THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE BLOGGINGAND #OPENSCILOGS

Paige Brown Jarreau

FIRST-THINGS-FIRST: WHAT IS A BLOG?

• A piece of software / platform?

• “a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML browser.”

• Comments (?)

• The “unedited voice of a person” (?)

• “less formal, more conversational, often with no traditional reporting (but never without research), and aimed at a small but passionate audience.”

• Blog = an online tool for publishing one’s thoughts, stories, news, links, visual materials, etc. in an extended form, on an ongoing basis

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/whatmakesaweblogaweblog.html

Dave Winer, Scripting News

https://medium.com/@dankennedy_nu/blog-like-a-journalist-8a4acac100c0

Mike Licht (CC-BY)

THE BLOG RESISTS DEFINITION

“[B]logs are now diverse and ubiquitous, and have hit the mainstream.” – Mary Garden, Defining blog: A fool’s errand or

a necessary undertaking, Journalism 2012

The uses and genres of “web blogs” have become so diverse that they have become broadly a “socio-technical format, whose convenience and general utility support a variety of

uses.” - Herring et al., Weblogs as a bridging genre, 2005

WHAT IS SCIENCE BLOGGING?

• a blog featuring primarily content that disseminates, explains, reports, comments upon, investigates, aggregates or otherwise deals with science, scientific research, science communication, science policy, science in society and/or other science-related concepts or events (Wilkins, 2008).

WHERE HAVE WE COME FROM?

• Early 2000’s – Early blogging, ‘Fighting Pseudoscience’, Culture Wars, Dover Trial

• ~2008 – Diversification of blogging genres – ResearchBlogging

• 2011 – Rise of blog networks at traditional media organizations (Scientific American, Discover, PloS, etc.)

• 2012 – Social networks for community building

• Today – Blog as the writer’s 'home' online

• More attention to the journalist / blogger as 'personality‘

• ‘Need for Niche’

• Openness and Spreadability

• Open Access

• Spreadable and Creative Commons models

• Blogging styles that are conversational and open to feedback

TRENDS IN SCIENCE BLOGGING

Science bloggers are increasingly handing conversations and content over to others, as well as asking for feedback via social media.

• Rise of a science blog ecosystem

• Increasing role of science blogs and social networks (Twitter) in science communication and science news

500 recent tweets mentioning “SciLogs”

Conversations based on blog content have

moved to social media

“Today, quick updates, links etc. are done mainly on social media

and many bloggers use the

traditional blogging software

only for longer, more thorough, one could even

say more ‘professional’

writing.”

– BoraZ, 2012

We can see different “communities” here

TRENDS IN SCIENCE BLOGGING

• Professionalization

• Science journalism

• Science blogs are where we are working out the kind of science, scientific publishing and science news we want in the future.

• Traditional functions• Debunking

• Expert opinions

• Media Criticism

• Community building among scientists

• Translation of scientific research

• New functions• Science journalism

• Sources of science news

• Curation

• Critical analysis

• Discussion of science missing from mainstream media

• Opening up the science research process • Citizen science, etc.

• Adding value and advancing the conversation around scientific issues

xkcd.com/386/

"I spend way

[emphasis] more

time correcting

misinformation

than I would like

to." #MySciBlog

"SOME OF THESE SCIENCE BLOGGERS [...] THEY'RE BASICALLY DOING WHAT A JOURNALIST DOESN'T EVEN HAVE TIME

TO DO ANYMORE.“ - #MYSCIBLOG RESEARCH INTERVIEW

WHAT ARE WE BLOGGING ABOUT?

http://www.scilogs.com/from_the_lab_bench/science-blogging-got-comments/

Data from Merja Mahrt and Cornelius Puschmann:

44 bloggers at SciLogs.de

WHAT ARE WE BLOGGING ABOUT?

http://www.scilogs.com/from_the_lab_bench/science-bloggers-and-the-long-tail-of-science-writing/

Science bloggers and the long tail of science writing:

Bloggers’ strategic choices to deep dive into the under-reported science stories of the week

are having far reaching implications for the impact of science blogging.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Flickr.com

EXPLOSION OF ALTERNATIVE COVERAGE OF SCIENCE

BLOGGING SOMETHING DIFFERENT

BLOGGING SOMETHING DIFFERENT

“[But] "if there's something that everyone else is talking about, and they're doing a good job with, I'll avoid that.”

“[P]eople aren't going to come to my blog for the news. They're going to go to a news outlet… So, if I'm going to write about

something that's current, it'll only be [if] I can explore something, different about it."

"I couldn't really find out the facts myself, from reading the news, so I thought, I'll go ahead and kind of dig it out..."

"[I] go through lesser-known journals...for little hidden jems...that wouldn't have made it into the news"

“[L]ooking at the other blogs...I think it's important that we cover kind of smaller things that aren't always picked up on"

"I really don’t feel like I’m a slave to the news cycle."

"If I wasn’t going to have all of those crazy resources [and be able to] interview multiple people [...] it had to be DIFFERENT."

#MySciBlog Interviews

“THE FREEDOM OF A BLOG, AND WHY BLOGS ARE SO MUCH FUN TO READ, IS, THAT YOU GET TO KNOW A LITTLE BIT MORE OF THE

PERSONALITY OF THE PERSON WHO’S WRITING IT, AND WHAT THEIR THOUGHTS

AND OPINIONS ARE, AND THAT THEY KIND OF INTERPRET THINGS, A BIT MORE.”

- #MYSCIBLOG RESEARCH INTERVIEW

SCIENCE BLOGO-JOURNALISM

Interviewing

Editing

Fact-checking

Social responsibility

News values

Shareability

Scientific values

”I’ve sort of developed a gut feeling for

what I can turn into a blog post, and

which ideas won’t work.”

– science blogger Signe Cane

• breaking out of traditional roles of criticizing/complimenting science journalism from a corner of the internet

• Not replacing science journalism, but it’s increasingly a vital component of science journalism.

• The science blog is increasingly the journalist’s path into science, the scientist’s path into journalism, etc.

• Science bloggers are the new gatekeepers?

EXPERIMENTING WITH SCIENCE BLOGS

Multimedia / Lives of Scientists

Experimenting with content – Science Book A Day

“TO ME, SCIENCE ISN’T ABOUT BEING TOLD BY SCIENTISTS THAT ‘THIS IS

SCIENCE’ BUT FOR PEOPLE TO BUILD AN UNDERSTANDING AND

ENGAGEMENT WITH SCIENCE IN THEIR OWN WAY.”

- SCIENCE BLOGGER GEORGE ARANDA, AKA @POPSCIGUYOZ

EXPERIMENTATION IN SCIENCE BLOGS

Blogging driven by visuals

AND SO, ON A BLOG WHERE YOU HAVE EDITORIAL FREEDOM…THERE’S NOTHING

MORE EXCITING AS A WRITER, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. YOU CAN DO ALL OF THESE

WONDERFUL EXPERIMENTS, YOU CAN TELL STORIES IN INTERESTING WAYS… I MEAN YOU STILL HAVE TO DO RESEARCH, AND YOU STILL

HAVE TO BE – I’M A JOURNALIST, SO, MY STUFF IS VERY RESEARCHED AND VERY FACT-BASED, BUT THEN THERE’S THIS UNBELIEVABLE

OPPORTUNITY TO JUST WRITE. - #MYSCIBLOG RESEARCH INTERVIEW

THE POTENTIAL OF SCIENCE BLOGGING:FOR SCIENTISTS

How do scientists write blogs that are taken as seriously as the blogs of professional science journalists?

• Rise of networked scientist bloggers • More community-based feedback, fact-

checking, editing and collaborative data blogging?

• Journalism/Media training for scientists

• Opportunity to open up the process of science via blogging

THE POTENTIAL OF SCIENCE BLOGGING: FOR JOURNALISTS

• Blogs remain (and grow as) an integral component of science journalism • Building one’s portfolio• Opening up the journalism process• Enhancing amount of diversity of science news

coverage, and web traffic, at legacy media outlets (National Geographic, newspapers, etc.)

“EVERYTHING IS CHANGING. THE SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING INDUSTRY IS

CHANGING. VERY TRADITIONAL PUBLICATIONS ARE EMBRACING SOCIAL

MEDIA, AND EVIDENCE IS PILING UP THAT THIS METHOD OF

COMMUNICATING SHOULD SOON SEEM TRADITIONAL TO SCIENTISTS.”

- DOMINIQUE BROSSARD

PROBLEMS IN SCIENCE BLOGGING

How can we bring scientists and journalists together while at the same time paying for more in-depth science blogging and fostering public engagement?

OPENSCILOGS

CROWD-FUNDED PARTICIPATORY, OPEN NOTEBOOK SCIENCE REPORTING

Paige Brown Jarreau & Pratiti DiddiManship School of Mass Communication

CROWDFUNDING INVESTIGATIVE / IN-DEPTH

SCIENCE BLOGGING

• Wiki Journalism

• Citizen Journalism

• Spreadability

• Changing Traditional Media Business Model – Crowd Funding

• Open Notebook Science

1st project:

2nd and current project:

OPENSCILOGS DESIGN BRIEF

• Target Audience: A broad science-interested audience, as well as other science bloggers, journalists, educators, students

• Tone: Open to new ideas and directions, transparent, participatory

• Platforms: SciLogs blog posts for updates and final story; Google docs or other document file sharing for raw materials, notes, references, links etc.; Social media / Wiki for audience engagement

• Content: In-depth, critical analysis of a scientific issue or topic that deserves more attention, that readers express an interest in, etc.

• Conversation: The goal is to spark conversation and participation in the ongoing story, to spread materials, quotes, and story ideas

OPENSCILOGS CONCEPTS

1. Crowd-funding of in-depth “open notebook” story project by one SciLogs blogger every 30 days.

2. Selected blogger, once funded, begins the reporting phase. For each story project, the funded blogger provides all raw data, notes, source information and source contact information (if permission granted from source) in a public Google Doc (or similar public document sharing tool), on an ongoing basis.

3. For each story project, the selected blogger is strongly encouraged to have another blogger, journalist or editor fact-check (for a share of the funding or authorship.)

4. For the duration of each story project, the lead blogger posts weekly short blog updates.

5. Anyone can contribute story ideas, story content and/or multimedia to each OpenSciLogs story project, and are encouraged to claim partial authorship.

FUTURE OF OPENSCILOGS

• Topics of wide public interest?

• Getting input from audience on what stories they want to see about science in the media

• Collaboration on science blogo-journalism and investigation of scientific topics across different languages?

• Crowd-funding of research paired with science communication?

CAN CROWD-FUNDING OF BLOGGING BE SUCCESSFUL?

• Targeting the right audience is key• Who will help fund?

• Who will participate?

• Finding media partners

• Targeted social media promotion is key • a significant portion of the time and effect in a crowd-

funding campaign – Need 100 views for 1 donation

SCIENCE BLOGGING PRACTICES – TAKE THE SURVEY!

http://bit.ly/MySciBlog

Images Credits:

Feature image: Will Lion: extreme sports and blogging. Flickr.

Original Illustration Logo Credit: Lindsay Cade

News values, Quizlet

Blue Linckia Starfish CC BY-SA 3.0, Richard Ling

xkcd.com/386/

Magnifying Glass – PublicDomainPictures

Tucker Martin - Science & Technical Writing

Shutterstock – SciLogs.com License

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Flickr.com

Mike Licht (CC-BY)

Illustration: Dusan Petricic for The Scientist

Gideon Burton (Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

Will Blog for Money, Voxeros, Flickr.com

Crowd, PartiallyHere, DeviantArt

ImagesBuddy