1 As-life paper.cite as unpublished.Billings.2012.doc Today’s date: July 9, 2012 Completion date: July 30, 2011 Cite as unpublished research Linda Billings, Ph.D. Research Professor School of Media and Public Affairs George Washington University Washington, DC, USA
[email protected] ph. 703-528-2334 http://lindabillings.org http://doctorlinda.wordpress.com Weird life, or not? The role of social and mass media in the discourse of science in the case of disputed claims about the microbe GFAJ-1 Abstract The discourse of science is an evolving ecosystem of sorts, an actor-network1 in which knowledge and power, credibility and legitimacy, and cultural authority are constructed and distributed, reconstructed and redistributed, among individuals, groups, institutions, and others. In this evolving ecosystem, what credentials are required to be a scientist, a journalist, or a science critic? Who has the authority to speak for, to, or about science? Open, public, participatory practices of the expanding online universe called Web 2.0 are changing the discourse of science, including the holy ground of peer review. In this new round-the-world, round-the-clock, electronic environment, anyone with access to the Internet and an ability to read and write in English (still the “universal” language of science) may now participate in the ongoing dialogue about science2 – 1 B. Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, Oxford: OXford University Press, 2005; B. Latour, Science in Action, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987. 2 D. Kennedy and G. Overholser (Eds.), Science and the Media, Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2010; M.