Communicating science on the Internet: new genres for new social practices

LECTURE SERIES ON SCIENCES AND SCIENCE COMMUNICATION, organized by the Laboratory of Science communication (LABCS) and the InterDisciplinary Institute of Data Science (IDIDS).

Lecture 1. Communicating science on the Internet: new genres for new social practices

Maria José Luzon Marco, University of Zaragoza
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
12.30-13.45
room 351
Discussant: Sara Greco

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In this lecture I will discuss a new form of online science communication, the academic blog, to explore how new technologies are shifting the circulation of scientific knowledge. Although the academic blog may adopt conventions from traditional academic genres, the technological affordances of the digital media (e.g. hyperlinking, multimodality, data sharing and collaboration, new participation frameworks) enable academics to use blogs for new social practices. There is a variety of academic blogs (e.g. individual blogs, research group blogs, community blogs, PhD blogs, research blogging), used for different rhetorical purposes (e.g. publicizing the scholars' research, commenting on others' published research and discipline-related news, discussing controversial issues). In this lecture I will (i) compare the features of blogs to those of traditional genres of science communication; and (ii) analyse different types of academic blogs to show how digital affordances open new avenues for public communication and discussion of science, enable new social practices and facilitate new discursive practices.

María José Luzón is Senior Lecturer at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. She has a PhD in English Philology and has published papers on academic and professional discourse and on language teaching and learning in the field of English for Specific Purposes. Her current research interests include the analysis of online academic genres, especially academic blogs, and the analysis of ELF in academic written discourse.

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For further information on the Lecture series and on the Laboratory of Science Communication (LABCS):