science communication & blogs

janaina.oliveira@urv.catUniversitat Rovira i Virgili

Identify key communicative and technological strategies used by science bloggers and their audiences

Contrasts blog participants’ discursive and technological behaviour in English and in Spanish.

Pragmatics and Social Semiotics

Search engines: http://www.google.es/blogsearch http://digg.com http://es.ask.com http://top.blogs.es/ http://www.technorati.com/ http://www.blog-search.com/ http://www.blogsearchengine.com/ http://www.bloggernity.com/ http://www.kbcafe.com/blogs http://www.bloglines.com

Post date: a variety of practices The post’s titles: to be or not to be human Bloggers and their profiles Links and references in the posts Links to other science popularization blogs Comments: the audience’s participation Bloggers answer’s to comments: dialog

between bloggers and their audience Interaction between readers: dialog within

the blogs audience

The science expert

“Chordates are members of the phylum Chordata - a large group fairly high up on the tree of life that includes all vertebrates, along with just a few invertebrates – I didn't know we could measure the height of taxa in a phylogeny. What algorithm do you implement for such an analysis?” [RPM (reader/blogger) to chrismiller.com]

The lay person “Superficial as they were, I found the news

reports enticing. But PZ's much more in-depth review satisfied my aroused appetite! Thanks.” [Steviepihead (lector) para Pharyngula]

“Does it say anywhere WHY they taste so Yummie in Sushi? (…) :-D” [karen Mcl (lectora) para Pharyngula]

The blog expert

“You're doing an incredible job! I'm really amazed by bloggers whose posts are full of references. I must add you to my blogroll and feedreader.” [Bertalan Beskó (lector) para Genomicron]

¿The Science communication expert? ¿What do good science bloggers do?

◦ build strong networks◦ make links to many and varied sources◦ answer hi/her reader’s comments◦ participate in the scientific blogosphere◦ Keep post frequency◦ quote sources and respect authorship◦ Tune style to a much jauntier audience◦ use multimodal resources◦ link difficult terminology to on line dictionaries or

Wikiepedia◦ be up to date with scientific actuality.

In the blogosphere, expertise is not primarily given by institutional background.

Comments and or/or questionsjanaina.oliveira@urv.cat