside the scientific community maybe a resource, not a hurdle (some overview in Irwin 2009). It is often argued – fairly in my view – that this shift to engagement is largely hand waving rhetoric, but it is wrong to assume nothing has chanced (Burchell et al. 2009). Similarly, although I think it is fair to be cynical of science blogging as more than an attempt at dissemination, the


field does embody some of the history of a post-‐PUS critique of talking down to non-‐scientists, as well as the many elements of web culture which stress the positive value of interactivity. The way desires to be both inclusive and exclusive mingle in such online spaces are one of the many things Brian Trench (2008) describes as an apparent paradoxes of online science, or it at least reflects the heterogeneous nature of actors in the field. Building a case study: brain bloggers The fact that bloggers are not only often so self-‐analytical but actively leave traces of such analysis posted online, mean they produce prestigious quantities of primary sources for budding researchers. The first stage of my work – as outlined above – was developed from researching posts and watching bloggers interact online (e.g. twitter, in comments), supplemented by attending blogger meetups and some interviews. However, as a researcher, I felt it worth generating some new data via first a brief survey (which will be reported below) and which I could use to frame later in-‐depth interviews. I decided to focus on people who blog about something to do with the brain. It seemed like an area which there is a lot of public interest in and some history of interdisciplinary research; both issues potentially throwing up some interesting tensions from which to explore issues of boundary blurring or re-‐articulation. Under an umbrella of brain blogging I thought I might find elements of ‘bad science blogging’ (debunking media myths) outreach work (communicating research to the public) and researchers talking about their work in quite technical ways. I was also conscious that brain blogging was not an identity consciously articulated within the science blogging community, so it would be interesting to see who the tag drew in. Analytical framework As well as the background of science studies’ interest in boundaries (e.g. Hilgartner 1990, Bucchi 1998, Gieryn 1999), I also drew on David Brake’s (2009) work on the imagined audience of what he calls ‘personal bloggers’ (journal-‐based bloggers rather than political communication or knowledge sharing). Although the type of bloggers Brake studied were in


many ways quite different from the ones I wanted to consider, I thought the basic idea of a sense of an imagined audience would be useful, and Brakes’ framework of the types of relationship to imagined audiences he spotted in his research subject looked like something which might map on, at least slightly, to science writers. Indeed, the notion of imagined audiences seemed like a useful topic for science communication scholarship even outside of new, complex and uncertain communities of online communication (it was also something I touched on slightly on my previous work with children’s science book writers, e.g. Bell 2008). Brake defined four types of bloggers in this study: monologic, wishing their posts to be read by friends but not seeking a response; dialogic, using their blogs to engage with friends; telelogic, using their blogs to engage with a broad range of unknown others; and lastly, (and unexpectedly) some appeared to be primarily self-‐directed in their blogging practice. In this latter group, the interactional aspects of their blogging appeared to be secondary to other goals, which Brake summarised as quasi-‐therapy (relief of emotion through its expression), quasi-‐sociality (a feeling of being heard by unknown others but without a strong desire to interact with them) or blogging as an end in itself (the pleasure of mastering a new tool or of expressing oneself through writing). My hypothesis, based on knowledge of science blogging so far and the history of scientists communicating is that we will see telelogic stressed but not necessarily easily backed up, with monologic and telelogic also dominant (and ‘friends’ here replaced with academic peers). However, Brake was surprised by his results and I am open to be so too. I think such a context will provide interesting results in terms of the ways different genres of blogger approach audience and writers’ sense of intended readers, but also fit into work in science studies on ideas about the public (e.g. Michael 2009). A model based on personal blogging does not exactly fit science blogging, although the differences may well be illuminating in themselves. E.g. less writing for personal therapy and more for a moral desire to share science with the people, an attitude satirised in the opening lines of Gregory and Miller’s (1998) book Science in Public as “Thou Shalt Communicate”.


Methodological approach I started noting the blogs and twitter accounts I could personally identify as brain bloggers; following their own links and lists to find more. I then posted an open survey on my blog with a deadline of roughly a month to reply. I emailed several bloggers I knew of in advance. This was partly as a personal invite for them to fill it in, but also to encourage them to share it too as I wanted to see who the invitation to participate would draw in. I knew that these invites would frame the perimeters of the call slightly, but also hoped it would help pollinate more replies than I could without it. The aim here was just to increase the perimeters of where I would look, and get some ideas for how to frame interview questions. However, the data was, although small, interesting in itself, and so offered here. It was posted on twitter by me and several high profile bloggers. I had 14 reply in the comment section (these could see others’ answers before), and 47 in total. Some of the people who responded had some relationship with me online, or read content I posted (even if I wasn’t aware of them). One respondent also remembered me from a science studies conference. I was being purposely vague with the notion of brain bloggers. My call said:

By ‘brain bloggers’ I mean bloggers who write about the stuff that goes in people’s heads, whatever we think this stuff is. Such bloggers might focus on neurology or psychology, or another field entirely. It might be the history, anthropology or commercial applications of these fields. It might come under ‘research blogging’, journalism, ‘public engagement’ or some form of political activism (or several of these at once, or something else entirely). This focus might be exclusively brain-‐y, or brain-‐ish issues might be topics they occasionally blog about in the course of other work (Bell 2010).

Although I was seeding this snowball approach with my email invites, I wanted to see who it attracted. For example, one of the people I emailed, a social psychologist, felt it wasn’t to do with her. I also had a reply from a pseudonymous blogger I emailed saying he was worried about privacy issues, although privacy was


built into this and several of the respondents were pseudonymous, this is something we have to be very aware of in these sorts of studies. I should note that this paper is a report of work in progress research. My next step will be to interview a smaller number of bloggers in more detail, framed by this first-‐stage of analysis. Who and what? Some of the replies were from people with academic posts; mainly the natural sciences, but there was a philosopher and anthropologist, and one worked in medical practice. There were a few science students, who offered the description of scientists in training. Some were people who suffered from some problem to do with the brain – brain injury, schizophrenia – some were journalists, and some I can only describe as ‘other’ (e.g. one blogged on perfume). Some were part of skeptic communities. Some were several of those identities at once. Some wanted to note they did not fit into one of those groups, or even prized an always-‐outsider identity. This was mainly a matter of saying they were not scientists (although this number was much smaller than those who said the had scientific training), and one wanted to stress that he was not a skeptic. Very few had any formal training in science communication or journalism, though several (including professional academics) had experience of some sort outside of their blog. Very few said they were paid to blog, and interestingly many of the academics said they were not paid even if their blog was connected to their department website, that they blogged about work they did and might well be counted as outreach by their employers. Most said they were open about the fact they were a blogger to friends, family and employers, even those who blogged under a pseudonym. In terms of content, they generally noted that they blogged about latest or interesting research in the field, which I felt reflected patterns of news reporting of science (although many would also blog about older work they stumbled across). Some would also write about their own work and other aspects of academic life aside from research findings (e.g. science policy, one in particular has posted pieces about feminist issues relating to women in science). When it came to patient bloggers, they would reflect on


how they cope with a particular problem. The nature of the topic(s) involved mean that even one focus might easily slip into others, and many respondents had larger or smaller different focus. To give some flavor of the replies:

I blog about things that are (or were once) alive. That covers a gamut of fields from animal behaviour to neuroscience to genetics. Biology basically, with a smattering of opinion pieces on journalism, writing and science communication. I critique peer-‐reviewed research and its coverage by the press. I occasionally write about the intersections between neuroscience and art, music, politics, and popular culture. Psychology, sociology. All sorts of things; essentially, whatever journal alerts pop up in my inbox and yield interesting results. Also, if I've read a particularly good book, I'll blog about that.

Several would talk about work which simply caught their eye, and I thought it was interesting that the bloggers did not feel constrained to keep to one topic, but rather reflected the diversity of interests of a whole person, and I wondered if this related to the personal rather than corporate nature of a blog, even for those on mainstream media networks. There was also, I felt, a strong focus on social issues, perhaps the personal nature of blog means they do not need to keep on topic in the way a journalist on a science beat would, or perhaps this is to do with the nature of science(s) associated with the brain. Sense of community and audience I asked if they felt if they fitted into any particular community, network or genre if science blogging. Those who were on networks often referred to these here, and interestingly I felt, the more famous bloggers who were not on networks spoke about the importance of independence (e.g. that they had been asked to join networks but had turned them down). The respondents seemed rather unsure about this, which makes me feel as if the question was not clear enough – there were a lot of question marks after


answers – although it may also be because the bloggers were aware of how diffuse their work was and the complexity of themselves as social actors. For example, this was perhaps enlightening to the size of the potential set of fields a blogger might sit within:

I feel I belong to a number of blogging communities: ex-‐Sciblings, bio-‐bloggers, neuro-‐bloggers, skeptical bloggers, atheist bloggers, nature-‐bloggers, medbloggers, edubloggers, navel-‐gazing-‐bloggers, Open-‐Access-‐evangelist-‐bloggers, North Carolina bloggers, liberal/progressive bloggers, Balkans bloggers, etc. Cognitive neuroscience, social cognitive neuroscience, evolution, decision neuroscience

I also asked if they felt their membership of communities had changed over time and the answer was largely no, although some mentioned twitter as making things more noticeable. Some referred to the way other people might define them, e.g. noting the twitter lists others had put them on, or having noted that they used to be on ScienceBlogs ‘apparently, once a Scibling, always a Scibling’. When I asked what the community gave them, the response was mainly a sense of community and of audience (although some more one than the other), ideas, friends, inspiration, feedback, sometimes access of paywalled papers and technical advice, and also emotional support.

Support in terms of interaction/feedback/expansion of ideas. I think that the process of blogging-‐-‐my approach, at least-‐-‐is only sometimes about delivery. Otherwise, it's about exchange, and debate, and expanding ideas...something which can only happen via dialogue, which is most rewarding when done with other voices [a blog carnival] helped create connections with other female science bloggers and I find that useful in terms of feeling like I'm not alone as a female blogger who wants to contribute more to progress in terms of education and outreach


The community provides me with the motivation to dwell deeper in science to find satisfying answers to curious questions and also gives me the sense that I am part of the future of the scientific community

The neuroscience genre of science bloggers is a great resource for finding new articles of interest, and their fact checking definitely keeps me on my toes! [my network] is a group of science bloggers who are blogging as a community, and have a shared love of science blogging. It's a very supportive community While I don't identify with any particular community, I'm always grateful for the larger science blogging community. I live for those little "Nice post" comments on Twitter or elsewhere.

On their perceptions of the size and nature of their readership, it was fascinating to see the diversity of ways people came to this question. Some quoted web metrics and how they were ranked externally (some at face value, some reflecting on how these varied) some said they thought only their friends read it, and clearly felt their readers were just those who left a comment or tweeted about it. Others felt there was probably some unknown audience, but that this was unknown. One said he’d like to do a reader survey as championed by Ed Yong (e.g. Yong 2010c). When I asked about attitude with respect to audience, the response was nearly entirely positive, though some seemed more keen to hear from outside voices than others (a few seemed to boarder on the ‘I tolerate them’ end of things, rather than that they gained something emotionally and/ or intellectually from them). This question was more likely to be answered with negative examples than the one about community, e.g. reflecting more on rude comments; a possibly discontinuity I would like to reflect o further in interviews. Motivations Reasons for starting blogging were diverse, so much so it is worth given several examples here. Some by accident. Some just for fun and curiosity. Some to share or get ideas in an efficient way. Some


people wanted to get their foot in the door/ tip a toe into professional writing, some wanted to promote a particular idea.

I wanted to regularly write about science and mainstream media wasn't giving me the opportunity to do that. So I thought I'd have a crack at it myself. I was burned-‐out and depressed. I wanted to find a Democrat who could unseat GW Bush in 2004. Which is why I started in political blogging (on candidates' blogs) in 2003 and only switched to science blogging after that election was over. Honestly, so many other people were doing it that I just thought I should give it a try. I needed a place to air my thoughts and opinions without being a drain on other not-‐so-‐like-‐minded people around me. My post-‐docs thought the lab should have a web page and a blog as a way of getting a public face for our work. I started to blogging to keep in touch with a long-‐distance friend who had similar interests in neuroscience and psychology. Our separation didn't allow the conversations we once had, so we chose to blog about our ideas to keep these conversations going. Sheer frustration with peer review and the quality of articles that were published in high-‐profile journals.

As a tribute to Darwin's 200th birthday. Because Neil Gaiman was. It seemed an interesting way to "open up" a process that many people might not know about Curious to try the form. Quite influenced by Alex Ross' New Yorker music critic, who wrote that he found an exchange of ideas in blogging that he couldn't easily do in print.


The fame, money, and hookers. No really, I enjoy it! It's a lot of fun, I've found a wonderfully interested audience, and I love to teach people new and cool things about science, and get them interested. I even get authors of papers chatting me with about findings, and clarifying their experiments.

I followed this up by asking ‘what keeps you blogging’. These answers were similar (some said ‘as above’) but they were more likely to stress the impact their blogging had had on others, so I also found these results interesting in terms of perceived relationships with audiences. There was also more mention of sheer enjoyment in this section, that they kept on finding things to share, and there was a sense of getting into the habit. One even described it as a form of community service, something which I would really like to dig into more in interview.

Monkey pushes lever, gets tasty treat, monkey gonn wanna push lever. That's only half-‐flippant. It's sort of become an addictive routine. But also, I have a decent audience, I get lots of writing practice, I learn stuff, and most of all, it's fun. Paycheck? LOL. No, I have ideas in my head, and I feel they should be shared. When I run out of ideas, I'll stop blogging. A big part of my blogging is community-‐building, which is why a lot of my current blogging is not so much original writing but promoting links to others, both on my blog and on other online spaces (e.g., Twitter, Facebook). It helps me learn.

A genuine interest in conversation about the topics I enjoy. A desire to enjoy global communication in an interest-‐specific way.

The pleasure of reaching readers and, more and more, being part of a fluid conversation with other bloggers.

I also asked about advantages and disadvantages of blogging, and answers here tended to return to points made previously, but in


slightly more reflective terms and/or considering the issue over a long period of time. For example, one noted as an advantage that there was a useful perspective gain from creating an archive, and several mentioned that they felt it could become a bit of a ‘time-‐suck’. Another mentioned the difficulty of being pseudonymous which had not really come up before: ‘people tend not to trust me right off [… and] being unable to take credit for what I've done, or use my real life experience to back me up and give me instant cred’. However, this blogger also stressed how much blogging had helped them improve their communication skills, which had helped their scientific career in less direct ways, as well as the friendships they had made from blogging. The relative freedom of blogging compared to the editing and peer review processes of academic publishing were mentioned a few times throughout the survey. However, on disadvantages there was also reference to the way a lack of peer review might mean ‘people (including me) may say daft/inaccurate things’. This blogger did also go onto to say the ‘self-‐correcting nature of the web means you’ll get put right quickly’ though, suggesting they relied on the open feedback of comments. Conclusions The next step is to develop this with more focused and probing questions; undertaking a small series of interviews with scientist bloggers who have previously responded to the survey. As further focus, I would limit this to studying scientists (or other academics) who blog, at least in the first instance. I may later talk to those who come from a professional journalist background, and I am really interested in student bloggers. As well as exploring ideas of self identity and whether they see themselves encroaching on a traditionally journalistic role, I particularly want to explore the slightly vague/ disparate sense of an audience which came up in the survey. I want to learn more about whether bloggers see readers as a recipient or resource of knowledge, as well as what sense they have of who there audience might be, and if they have a specific audience in mind. These are things I feel I have to tease out more discursively, though interview, rather than survey or tracking online behaviour. I want to ask questions such as who they feel they write for, as well as for examples of interactions with audiences they have had through blogging,


especially ones they have been surprised by (something not exclusive to blogging, but arguably more common). In terms of what I feel I can say already, at this stage of analysis, there seems to be some tensions between groups defining themselves as scientists, journalists and bloggers, particularly where professional scientists argue that their non-‐professional approach to science media may provide truer or more accurate picture of science, and journalists argue back with a sense of the Forth Estate, and that they provide a opportunity to critique. However, if anything, the dominant desire seems to be to blur these boundaries and seize opportunities for collaboration. Many of the major science bloggers have advanced scientific training, and we might well argue that it does not diversify the voice of science in public. However, there are several post-‐doc and student bloggers, as well as several working under pseudonyms, which may provide something new. Science bloggers often cover new research, but will also dig out older work and reflect upon the experience of working in science/ science communication and be lead by personal interest rather than a news cycle, although some may also be keen to chase hits. I can see a concern amongst science bloggers that they ‘do outreach’ and speak to as many people as possible, but there is also evidence that some bloggers enjoy niche conversations online and that many see their readership (inside and out of professional science) as a resource, a place to gather inspiration, and even learn from. We are still left with the question of whether the characterization of science blogging as a space of cliques and clubs a fair one? I am not convinced this is a question we can really answer convincingly. Shanahan (2011) provides a very hopeful case study of otherwise disconnected individuals meeting through blogging in her recent paper, but it is only a single case study easily rebutted with another. Still, when it comes to such niche media which is often at the “long tail” of communication and may work on such very personal level, rooted in serendipitous connections, perhaps broader generalisations based on surveys would be inappropriate. As with earlier, more cynical case studies (notably Wynne’s Cumbrian sheepfarmers, 1992) they are useful for challenging science communicators to consider how they might work within the specific perimeters of any project they are


managing to ensure it is as open as possible, or at least as open as desired. What I think my study shows is a desire on the part of many bloggers to do the sorts of work that might be dubbed ‘outreach’ or ‘public engagement’; a sense that they have a lot to gain from this and/ or that it might be their duty. From this, I feel I can say to scholars of science media to engage themselves with such a community of bloggers, to offer their critique and suggestions for more effective work. I also think my research notes that there are bloggers that do not seem to care so much about public engagement, and feel that they have good reasons for this, and that critics of science communication (be they scholarly critics or otherwise) should at least attempt to understand and support such people on their own term too. References Anthes, Emily (2011) ‘As Science Bloggers, Who are We Really Writing For?’, Wonderland, January 17, http://blogs.plos.org/wonderland/2011/01/17/as-‐science-‐bloggers-‐who-‐are-‐we-‐really-‐writing-‐for/ Bhattacharya, Ananyo (2011) ‘Scientists should not be allowed to copy-‐check stories about their work’, Guardian Notes and Theories Science Blog, September 29, http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/sep/29/scientists-‐copy-‐check-‐stories Bell, Alice (forthcoming) ‘Has blogging changed science writing?’, Journal of Science Communication. Bell, Alice (2011) ‘Studying the politics of online science’, Through the Looking Glass, January 29, http://alicerosebell.wordpress.com/2011/01/29/studying-‐the-‐politics-‐of-‐online-‐science/ Bell, Alice (2010) ‘Brain bloggers’, Through the Looking Glass, December 17, http://alicerosebell.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/brain-‐bloggers/


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