Science Blogging: Networks, Boundaries and Limitations

Abstract

ABSTRACTThere is limited research into the realities of science blogging, how science bloggers themselves view their activity and what bloggers can achieve. The ‘badscience’ blogs analysed here show a number of interesting developments, with significant implications for understandings of science blogging and scientific cultures more broadly. A functioning and diverse online community (with offline elements) has been constructed, with a number of non-professional and anonymous members and with boundary work being used to establish a recognisable outgroup. The community has developed distinct norms alongside a type of distributed authority and has negotiated the authority, anonymity and varying status of many community members in some interesting and novel ways. Activist norms and initiatives have been actioned, with some prominent community campaigns and action. There are questions about what science blogging—both in the UK and internationally—may be able to achieve in future and about the fragility of the...