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July 15, 2010
Blogging about a blog post about science blogging
Hauke Riesch and I have been researching science blogging - looking at some of the networks, boundaries and limitations in play here. We recently presented on the topic at the excellent Science and the Public Conference at Imperial. This led to an interview with Alice Bell - discussing some of the hopes, limitations and potential associated with science blogging.
Writing a paper on the topic has been interesting in part because of the degree of self-reflection in this community. As noted in the interview, bloggers have very much engaged with ideas around - for example - whether blogging is distinct from the mainstream media. It was also a nice surprise to get home from presenting the paper and talking about related topics in the pub to find that the paper had been tweeted (a worryingly good and very brief summary of the key points - I may have to start drafting papers in 140 character chunks); I have also now signed up for a Twitter account, in part in order to follow such debates.
I now find myself writing a blog post about Alice's blog post about Hauke and my research on science blogging; I will tweet the link to this post after publishing. Much new media discussion can seem like a kind of echo chamber and this type of reflection on reflection on reflection might appear to be an example of that issue. However, what makes the type of science blogging Hauke and I have been researching especially interesting is the focus on activism: the virtual realities of new media are used (with some notable successes) to impact upon our social and political realities. It has been interesting to see how ideas around science blogging (from many more interesting discussants than myself) have been reverberating around in virtual spaces. What will also be important, though, is the wider impact that these ideas are having and will have in future.
Posted by jon_mendel at July 15, 2010 07:23 PM
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