The Future of Science Blogging - One Perspective, #SciLogs14
1. THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE BLOGGING
AND #OPENSCILOGS
Paige Brown Jarreau
2. 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 (?)
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/whatmakesaweblogaweblog.html
• The “unedited voice of a person” (?)
Dave Winer, Scripting News
• “less formal, more conversational, often with no
traditional reporting (but never without research), and
aimed at a small but passionate audience.”
https://medium.com/@dankennedy_nu/blog-like-a-journalist-8a4acac100c0
• Blog = an online tool for publishing one’s thoughts, stories,
news, links, visual materials, etc. in an extended form, on
an ongoing basis
Mike Licht (CC-BY)
3. 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
4. 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).
5. 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’
6. TRENDS IN SCIENCE BLOGGING
• Openness and Spreadability
• Open Access
• Spreadable and Creative
Commons models
• Blogging styles that are
conversational and open to
feedback
Science bloggers are increasingly
handing conversations and content
over to others, as well as asking for
feedback via social media.
8. • Increasing role of
science blogs
and social
networks (Twitter)
in science
communication
and science
news
9. 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
10. 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.
11. • Traditional functions
• Debunking
• Expert opinions
• Media Criticism
• Community building among scientists
• Translation of scientific research
xkcd.com
/386/
"I spend way
[emphasis] more
time correcting
misinformation
than I would like
to." #MySciBlog
• 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
12. "SOME OF THESE SCIENCE BLOGGERS
[...] THEY'RE BASICALLY DOING WHAT A
JOURNALIST DOESN'T EVEN HAVE TIME
TO DO ANYMORE.“
- #MYSCIBLOG RESEARCH INTERVIEW
13. WHAT ARE WE BLOGGING ABOUT?
http://www.scilogs.com/from_the_lab_bench/scie
nce-blogging-got-comments/
Data from Merja Mahrt and
Cornelius Puschmann:
44 bloggers
at SciLogs.de
14. WHAT ARE WE BLOGGING ABOUT?
http://www.scilogs.com/from_the_lab_bench/scie
nce-bloggers-and-the-long-tail-of-science-writing/
Science bloggers and the long
tail of science writing:
15. EXPLOSION OF ALTERNATIVE COVERAGE OF SCIENCE
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
17. 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
18. “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
19. 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
20. • 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?
21. EXPERIMENTING WITH SCIENCE BLOGS
Multimedia /
Lives of Scientists
Experimenting with content
– Science Book A Day
22. “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
24. 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
25. 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
26. 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.)
27. “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
28. 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?
30. CROWDFUNDING
INVESTIGATIVE / IN-DEPTH
SCIENCE BLOGGING
• Wiki Journalism
• Citizen Journalism
• Spreadability
• Changing Traditional Media Business Model – Crowd Funding
• Open Notebook Science
32. 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
33. 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.
34. 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?
35. 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
37. 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
Editor's Notes
Blog = an online tool for publishing one’s thoughts, stories, news, links, visual materials, etc. in an extended form, on an ongoing basis
The uses and genres of “web blogs” have become so diverse that, as Herring and colleagues predicted in 2005 [PDF], they have become broadly a “socio-technical format, whose convenience and general utility support a variety of uses.”
From a technological structure perspective, a blog is simply an online tool for publishing one’s thoughts, stories, news, links, visual materials, etc. on an ongoing basis. In 2008, Wilkins defined a blog as a “fundamentally a continuously updated web page, with entries (‘posts’) that have date, time and, if many authors contribute to the blog, author-name stamps.” A blog may be hosted on a personal webpage, through a blogging platform service such as WordPress, on a social media network such Tumblr, on an organizations’ website, on a community blogging network such as Scientific American blogs or SciLogs.com, or on any number of other blogging platforms or traditional news organization websites. Typically, albeit with important exceptions, each blog post may be commented upon by readers, who may be required to sign-up with the blogging platform or website to comment. Each blog post also typically features social media share buttons, by which the individual blog post URL can be shared to social networking sites including Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc. Social networks such as LinkedIn are also beginning to offer long-form posting capabilities, blurring the lines between blogs and social networks and necessitating a closer look at microblogging platforms as playing a more critical role in blogging practices.
Traditionally, there has been no “Guide” to science blogging. Science bloggers have often referred to their content space as the “Wild West” where there are no rules. But actually just this year, NASW funded a group of science bloggers to write “The Complete Guide to Science Blogging” – a book comprising chapters written by some of the most prominent science bloggers online today. So I think we are starting to see the growth of various blogging communities and shared approaches to science blogging that do have socially shared rules. Research blogging, for example…
"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."Early blogging - culture wars, Dover Trial"Among early adopters of blogging software, rare are the exceptions of people who instantly started using it entirely for non-political (and non-policy) purposes, just to comment on cool science, or life in the lab etc., e.g., Jacqueline Floyd, Eva Amsen, Jennifer Ouellette, Zen Faulkes and Grrrlscientist.""In those early days, we pretty much all knew, read, linked, blogrolled and responded to each other, despite a wide range of interests, backgrounds, topics, etc. As the blogosphere grew, the nodes appeared in it, concentrating people with shared interests. Those nodes then grew into their own blogospheres. Medical blogosphere, skeptical blogosphere, atheist blogosphere and nature (mostly birding) blogosphere used to be all part of the early science blogosphere, but as it all grew, these circles became separate with only a few connecting nodes. Those connecting nodes tend to be veteran, popular bloggers with large readerships, as well as bloggers on networks like this one [SciAm] which tend to want to have representatives from many areas, e.g., medical bloggers mixed in with paleontology bloggers mixed in with space bloggers, etc.“ - BoraZDiversification of blogging genres - researchblogging, covering new papers (problems with access to embargoed materials)Rise of blog networksSocial networks for community buildingBlog as the blogger's 'home' onlineMore attention to the journalist / blogger as 'personality'Need for niche
Science bloggers have made significant in-roads to creating a more open access scientific communication, from pushing for open access scientific publishing, to publishing their own content under creative commons licenses. The Conversation is based on a Creative Commons publishing model that, ideally, leads to more spreadable content. Spreadable media, or media designed to spread across the web, is definitely the wave of the future. The difficult part is creating a spreadable media model that preserves scientific accuracy.
Science blogs remain more conversational and open to feedback than traditional science news media. The tone of science blogging, however, has changed over the years. Where early science blogs were largely focused on strong opinions and a chatty tone, modern science blogs run the gamut from serious science journalism to conversation between peers.
Science bloggers today are setting the stage for conversation with more complete, journalistic writing. They are often handing conversations and content over to others and asking for feedback via social media as opposed to blog comments.
The science blogosphere is increasingly taking on the structure of an ecosystem, where science blogs have a variety of functions, appearances and roles in the overall media landscape.
Science blogs as well as social networks such as Twitter are playing an increasingly important role in the work of professional science communicators and science journalists. Blogs also remain a preferred format for scientists wishing to communicate science in a longer-lived format than Tweets offer.
An important side-note, science bloggers covering new scientific research are increasingly reliant on open access scientific publishing venues. The science blogger still largely remains shut-out of traditional scientific information streams (scientific journals, embargoed science press releases, etc.)
The science blogosphere is increasingly taking on the structure of an ecosystem, where science blogs have a variety of functions, appearances and roles in the overall media landscape.
Science blogs as well as social networks such as Twitter are playing an increasingly important role in the work of professional science communicators and science journalists. Blogs also remain a preferred format for scientists wishing to communicate science in a longer-lived format than Tweets offer.
An important side-note, science bloggers covering new scientific research are increasingly reliant on open access scientific publishing venues. The science blogger still largely remains shut-out of traditional scientific information streams (scientific journals, embargoed science press releases, etc.)
Science blogging has traditionally served roles of media criticism, debunking and correcting misinformation, translation of scientific research and community building among scientists. Early science blogging often took the form of expressing strong opinions on what was wrong with the current state of science journalism, public perceptions of science and of life in academia.
But today, science blogging is different. It is mainstream. It has decided that it too can engage in science journalism, and be a SOURCE for science news. It curates and critically analyzes current information streams. Science bloggers entering a saturated science media ecosystem are going to greater lengths to talk about the science that DOESN’T get covered by the mainstream media. Science bloggers now place high importance on “adding value” and “advancing the conversation” around scientific issues.
The shared rules of science blogging have led to an explosion of alternative coverage of science beyond that covered by traditional news outlets.
So over the summer, I interviewed 50 science bloggers from a range of science blogging networks and independently hosted blogs. When I asked these bloggers how they decide what to blog about, many point out that if quote-on-quote everyone is talking about a given story, or if the mainstream media is covering a given story prominently, they are themselves less likely to cover it. If they DO cover something that is getting a lot of media attention, it’s because the media is quote-on-quote getting it wrong, or because the blogger has something unique to add to the conversation. Otherwise, bloggers are often purposely going to obscure sources of scientific information to pull out stories that are unique and different.
I think this common exploration of under-covered scientific topics and issues is something we haven’t given the science blogosphere due credit for adding to the larger science news ecosystem.
Bloggers are increasingly self-aware that they might be relied upon as journalistic sources of information, and have taken on some of the standards and values of journalism (interviewing, editing, fact-checking, social responsibility, etc.) as well as maintaining scientific values.
We are often using science blogs as places to experiment, with new writing styles, new ways of storytelling, etc..
In describing why he blogs, one Postdoctoral researcher writes that he blogs to reach a wider audience than he can with traditional publishing, to share his knowledge and experience with other academics, and to participate in debates that are important to him. “Some of these exchanges may take place in my blog, but these days they will often extend to social media, such as Twitter or LinkedIn, and specialized academic fora, such as ResearchGate and academia.edu, where readers record reactions to what I have written, point out useful information, and generally help me to clarify my own thinking by engaging with my writing.” http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/08/04/focus-credibility-academic-blogging-kostoulas/?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_campaign=hootsuite
And it turns out that these interactions via social media are not without consequence. Research studies have found a connection between “h-index” — a measure of the quality of a researcher’s work and influence — and social media activity.
According to science communication scholar Dominique Brossard, “If you talk to reporters and you tweet about your research, your work is more likely to be cited than people who do one or the other.”
Interactions with journalists had a significantly higher impact on h-index for those scientists who were also mentioned on Twitter than for those who were not, suggesting that social media can further amplify the impact of more traditional outlets. - http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/36274/title/Opinion--Tweeting-to-the-Top/
But for all the promises of science blogging there are still problems we have to address.
These include a Lack of pay for science bloggers often doing heavy legwork for science journalism. Science blogs also, in many cases, still have smaller audiences than traditional news media.
Another issue is that blog comments are no longer centralized – People want to tell their own stories about the content to their own friends…
And finally, I’m concerned that we may have separated communities of science journalism bloggers and scientist bloggers, who have different value and standards when it comes to science blogging.