Written Communication Oct 2013

Public Communication of Science in Blogs

María José Luzón Universidad de Zaragoza

Abstract

New media are having a significant impact on science communication, both on the way scientists communicate with peers and on the dissemination of science to the lay public. Science blogs, in particular, provide an open space for science communication, where a diverse audience (with different degrees of expertise) may have access to science information intended both for nonspecialist readers and for experts. The purpose of this article is to analyze the strategies used by bloggers to communicate and recontextualize scientific discourse in the realm of science blogs. These strategies involve adjusting information to the readers’ knowledge and information needs, deploying linguistic features typical of personal, informal, and dialogic interaction to create intimacy and proximity, engaging in critical analysis of the recontextualized research and focusing on its relevance, and using explicit and personal expressions of evaluation. The article shows that, given the diverse audience of science posts, bloggers display a blending of discursive practices from different discourses and harness the affordances of new media to achieve their rhetorical purposes.

Journal
Written Communication
Published
2013-10-01
DOI
10.1177/0741088313493610
Open Access
Closed
Topics
multimodality scientific writing

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (14)

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Cites in this index (4)

  1. Varghese et al. (2004)
    Book-Length Scholarly Essays as a Hybrid Genre in Science
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  2. Fahnestock (2004)
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CrossRef global citation count: 144 View in citation network →

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