scientific communication on the web: vox populi or vox dei?
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Scientific Communication on the Web: Vox Populi or Vox Dei?. Stephen Yeo [email protected] Centre for Economic Policy Research. I will explore three questions. How has the web changed over the past decade? Users create content - bottom up, not top down Users’ actions help organize content - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Scientific Communication on the Web: Vox Populi or Vox Dei?
Stephen [email protected]
Centre for Economic Policy Research
I will explore three questions
1. How has the web changed over the past decade?
Users create content - bottom up, not top downUsers’ actions help organize content
2. Has economics on the web changed as well?
Yes, but not nearly as quicklyScience is inherently conservative and
hierarchical, relying on peer review, journal publications
Mistrust of a “bottom up” web3. How do you know what to read and who
to believe on the web?
Outline
Background – changes in the web since 1997User generated content – wikis and blogsUser organized content – RSS feeds and tags
How have these changes affected communication in the natural sciences?
And in economics?Why have these chances been slower to take
place in the sciences?The tension between scientific authority and
web democracy
Economics on the web - 1997
The state of the art was reflected by Bill Goffe in
“Resources for Economists on the Internet” ¹Everything is top down
Many “institutional” websites, almost no individual websites
Data available on the web, usually produced by official agencies, a few other data sets (Penn World Tables)
A few examples of code for Gauss routinesNo mention of user generated content such as
"blogs" and wikis, RSS feeds
¹ http://rfe.org/
Something happened on the web in the late 1990s
The terms "weblog" and "blog" were first used in late 1997Initially a US phenomenon
Political blogs emerged in the US in 2001 - Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit)
Initially a phenomenon of the political right?Impression (not backed by any serious
research) is that blogging emerged on “the right” of the political spectrum initially
Is this surprising?
“Web 2.0” – the web in 2007
The (virtual) landscape looks very different today Has shifted from from a "read only" to a
"read/write" web“Web 2.0”
At a technical level this is Ajax, sophisticated client side interfaces, open source software
“Enterprise 2.0”"blogs, wikis, tags and feeds” ¹
… and in additionaudio (iTunes, Odeo) … and more recently video (YouTube)
¹ McAfee, A P. 'Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration' Sloan Management Review, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Spring 2006), pp.
The four elements of “Web 2.0”
Blogsbest known
WikisWikipedia is an example, obviously, but less familiar
RSS or Web FeedsNot widely used yet, but a key element in web-based
communication, especially blogsTags
Like keywords in a library catalogueIf on the web, can be shared across individuals
Shared tags connect you to information discovered by other users
Pooling information in shared tags is the basis of social bookmarking sites such as technorati and del.icio.us
¹
The natural sciences are changing, but more slowly
Changes have been slower than in the IT community itself, or in business. Why? Declan Butler in Nature 1 suggests this is due to
the conservatism of scientists and their habit of communicating via seminars and peer-reviewed journals
1 Butler D., 'Science in the web age: Joint efforts' Nature 438, 548-549 (1 December 2005) www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7068/full/438548a.htm
Nevertheless, some important changes have taken place
WikisOpenWetWare (www.openwetware.org)
Biology - A field where experiments and experimental protocols are very important
Share data, protocols etc on the web
Nature Magazine's own web presenceThe most advanced use of web techniques for science-based
communicationConnotea
online tagging and shared bookmarks (www.connotea.org)Scintilla
collaborative bookmarking and filtering mechanism for (RSS based) scientific material on the web (www.scintilla.nature.com)
Podcasts (www.nature.com/podcasts)weekly podcast of Nature articles attracts 45,000 downloads
Is there an “Economics 2.0”?
Look at the use of Web 2.0 elements in economicsWikisBlogsFeedsTags
Wikis
WikisCEPR has launched 3 or 4
only moderately successful - tend to be more successful for more "data intensive" topics and participants
may not be so different from physical sciences - experimental, lab-based fields have wikis
Individual and group blogs
Two obvious categories“Individual blogs”
slow start, but now a large number in the US - preponderance of conservative bloggers still, but balance has been shifting slowly (e.g. Paul Krugman and Dani Rodrik)
not clear whether bloggers are representative of views of economists as a whole in the US – are they more of a think tank than a university phenomenon?
in Europe - still relatively few "one person" blogs by university economists
“Group blogs" Typically 2-3 authors postingExamples - Crooked Timber, Marginal
Revolution
“Platforms /Portals”
A third category? Something between a blog and a web-based magazineLaVoce in Italy the pioneerEconomists Voice in US… and now at the European level
Vox (www.voxeu.org)“A platform for the analysis and discussion of
key European and global policy issues by leading European economists.”
Aims to be the leading web-based portal for economic policy issues
Parallels in traditional mediaPersonal View in The Financial Times“Economics Focus” in The Economist
Vox
Generates its own contentColumns by a set of eminent contributors
on policy relevant topics500-1500 words at a level that is generally higher
than a newspaper column
Federates or syndicates the EU-oriented content of national policy portals in EuropeLa Voce www.lavoce.infoTelos www.telos-eu.frSociedad Abierta (launched in July)Netherlands site will launch in DecemberGerman, Swedish and South African sites under
discussion
Some statistics
Launched in June1,166,258 page views or 4,097,004 hits since
launch, from 90,000 distinct IP addresses132,000 “visitors” in September
How many individuals does this represent?Depends on how often an individual visits the siteWe estimate between 5000 and 10,000 individuals
who read the articles
One third of readers in the US, 5% in Asia, the rest in Europe
Has risen from #27 to #17 among economics blogs since July (www.26econ.com)
Feeds and Tags in economics
FeedsSurprisingly little use
Audio and VideoThe next big thing?
TagsWill become increasingly important
Final theme: scientific authority versus web democracy
Vox Populi“Vox populi, vox Dei”The voice of the people is the voice of God
Vox Dei“Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox
Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.”
And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.
A letter from Alcuin to Charlemagne in 798
Vox Dei?
The importance of authority and reputationclear for individual blogs
It’s clear that many of the most popular blogs are written by good economists – Levitt, Krugman, Mankiw, Rodrik
So the academic authority of the author has some impact in the economics blogosphere
Rodrik: “a weak but statistically significant positive correlation between citations and blog rankings” http://www.26econ.com/?p=56
also seems to be the case for group blogs – the reputation of the contributors is important
EurointelligenceRGE MonitorMarginal Revolution
For an argument in favour of Vox Dei, see Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur (2007)
or Vox Populi?
Vox Populi?tagging, folksonomiesautomatic voting - but who controls the franchise?Slashdot handles this through moderators, and
ranking the performance of moderatorsDavid Weinberger (2007), Everything Is
Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder
You might be skeptical of this as internet hype, but isn’t this something economists believe in?Prediction marketsJames Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds (2005)