Blogging/New Media

Tomorrow morning at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, I will be addressing the annual conference of the University Research Magazine Association. I have pasted the text of my prepared remarks below with relevant links embedded. I will post a follow up on Friday highlighting questions, comments, and reactions. Readers are strongly encouraged to weigh in with their own reactions. As professional science communicators and journalists, you are living in an era of convergence between two major trends in society. The first trend is a dominant focus of this conference: Technology, audience…

Last month, Judith Curry had an important essay at Physics Today that deserves more attention than it has received. Curry argues that unlike the industry-funded climate skeptic movement of the past, contemporary debate is driven by a new generation of blog-based "climate auditors" who merge their own professional expertise with online communication strategies to demand a greater level of transparency in climate science. Here's how Curry describes the movement: So who are the climate auditors? They are technically educated people, mostly outside of academia. Several individuals have…

What does climate change mean to you? from Andrea Posner on Vimeo. Students in AU Professor David Johnson's class on interactive media have created a social media and discussion site for tonight's American Forum on "The Climate Change Generation: Youth, Media, and Politics in an Unsustainable World." Features at the site include video interviews with AU students on the topic (see above), a Twitter feed that student attendees and public radio listeners will be posting to, a Facebook group, a news aggregator on climate change, and various topic driven discussion boards with topics ranging…

Last week I posted about the increasing problem of incivility at comment sections for blogs and news sites. As I noted at the end of the discussion thread that was started, I plan to return to the topic in depth, perhaps as part of an article or study. My thoughts on the topic are apparently at least partially shared by Richard Dawkins. In a post yesterday, Dawkins lashed out against many commenters at his own site, noting their "remarkable bile" and extreme reaction to a change in comment and editorial policy at RichardDawkins.net. The full post should be read, but here is just an…

I've long questioned the value of anonymous blogging or commenting. Much of the incivility online can be attributed to anonymity. And with a rare few exceptions, if you can't participate in a dialogue about issues without using your full name and true identity, then what you have to say is probably not that valuable. These long standing thoughts were called to mind again after reading a post by Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth. Quoting as the subject to his post a line from Monty Python "is this the right room for an argument?," Revkin writes: Michael Palin asked that question nearly 40 years…

The American University news media relations office is running a Web feature that focuses on many of the themes discussed at this blog. The feature is in the form of a "Q&A." You can read the feature here. Below are the questions for which I responded with written answers. Q: What is "framing" and why is it important? Q: What, in your opinion, is the most pressing scientific issue in need of being reframed in the United States, and why does it need to be reframed (what about the communication of this issue has not worked to win over broader public support)? Q: How would you reframe…

This week, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting released a report on best practices in digital journalism that I co-authored with several colleagues here at American University and the Center for Social Media. Titled Scan and Analysis of Best Practices in Digital Journalism In and Outside U.S. Public Broadcasting, the report was commissioned by CPB as part of the organization's planning for future directions in online reporting and media. In keeping with CPB's mission, the report has a strong emphasis on strategies for using digital journalism to promote civic engagement, public…

1 Wired Science - Wired Blog 2 Watts Up With That? 3 Climate Progress 4 Environmental Capital 5 Dispatches from the Culture Wars 6 TierneyLab - New York Times blog 7 Gristmill 8 Respectful Insolence 9 Effect Measure 10 The Frontal Cortex 11 Next Generation Science 12 RealClimate 13 FuturePundit 14 A Blog Around The Clock 15 Greg Laden's Blog 16 Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted 17 Gene Expression 18 Cognitive Daily 19 Uncertain Principles 20 BPS Research Digest 21 Deltoid 22 Laelaps 23 SciGuy 24 The Questionable Authority 25 denialism blog 26 Good…

Over at the NY Times' Dot Earth blog, Andrew Revkin has launched a conversation with his readers on the challenge of navigating the many emerging arguments and claims about climate policy, with Revkin emphasizing the need to engage with a range of ideas and perspectives about what should be done. As I wrote about a few weeks back, if as a society we only engage with narrowly like-minded opinions and perspectives, we will lose the ability to build consensus and achieve effective policy actions. Unfortunately, as Revkin alludes to, the dominant style among several prominent progressive…

There are a lot of Twitter dismissives among science bloggers, but the mobile technology has promise, journalists and others just have to understand how to structure its use successfully. One such constructive application was pioneered here at American University by journalism professor David Johnson and used by students and collaborators in last year's November election. Read or tweet about Twitter Vote Report, an application that is cleaning up among this year's journalism and technology awards.

Yesterday I focused on the need for "cross-talk" on matters of science policy, highlighting for example the importance of a middle ground perspective on science and religion. It had escaped my eye, but at the Washington Post on Sunday, columnist Kathleen Parker apparently is thinking along similar lines, spotlighting a recent "Candle in the Dark" initiative from Francis Collins. I don't normally agree with Parker, yet I continue to read her and respectively assess her ideas. For example, I think in the past she hasn't given the Obama administration enough credit for incorporating a range of…

Several colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have a new study out that shows not surprisingly that like-minded conversations drive attitude extremity relative to science policy. Analyzing data from a national panel survey conducted between 2002 and 2005, graduate student Andrew Binder and his collaborators find that after controlling for demographics and news use, like-minded discussion pushed respondents' position on stem cell research to the extreme ends of the distribution, either towards strong support or strong opposition. The study comes out of the research group at…

Pew has a detailed run down on the surge in motivation for information about swine flu. The brief analysis goes on to discuss strategies CDC had put in place to be ready to "pull" audiences in when an infectious disease outbreak occurred: The prominent position of the CDC on these lists may be owing in substantial part to the government's earlier recognition of the usefulness of Google search tools in tracking the actual spread of diseases. Google's Flu Trends tracks certain search terms to estimate possible flu activity at a state level - and it does this far more quickly than the CDC's…

Back in January, Desmog blog noted what they dubbed a "troubling" trend online, plotting a rise in mentions of "global warming + hoax." The graph was construed as evidence of growing strength for the climate skeptic movement. At the time I observed to a few colleagues that the graph probably also reflected the intense interest in so-called "denialism" among the liberal climate netroots. By constantly responding to and attacking the climate skeptics in blog posts and comments, liberal bloggers were only bringing additional attention to their claims. The same observation currently applies to…

Sometimes I just don't get it. Whether it is climate change, evolution, or vaccination, the more literal minded among science bloggers and pundits typically blame science journalists for breakdowns in public communication. Yet as I discuss in a forthcoming article at Skeptical Inquirer magazine, constantly blaming the media messenger deflects attention away from the fact that scientists and experts themselves make mistakes when it comes to public engagement (or that literal minded bloggers create more heat than understanding). As I often like to point out in talks, research shows that…

The HHMI Bulletin, the monthly magazine of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, runs a lengthy feature on science blogging in its November issue. I am quoted in the article with fellow Sciblings Tara Smith and Alex Palazzo. Readers of Scienceblogs are likely to find the article of strong interest along with the other features at the online version of the Bulletin. You can subscribe for free to the print edition here.

For the fourth straight month, Framing Science ranks among the top 15 science-related blogs, as tracked by Wikio. The position of a blog in the Wikio ranking depends on the number and weight of the incoming links from other blogs. (Blogrolls are not taken into account and Wikio only counts links from the last 120 days.)

That's the take in this recent profile at New York magazine. The far left blogosphere first stung Lieberman when his 2004 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination fell flat but then really turned him towards the GOP following his 2006 Senate primary race. In Lieberman's view, powerful bloggers have hijacked his party, especially on foreign policy. From the article: The 2004 debacle was Lieberman's first introduction to a new force, the netroots, a loose collection of leftist blogs including MoveOn.org and DailyKos. The way the senator sees it, those groups have been "taking the party in…

I may not generate the type of ideologically-intense traffic of a PZ Myers, but when it comes to influence, Framing Science continues its steady ascent. According to Wikio's latest rankings, this site climbed one spot during the month of July to #14 among science-related blogs (#11 if you go by Greg Laden's count.)

Wikio has its latest rankings out, tracking the most influential blogs about science (as well as many other categories.) Framing Science has pushed up from the top 25 blogs about science to break into the top 15, based on number and influence of links to the site.