As is customary, this section includes an overview of the chapters following in the book. Another way to orient oneself, however, may be through a selective reading of chapter 1, which offers first a discussion of genre studies and
rheto-ric of science, and then features a discussion of what I propose are emerging forms, trans-scientific genres. In these pages, one will find the core theory developed in this book and the broad framework or methods used through-out the book’s case studies. Chapters 2 through 4 follow with elaborations and refinements of the theory through empirical investigation, along with more details on the methods used in each case. Although the theoretical framework and methodological approaches are articulated in chapter 1 most fully, I have worked to include enough details in each chapter that they are reasonably informative in their own right, but it is together that these broad socio-techni-cal sites (blogs, crowdfunding platforms, databases) most powerfully illustrate trends in science communication.
Chapter 1 introduces the theoretical framework for the book, drawing rhe-torical studies, to offer an analytical approach to understanding genre evolu-tion and change. Two subfields within rhetorical studies help explain how science communication online is evolving and provide the critical apparatus for this book: genre studies and rhetorical studies of science. Both fields cur-rently feature research about affordances brought with the rise of the web and social media. For genre studies and rhetoric of science, the new forms of com-munication across a range of modalities offer a point to reflect on change, and also to take a reflexive stance on our approaches and methods. After exploring these areas, the chapter then features a discussion of current methods in these fields. Although case studies have been a staple in rhetorical studies of sci-ence, some recent critiques must be accounted for and used as opportunities to expand our methodological understandings. Relying on work in rhetorical genre studies, and allied areas of genre studies, the methodological approach developed in chapter 1 offers a blend of close textual analysis with analysis of a small sample of texts.
Chapter 2 explores how the complex networks of actors, audiences, and genres shape a new method of funding research: crowdfunding. First, the chapter examines the networked technologies and networks of people that provide a platform for crowdfunded proposals. Looking at the structure, and the communities building those structures, the book examines where crowd-funding proposals are shared, who is sharing them, and what kinds of results these efforts see. Crowdfunding platforms—from the generalist crowdfund-ing website Kickstarter to the niche, research-driven Experiment.com—are noteworthy because they reveal (1) the challenges in funding science, par-ticularly those projects outside a disciplinary zeitgeist, in an era of decreased federal dollars; (2) the shift to promotional efforts in scientific discourse; and (3) the variety of voices, of scientists and students and citizens alike, appear-ing on these sites. This chapter notes that the importance of social networks
to cultivate an audience is striking and the stakes are high—fund or fail. In contrast to usual research funding models, crowdfunding models generate a different audience, one that comprises experts and nonexperts. Given this complex landscape of experts, nonexperts, and perhaps amateur experts, the communication strategies in these proposals are markedly different from their conventional, academic counterparts. A move analysis of a small corpus of Experiment.com proposals reveals how crowdfunding proposals are written and embedded in social networks.
Chapter 3 explores databases as a central site of rhetorical work. The pro-cesses of collecting, organizing, and storing data are all negotiated in terms of a research project, and in terms of community expectations. When data are good, they can be useful to other researchers, policy makers, and citizens who are making evidence-based decisions. In the chapter, the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster sets the stage for a story of how radiation contamination data suddenly became a topic of public conversation. Illustrating the complexity of data collection, the science of radiation, public education, and the tensions between government agencies and corporate entities, the case of the Fuku-shima Daiichi disaster is dramatic but not atypical. The chapter explores how an obscure subject area sequestered to the innermost circles of scientists (with imposing titles such as “nuclear scientist,” no less) became a public conversa-tion, and illustrates how data function rhetorically and how data sets function as a rhetorical tool for both scientists and citizens. And, when researchers and governments failed to produce these data, citizens began to compile their database. The chapter examines one of the most powerful citizen groups that emerged: Safecast, an organization that continues their work today, long after media around the world have lost interest in the ongoing disaster that unfolds in Japan. Investigating the significance of data for civic purposes, and how civically minded scientists and citizen scientists collect and put these data to work, the chapter explores the importance of this seemingly obscure form. For publics and citizen scientists collecting data, the effort to justify their methods and samples is increasingly essential, and the rhetorical work of scientists to explain and justify data must be understood to help articulate where commu-nication breaks down between scientists, publics, and policy makers.
In Chapter 4, blogging provides a well-established case to illustrate how new opportunities to communicate with new audiences online unfold. It is unsurprising that scientists and science communicators have harnessed these affordances given the now long life of the platforms, relative to other social sharing technologies. Exploring the media ecologies in which blogging occurs, this chapter investigates the technologies that facilitate these ecologies by way of a case study of the Public Library of Science (PLOS) blogging
net-work, a large collection of science-focused blogs written by scientists, gradu-ate students, science journalists, and even citizen scientists. Breaking down the barriers between internal genres of science communication and public genres of science communication in powerful ways, these blogs have a vast and varied audience including scientists and publics. The uptake of blog posts among popular audiences underscores how science can be popularized using a new technology. However, blogs also serve to chart insider debate and new findings, and thus they operate outside the internal and external divisions of science communication. They offer insight into the challenging process of science—the debates among scientists and the characters, acts, and dramas that unfold in the theater of science. Rich, and highly rhetorical, blogs are an especially interesting site where scientists, citizen scientists, civically minded scientists, citizens, and everyone in the gradients between can communicate with one another, casting off the broadcast model of popular science genres.
The concluding chapter takes the theoretical implications and practical lessons learned about communicating with these new genres to offer insights about the rhetorical life of online genres of science communication. Audience is perhaps the most crucial element to consider in characterizing trans-scien-tific genres. Both the genre producers and users govern trans-scientrans-scien-tific genres.
This means that the genres we have considered here are necessarily in a lim-inal space between internal genres of science communication and external genres of science popularization because they are composed by and for sci-entists and nonscisci-entists. But the heterogeneous audience is notable for more than its composition. In its heterogeneity, the audience has driven rhetorical conversations among blog authors, in scholarly journals, and in discussions about popularizing science. These rhetorical conversations are characterized by a rejection of the deficit model of thinking, which has plagued science communication. Science communicators and scientists trying to communi-cate their science talk about the value of thinking about one’s audience and, significantly, engaging that audience. With new genres come new opportuni-ties, but to effectively use these genres, communicators must contend with rapid genre change.
Overall, the book explores how we make sense of science that is presented to us online. Scientific information is immersed in an ecology and cultural moment where we are challenged by “post-truth” (once plainly called lies),
“alternative facts” (once plainly identified as propaganda), and “fake news”
(which Lakoff astutely explains is a dangerous modifier as it subverts the basic function of news—that is, to be not fake6). Online, we are inundated with
6. Qtd. in Kurtzleben, 2017.
information and claims about that information’s validity and the credibility of the source. PEW found that 64 percent of American adults believe “fabricated news stories cause a great deal of confusion about the basic facts of current issues and events” (although 39 percent believe they are capable of spotting the fake stories), while 23 percent of respondents admit to sharing fake news (Pew Research Center, Barthel, Mitchell, & Holcomb, 2016). The stakes are high for science. Science communication has had an abiding commitment to factual information, truthful representation of established information as we gener-ate new knowledge, and cautious and credible reporting of new knowledge for centuries. But moving into these emerging online environments, science com-munication leaves behind the safety of cloistered communities where trust and credibility7 can be carefully measured and evaluated to enter the tumultu-ous and often-vituperative discourse communities of the web.
Science has long faced those deceivers who wish to undermine science for their own political gains, the deceivers using what Ceccarelli (2011) calls
“manufactured controversy,” and sometimes disguising their claims with pseu-doscience. Together, scientists and science communicators face formidable political, cultural, and online social environments where they must work to establish not only facts but also credibility and trust so that they and their audiences are able to engage in discourse and debate with goodwill. Ultimately what I argue is that the large discourse community8 composed of scientists—
professional to civic to citizen, and science enthusiasts—helps us understand the complex rhetorical world of not only communicating science online, but communicating truthfully, factually, and credibly.9 Genres create and are
cre-7. The majority of the American public does have confidence that scientists will act in the best interests of the public (Pew Research Center & Kennedy, 2016).
8. Porter (1986) offers a useful definition of “discourse community” as a “group of indi-viduals bound by a common interest who communicate through approved channels and whose discourse is regulated. An individual may belong to several professional, public, or personal discourse communities” (pp. 38–39). Killingsworth (1992) provides a reminder to remain criti-cal about the term, particularly owing to the positive valance that “community” tends to carry.
9. Indeed, I am calling upon an old refrain. Aristotle gave us the groundwork in his account of rhetoric as “the available means of persuasion,” and specific to the matters of science, rhetoricians of science have considered the importance of trust (Gross, 1994; Miller, 2003), as have other science studies scholars (Wynne, 2006; Brunk, 2006). Trust in a speaker is central, Gross (1994) reminds us, writing, “Because the public must trust those who are trying to per-suade them, central to all situated utterances is a speaker who evokes appropriate emotions and endorses appropriate values, a speaker in whose virtue, good will, and good sense the public has confidence” (p. 4). What if the source (not just the speaker) isn’t trusted? Only 4 percent of online Americans say they have a lot of trust in information from social media (not that local or national news fares well, either, receiving trust ratings of 22 percent and 18 percent, respec-tively) (Pew Research Center, Mitchell, Gottfried, Barthel, & Shearer, 2016, p. 8). An interesting aside, however, is that 63 percent of respondents, when asked, “How closely do you follow each
ated by conventions, norms, values, and recurrent rhetorical situations with typified responses from a discourse community. Exploring new kinds of sci-ence communication helps explicate both rhetorical and technological tools that help shape discourses, even those infused with the toughest forms of argument. As new forms of science communication emerge online, the pro-cesses of creating, replicating, or modifying discourse norms are at work, but the rapid evolution of these recognizable forms has much to teach us about theories of genre and genre change.
type of news, either in the newspaper, on television, radio, or the internet?” reported they fol-low “Science and technology” very closely (16 percent) or somewhat closely (47 percent) (Pew Research Center, Mitchell, et al., 2016, p. 30).
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