The role of new Information and Communication

Technologies (ICTs) in information and

communication in science

A conceptual framework and empirical study

Christina K. PikasPhD Candidate

November 26, 2013

Agenda

• The Problem•My Framework• Testing the Framework• Early Results• Conclusions

The Problem

• “Communication is the essence of science” (Garvey, 1979)•Many scientists use social computing

technologies to communicate

Problem: Separate Literatures

• Separate large bodies of literature studying communication in science• Communication, Journalism, and Rhetoric• Information Science• Science and Technology Studies

• These bodies are independent (rarely citing each other) • New studies of social computing technologies (SCT)

cite little of this literature

Problem: SCTs Evolve Quickly• New descriptive studies often narrowly focus

on a single technology• Users adapt technologies as they adopt them

(Rogers, 2003)• The uses and features of SCTs can evolve

quickly as they are adopted• Studies of SCTs can get dated quickly

Needed: Comprehensive Framework• No overall view of how these SCTs fit into

what we already know about how scientists communicate• No grounded approach to understanding any

new SCT that comes along

My approach

Develop a comprehensive framework to describe communication in sciencethat draws upon the relevant literatures

The framework will be useful for:• Situating new technologies• Research on uses of SCTs• Helping organizations understand SCTs, so that

they may support their use

Agenda

• The Problem•My Framework• Testing the Framework• Early Results• Conclusions

Elements of the Framework• Features of the Communication Partners• Purposes of the Communication Activity• Features of the Message or Content• Features of the Channel

Partners

• Communication depends on the relationship among the communication partners (Schramm, 1971;Rogers & Kincaid, 1981)• In SCTs, it might be imagined audience based

on cues (Marwick & boyd, 2011)

Partners: Numbers

• One to One• One to Many

Partners: Specialization/SophisticationEach partner belongs to a category/level:

1. Participants in the specific research area who share background knowledge, expertise, and experience (Fleck, 1935; Kuhn, 1962; Crane, 1972; Collins, 1985)

2. Other scientists in the general research area with significant commonalities, but without the specific expertise and experience of direct participants (Paul, 2004)

Partners: Specialization/Sophistication

3. Scientists and non-scientists who have some college-level scientific training and who are interested in science (Kyvik, 2005); practitioners in an applied area of that science who have strong experiential knowledge, but who may have had less formal science education (Fleck, 1935; Wynne, 1995)

Partners: Specialization/Sophistication

4. Non-scientists who have an interest in science (Kyvik, 2005)

5. Non-scientists who are not interested in science and who may be distrustful of scientists or some scientific ideas (Merton, 1973)

Partners: Relationship

•Match by specialization/sophistication• Social relationship• Do they share a common background?• Have they worked together long? (Kouzes, 2000)

Elements of the Framework• Partners• Purposes• Content• Channel

PurposesTo do with the intended goal or result• Dissemination – to disseminate the results of their

work• Discourse or contributing to the conversation

(Nentwich, 2003)• Societal benefit or application (Kleinman, 1998)• Identity (Polanyi, 2000)• Rewards (Latour & Woolgar, 1986; Borgman & Furner,

2002)• Certification (Borgman, 2007; Nentwich, 2003;

Zuckerman & Merton, 1971)• Preservation (Bowker, 2000)

Purposes

• Learning, teaching, or providing instruction (Collins, 1985; Hara, Shapin, 1995;Solomon, Kim, & Sonnenwald, 2003)

• Persuasion – e.g., grant applications but also in journal articles (Latour & Woolgar, 1986)

• Evaluation or opinion – e.g., peer review reports, grant review reports (Weller, 2001)

Purposes

• Coordination – socially to meet or to negotiate research collaborations (Vetere, Smith, & Gibbs, 2009)• Social• Common ground (Clarke & Brennan, 1993)• Group membership (Tufekci, 2011)• Politeness, social norms (Schneider, 1988)

• Entertainment – to entertain or provide humor (Pikas, 2008)

Elements of the Framework• Partners• Purposes• Content• Channel

Content

Preliminary classification• Topic• Type• Data• Methods, algorithms, protocols, scripts• Analysis, narrative • Theoretical or philosophical• Opinion or evaluation

Content

• Structure – well-structured (as in headings or as in marked up for computational use) to free text• Persistence – part of the permanent record

or a short-lived utterance• Review or quality control - extent to which

the communication is reviewed, edited, or curated prior to or after transmission

Elements of the Framework• Partners• Purposes• Content• Channel

Channel

Elsewhere channel can mean source or format but here used for medium between communication partners • Face to face•Mediated – Clark and Brennan, 1993,

characteristics plus coherence (Honeycutt & Herring, 2009)

Agenda

• The Problem•My Framework• Testing the Framework• Early Results• Conclusions

Study Setting

• One general area of science: geosciences• Two SCT: Twitter and blogs

Why Geosciences

• Studies all aspects of earth and planetary science including, for example, geology, oceanography, and climatology• Active Twitter and blog communities• Professional society support for social media• Active local community

(NASA, USGS, APL, UM)

Methods

• Longitudinal study: 2010-2013• Participants: Geoscientists who attend

American Geophysical Union conferences• Tweets with hashtags: #AGU10, #AGU11,

#AGU2011, #AGU12, #AGU2012, #AGU13, #AGU2013

Methods

Two ethnographic case studies:• Directed qualitative content analysis (Hsieh &

Shannon, 2005) of tweets and blog content• Semi-structured interviews with participants

(Rubin & Rubin, 2005)• Participant observation• Some exploratory social network analysis for

selection of interview participants

More About Methods

• Retrieved tweets using a variety of methods• Which tweets?• Organizations (individuals representing

organization) – quite different behavior > omitted• Many (modified tweet) MT and (retweets) RT are

for event and press release announcements > omitted from content analysis

• Interview participants selected from meeting tweeters• Blogs/bloggers will be selected from the same

pool

Agenda

• The Problem•My Framework• Testing the Framework• Early Results• Conclusions

Exploratory SNA

• Networks from @ conversationsn1 tweets @n2 forms an arc• Largest component shown • Nodes sized by degree

2010

theagu

nasa

efectos1260

setiinstitute

nasajpl

Twitter @ network, nodes sized by degree, largest component only860 tweeters, 2995 tweets (whole conference)

2011

Twitter @ network, nodes sized by degree, largest component only. 907 tweeters, 3604 tweets (whole conference)

2012

Twitter @ network, nodes sized by degree, largest component only1276 tweeters, 6207 tweets (whole conference)

Partners: Specialization

• Reported that it is good for outreach“it’s clearly been useful for NASA in terms of their missions “

• Yet most useful examples were• Within research area

“there are times when one of us will have a question, ‘hey I’m looking up …what’s the fraction of Kuiper belt objects with satellites?’” • With scientists from adjacent research areas

“…a way to bounce things off of people … ‘hey this is how I’m interpreting this’ and [] who’s a dynamics guy could say … ‘that’s kind of crazy and here’s why. Here’s this paper that I’m working on that shows that this isn’t what’s going on’”

Partners: Relationship

•Meet-ups and following relationships make for groups or cliques with more conversations and re-tweets – even if anyone and everyone can observe threads

Purpose: Dissemination

• Session Reporting• Example:

“Emile-Geay: using non-marine proxies for SST reconstruction potentially problematic; unstable teleconnections #AGU12”• Coordination with multiple tweeters for

coverage of small conferences or for session coverage

Purposes: Dissemination• Sharing work in progress, links to slide decks

and poster files for conferences“The DIL team's presentation at #agu2012 is now available via slideshare”

Purposes

• Preservation: Use as notes“it’s sort of become how I take notes now so it’s kind of become a public note-taking thing”

• Teaching: Ask a scientist• Persuasion: Effort to restore funding for

robotic planetary science missions

Purposes• Coordination• “Room for @chasingice showing at 7.30 is full! Moscone

South 300. #AGU12”• Meet me at poster #1987 in Moscone South Hall C

11am-12pm, 1:40-2:00 pm, 2:15-3:45 pm. #AGU2012

• Social: Phatic (Vetere et al., 2009)• “Postdoc bought a 5# bag of jelly beans to help him

through #AGU12 prep. I am now an attentive advisor, stopping by his office every 5 min.”• “@seagirlreed Christy, we miss you at #AGU2012. Naomi

made it. Ever again for you??• “there’s a lot of the equivalent of sitting around the

dorm late at night shooting the breeze”

Content

• Evaluation/Opinion:• Great little animation by @jimcameron to finish the

session. What a lander and deep ROV for Europa might look like #agu12 #agu2012• Impassioned lecture on latest climate science and

implications for policy by Bob Watson at #AGU2012. Worth watching: http://bit.ly/QIkj2p

• Interviewees alluded to:• Data• Methods/Algorithms• Quality control: press release tweets from

organizations approved

Content

• Analysis:• “when the Chelyabinsk bolide happened that was really

exciting and I felt like I was able to go and get online and I knew the tools and I was able to go: just based on this video that we’re seeing the bolide the original body was probably this big. That means it happens about this often”

Conclusions

• As more geoscientists adopt Twitter, it becomes more used/useful for informal scholarly communication• Interesting conversations in public – reveals

scientific work to non-scientists• Science writers and science enthusiasts are

welcomed and engaged• Flexibility with data collection is a must as

APIs change!

Take Aways

• Framework is useful to describe how geoscientists use Twitter

Contact: Christina K. Pikascpikas@umd.edu or cpikas@gmail.com@cpikasSlides will be posted to SlideSharehttp://www.slideshare.net/cpikas

Clark & Brennan (1993) on mediated channels• Copresence refers to actually being in the same place at the same time. • Visibility means that the conversation partners can see each other

including gestures and facial expressions.• Audibility means that the conversation partners can hear each other and

the tone of voice. • Cotemporality means that the messages from one person in the

conversation to another are received immediately. • Simultaneity means that both parties can send and receive at exactly the

same time. • Sequentiality refers more to recorded channels. It means that turns by

each partner do not get out of order. • Reviewability enables conversation partners to look at what has been

said. • Revisability enables conversation partners to correct or change what they

have said • Coherence the ability of the channel to support “sustained, topic-focused,

person-to-person exchanges” (Honeycutt & Herring, 2009, p. 2)