You …are part of the network: why network analysis matters in science communication
No man (or woman) is an island, as the saying goes. We’re all part of a global network comprised of many, many smaller and interlinking ones where people are connected to each other based on location, friendships, profession etc. A social network is defined by the constructs of “nodes” and “links” (or “actors” and “ties”), which are applied to a community of people, which can be formal (a working group of scientists) or informal (friends). The nodes, therefore, can be individual people, while the links are the relationships that connect them to one another. Network analysis requires a relationship around which the nodes or actors are connected. For example, a co-authorship network is based around scholarly articles; if two academics are listed as authors on the same paper they are co-authors and the paper acts as a link between them. If you want to know more about social network analysis I suggest you read Social Network Analysis – Methods and Applications by Wasserman and Faust (which I’ve only started reading myself).
Networks of scientific communities are especially interesting to those of us involved in science communication. How do scientists work together in groups? Individual scientists can be viewed as part of the network when they share commonalities with other scientists: co-authored papers, working groups, conferences they both attend, etc. This is interesting for the science communicator when you realise that deeper analysis of these networks can shed some light on public perception of trust in the scientific community as this nice conference poster by Jeanine Finn demonstrates.
Finn’s paper describes how she carried out a network analysis of the co-authorship patterns (using the ISI Web of Science database) of both a group of 16 scientists who wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal entitled “No Need To Panic About Global Warming” and the group of 38 scientists who responded with an article stating that, in their opinion the group of 16 were non-experts on the subject and that there is evidence to support the fact that human-induced climate change is occurring. Interestingly there is “almost no co-authorship activity” amongst the 16 critics while the network of 38 climate science supporters is “much more densely connected”.
Finn also carried out a hyperlink analysis of the scientists by using URLs that the scientist controls (personal blog, university profile page etc.) rather than, say, a Wikipedia page about the scientist. This hyperlink analysis, she says, can possibly detect those who may important in the science communication process but don’t go through the traditional channels of scholarly publishing. Finn looks at how they interact with each other online in term of whether they have linked to each other’s websites. These 16 scientists might not have worked together but they have connected online.
To me, this seems like an intriguing way of analysing how climate science actors interact, which, one would assume, has an effect on how the science is communicated to the lay (or non-expert) public. Perhaps this could be extended to their social media activity: are they connected to each other on platforms like Twitter and what does their extended Twitter network look like? It also brings up issues of trust and credibility. Would you trust a group of scientists – who have co-authored many papers together – to present a more cohesive picture of their field of research or a group who connected more by their online interaction than traditional scholarly avenues? Which comes across as more credible when weighing up scientific evidence?
Altmetrics, Social Network Analysis and SpotOn London
Earlier this week I had a chance to attend and speak on a panel at the SpotOn (Science Policy, Outreach and Tools Online) London 2012 conference. This two day event was aimed at science professionals and covered topics ranging from women science bloggers to developing metrics to measure public engagement for institutions such as museums. I spoke on the Altmetrics panel, which was organised by Martin Fenner and here’s a fantastic blog post…
Read more...Tags:altmetric.com , altmetrics , Impact Factor , Martin Fenner , Social Network Analysis , SpotOn London
Social media and science communication
Ireland was lucky enough to have the opportunity to host the European Science Open Forum (ESOF) 2012 in Dublin this year, resulting in a week of amazing talks, demonstrations, workshops and lectures from scientific luminaries such as Brian Greene and Craig Venter. A central part of this involved several panel discussion on science journalism, outreach and communication. It became clear that social media is playing an increasingly important role in…
Read more...European Commission uses “glossy magazine view” of women to sell science
Last week I wrote a news piece in the Irish Times about the public reaction to the European Commission’s “Science – it’s a girl thing” video. Here is a slightly longer version where I have interviewed Trinity College Dublin scientist Aoife McLysaght and DERI researcher Jodi Schneider (she’s in the same USS research group as me), with comment from Eoin Lettice of awesome science blog Communicate Science: A European Commission campaign…
Read more...Tags:#sciencegirlthing , bad science , European Commission , gender , Maire Geoghegan-Quinn , women in science
Opening up scientific discourse online
“With Google personalized for everyone, the query ‘stem cells’ might produce diametrically opposed results for scientists who support stem cell research and activists who oppose it. “Proof of climate change” might turn up different results for an environmental activist and an oil company executive” – Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble (2011) Personalisation on the web – specifically personalised search – is not simply an effective method of filtering the mass…
Read more...Tags:bad science , media bias , Rbutr , search engine bias
RSS feeds for the busy technology journalist
The humble RSS feed may not be as cutting edge as it once was but it still serves as a valuable journalistic tool. An RSS reader (such as Google Reader) is one of the handiest ways to aggregate official blogs, websites, press releases, Twitter feeds and various assorted materials from across the web into one space. I don’t know how other science/technology journalists begin their day but part of my…
Read more...Tags:Apple , journalism , news feeds , press releases , RSS , technology news
Science journalism – a unique journalistic specialism in a changing media landscape
It’s not my job to sit down and read peer-reviewed papers, because I simply do not have the time; I don’t have the expertise … I am an interpreter of interpretations. (Delingpole 2011) I will argue against the assertion that science journalism is not a unique journalistic specialism. Prominent UK journalist Jack Delingpole uttered the above words in January of this year during a television interview on BBC2’s Horizon programme…
Read more...Tags:Ben Goldacre , climate change , Climategate , Hilgartner , public discourse , science writing , simplification , the Long Tail
Size matters …and so does scale
My latest piece for the Irish Times Bang! magazine plus some essential links below the post to further reading on the subject of size, scale and our universe! How big, how far, how small, how much? These are the questions about our universe, and everything in it, that have fascinated us humans for millennia. And science helps us answer them, writes MARIE BORAN. Ever since mankind gazed up at the…
Read more...Siri, AI and robots
Some rights reserved by sk8geek Here’s a piece – iRobot – that I wrote for Bang! science magazine in the Irish Times. It’s on one of my favourite subjects: robots. Tell me a joke Siri. ‘Two iPhones walk into a bar . . . I forget the rest.” It turns out that Siri, the new virtual digital assistant on the iPhone 4S, has a (bad) sense of humour. Does the…
Read more...Tags:Adam Cheyer , AI , Alan Turing , artificial intelligence , Asimo , Calo , chatbots , Do-Much-More , emotional robots , HAL 9000 , Honda , ihone 4S , Kismet , linguistics , Loebner Prize , Michael Hulme , robotics , SIRI
Irish science podcasts and radio shows
I listen to quite a few science podcasts but up until about a year ago they were mostly British or US-based. Since then I’ve got involved in the Scibernia podcast with Lenny Antonelli, Triona O’Connell, Sylvia Leatham, Gavin Byrne and several other enthusiastic contributors. I’ve noticed that there is a good handful of Irish-based science podcasts and radio shows around and I hope educators are giving them a listen and…
Read more...Tags:Futureproof , Irish science , Newstalk , podcasts , radio shows , RTE , Scibernia , science , science communication
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