Science Communication Online

SCIENCE COMMUNICATION ONLINE SCIENCE COMMUNICATION ONLINE ENGAGING EXPERTS AND PUBLICS ON THE INTERNET ASHLEY ROSE MEHLENBACHER THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS COLUMBUS This edition licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivs License. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Mehlenbacher, Ashley Rose, 1983– author. Title: Science communication online : engaging experts and publics on the internet / Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher. Description: Columbus : The Ohio State University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018051713 | ISBN 9780814213988 (cloth ; alk. paper) | ISBN 0814213987 (cloth ; alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Science—Computer network resources. | Communication in science. | Internet research. Classification: LCC Q224.5 .M44 2019 | DDC 302.23/1015—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018051713 Cover design by Susan Zucker Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Minion Pro The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992. In memory of Sandra, because of Brad, and for Carolyn. CONTENTS List of Illustrations ix Preface xi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 Theory and Method: Genre Studies and Rhetorical Criticism 18 CHAPTER 2 Crowdfunding: Genres for Funding Research 46 CHAPTER 3 Databases: Genres for Knowledge Production 82 CHAPTER 4 Blogging: Genres for Scientific Engagement 107 CONCLUSION 138 References 151 Index 167 ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURES FIGURE 1 Lab Note Images from an Experiment Proposal 77 FIGURE 2 Early Safecast Visualization 99 FIGURE 3 Safecast Interpolation Map 100 FIGURE 4 Safecast Web Map 102 FIGURE 5 PLOS Biologue Home Page 123 FIGURE 6 PLOS Ecology Community Home Page 123 FIGURE 7 PLOS Biologue Blog Text and Graphic, and Original PLOS Computational Biology Article 125 FIGURE 8 PLOS Image Viewer Technology 126 TABLES TABLE 1 Swales’s Revised Create a Research Space (CARS) Model 56 TABLE 2 Moves Found in Crowdfunding Proposals 58–59 TABLE 3 Summary of Blog Posts from PLOS Network Blogs 115 TABLE 4 Rhetorical Moves in Science Blog Posts 117 ix PREFACE THIS BOOK can be traced back to ideas that took shape in a book chapter Car- olyn R. Miller and I coauthored for Alan Gross and Jonathan Buehl’s (2016) Science and the Internet, now reprinted in the second edition of Landmark Essays in the Rhetoric of Science: Case Studies (2017), edited by Randy Allen Harris. In that chapter, Miller and I explore the changing landscape of science communication with a case study of nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi site in March 2011. We look specifically to microblogs, Wikipedia, and an online database of radiation contamination readings as emerging forms of science communication online. Exploring how these platforms were used to share information in response to crisis, we advance the notion of “para-scientific genres,” borrowing and expanding upon the term from Sarah Kaplan and Joanna Radin’s (2011) article “Bounding an Emerging Technology: Para-scientific Media and the Drexler-Smalley Debate about Nanotechnology,” published in Social Studies of Science. When Carolyn and I completed our work, the world of science communication looked somewhat, although not altogether, different from the vantage we have here in early 2019. Much of what I was seeing continued in tradi- tions to share science with broader publics, but revealed some of the inter- nal workings of science to those who may not have previously had access. There were new actors emerging on the scene as well: citizen scientists and civic scientists, as John Angus Campbell (2015) parses them up. Much of my xi xii • preface work has attended to citizen scientists—everyday people who participate in scientific research and not-so-everyday people who design their own grassroots research enterprises in response to technoscientific disaster. In the lat- ter case, the situations serving as case studies in grassroots citizen science generated a more overtly political situation than we might normally see for scientific research and work. After all, the kinds of grassroots citizen science that emerge in response to technoscientific disaster often form either in the absence of professional research dedicated to the problem, or when corporate and statal entities seem to obscure the data or science that affected citizens want to know. Miller and I explored how citizen scientists worked in response to such failures following the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi. And in this book, the group Miller and I examined, Safecast, will be revisited as an example of how boundaries between experts and nonexperts continue to be compli- cated. However, citizen scientists are not the focus of this book. Instead, we might call those civic scientists the rhetors of interest here. Some of our civic scientists have long been motivated to engage a broader public with scientific research, and these are the civic scientists often engaged in conversations about science communication and perhaps popularization of science. There are those civic scientists, too, who are concerned with the public accessibility of data and research findings. Others find online a new way to excite others about their science and even garner support for their work. And, among civic scientists are those who wearily enter a new communicative space when par- tisan politics seems to stifle research. It seems there has been something of a shift in how politically—how civi- cally—engaged scientists are as a broader constituency. Images appearing on social media feature protestors holding up signs about the need for peer review and evidence-based policy. With the challenges that experts face in matters of vaccination, climate change, and genetic modification, it does seem we can say that in this moment something is unfolding that changes how we understand the rhetorical world that scientists inhabit, and the rhetorical strategies they will need to navigate that world. This book puts rhetorical theory and criticism to work to better understand what appear to be evolving strategies of science communication, and I necessarily had some help charting out these strategies. Crucially, I want to express sincere gratitude and thanks to my editor, Taralee Cyphers, at The Ohio State University Press. Her dedication to the intellectual substance of the book and her editorial excellence are highly commendable and made this a stronger and more engaging book. I also owe the anonymous reviewers great thanks; their feedback was substantive and essential to the book in its current form. A number of fine research assistants kept this project moving, or other preface • xiii projects on track while I focused my energy on the book, including Catherine Lemer at Purdue, as well as Lillian Black, Devon Moriarty, Paula Núñez de Villavicencio, and Cailin Younger at Waterloo. Thanks also to many inspiring and motivating colleagues in rhetorical studies and allied fields at Waterloo, including Frankie Condon, Bruce Dadey, Jay Dolmage, Randy Allen Harris, Andrea Johnas, George Lamont, Michael McDonald, Aimée Morrison, and special thanks to an exemplary department chair, Kate Lawson. The Faculty of Arts at the University of Waterloo generously provided funding support for this book. Thanks also to Caren Cooper and Darlene Cavalier for oppor- tunities on PLOS Citizen Science, Discover Magazine’s Citizen Science Salon, and SciStarter. Also some others deserve special thanks, notably Lamees Al Ethari, Chelsea Ferriday, S. Scott Graham, Molly Hartzog, and Josh Scacco. Thanks, as well, to Sune Auken, who is conducting timely and important work in genre studies through the Centre for Genre Research at the University of Copenhagen. On a personal note, I want to thank my husband, Brad Mehlenbacher. Our joints are now well set, and Brad’s engaged and enthusiastic support con- tributed crucially to the completion of this book. I don’t mean that with the kind of banality it invokes. Brad didn’t simply encourage me and bring cups of coffee or tea at all hours (although he did pour more than his share); he also spent time listening to me talk through methodological decisions, theoretical commitments, and pragmatic implications. Brad’s family has been supportive, too, including his father, Bryan, who indulged me talking about work, and Brad’s late mum, Sandra, whose encouragement was energizing. Thanks also to my family for their continued support, especially Nancy, Jennifer, CJ, and Daniel, who motivated me to finish. Importantly, I want to thank Carolyn R. Miller. It is far too early in my career for me to fully understand the gifts Carolyn has given me over the years we have worked together. My thanks are a clumsy attempt to account for what gifts I’ll certainly discover as my career unfolds. I hope, then, Carolyn will for- give what I’ve gotten wrong in the book with the knowledge I’ll likely figure it out, eventually—if only I’d listened more carefully, sooner. INTRODUCTION UNCLOISTERED BY the web, science and science communications are finding their way to new audiences through once unimaginable media. By playing the citizen science game Foldit while on the subway to work, recording videos of their backyards to help wildlife experts manage populations, or even funding scientific research out of their own pockets, nonexperts and amateurs can engage science in unprecedented ways at an equally unprecedented scale and

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