A Tale of Two Platforms:Emerging communicative patterns

in two scientific blog networks

Cornelius PuschmannSchool of Library and Information Science,

Humboldt University of Berlin /Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG)

Nuffield/Oxford Internet Institute Social Networks Seminar SeriesNuffield College, Oxford

11th February 2013

photos by http://www.flickr.com/people/7455207@N05/

The context of my research

Framing the issue:How can we describe new formsof scholarly communication online?

Tracing the evolution of two scholary blog platforms

This talk

net· work\ˈnet-ˌwərk\

in a broader sense:science and scholarship as networks of knowledge (citation networks, social networks, conceptual networks)

in a narrower sense:hyperlinks between blogs on two scholarly blogging platforms

Prior and related research

• Junior Researchers Group „Science and the Internet“ (University of Düsseldorf, 2010-2012)

• Networking, visibility, information: a study of digital genres of scholarly communication and the motives of their users (DFG grant, Humboldt University Berlin, 3/2012-2/2015)

• Open Science project (Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, 2011-)

• Oxford e-Social Science Project (OeSS, 2005-2012)

"Scholarship in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities is evolving, but at different rates and in different ways. While the new technologies receive the most attention, it is the underlying social and policy changes that are most profound... This is an opportune moment to think about what we should be building." (Borgman, 2008, p. xvii)

How does the Internet reshape science and scholarship?

communication methods/tools data

funding relationship with the public epistomology

peer review

collabora'on  1.0  (sharing)

collabora'on  2.0  (contribu'ng)

collabora'on  3.0  (cocrea'ng)

(Du9on,  2008)

among  scien'sts

between  scien'sts  and  

amateurs

• Internet  users  who  (some/mes)  read  blogs:• Germany:  7%  (ARD/ZDF  Onlinestudie  2011)• USA:  32%  (Pew  Internet  2010)• Japan:  80%  (comScore  2011)

• Researchers  who  (some/mes)  read  blogs:• Germany:  8%  (study  „Digitale  WissenschaPskommunika/on“  2010-­‐2011)• UK:  ~7%  (study  „Impact  of  Web  2.0  on  Scholarly  Communica/on“  2009)

The  acceptance  of  blogs  varies  greatly  from  country  to  country!

How significant is social media for scholarly communication?

"How  do  you  stay  in  touch  with  colleagues?"  (survey  among  researchers  conducted  by  Bader,  Fritz  &  Gloning,  2012)  •  in  person:  96%•  phone:  49%•  audio/videoconferencing:  21%•  email:  94%  •  mailing  lists:  24%•  blogs:  4%  (law:  10%)•  scholarly  social  networks  (e.g.  ResearchGATE):  5%•  conven/onal  social  networks  (e.g.  Facebook):  5%•  Twiger:  2%•  wikis:  6%

How significant is social media for scholarly communication?

• formal scholarly communication is a highly resilient system

• acceptance and use of social media among academics remains low

• but: ,pockets‘ of adoption exist in some local and disciplinary scholary communities

Is anything new?

How do scholarly blogs fit it?

Scholarly blog research

• Mortensen and Walker (2002):blogs as tools for writing and knowledge management

• Walker (2006): change of usage over time

• Gregg (2009): blogs as a subcultural form of expression, part of constructing a professional identity

• Bar-Ilan (2004): aims of scholars inferred from form and content

• Luzón (2009): use of hyperlinks in academic blogs

• Kouper (2010): “virtual water cooler” for experts

• Kjellberg (2010): diverse set of functions for different users

• Shema, Bar-Ilan, & Thelwall (2012): what sources of research do scholarly bloggers link to?

• Fausto et al (2012): systematic content-based study of ResearchBlogging.org (dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050109)

Aims of blog data analysis

1. ExplorationHow can academic blogging be best described?

2. Comparison to antecedent genresHow do practices in academic blogging differ from practices in formal publishing?

3. Comparison of platformsHow do scholarly blog platforms compare?

content

use of hyperlinks

languagecomments

Scholarly blogging platforms

Scilogs ResearchBlogging Hypotheses

launched 2007 2007 2004

type publisher publisher* publicly funded

# blogs ~60 1,230 456

# posts ~7,500 26,960 45,528

History

Sociology

Political Science

Asian Studies

Library Science

Cultural StudiesUrban Studies

other

Hypotheses.org: disciplines of most active blogs (n=74)

Hypotheses.org(*) Researchblogging.org(**)

* based on those blogs with more than 100 posts (n=74) ** reproduced from Fausto et al, 2012

french

portuguese english

spanishgermancatalan

other

Hypotheses.org: languages by post

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Hypotheses.org: active blogs per year

blogs

0100

200

300

400

2004−01

2004−02

2004−03

2004−04

2004−05

2004−06

2004−07

2004−08

2004−09

2004−10

2004−11

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2011−08

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2011−10

2011−11

2011−12

2012−01

2012−02

2012−03

2012−04

2012−05

2012−06

2012−07

Posts per month starting 2004−010

500

1000

1500

Hypotheses.org v. Researchblogging.org

1 19 40 61 82 106 133 160 187 214 241 268 295 322 349 376 403 430

Hypotheses: blogs by number of posts

rank

num

ber o

f pos

ts

010

0020

0030

0040

0050

0060

00

one author, 6k posts since 2003

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

postslinksinternal links

Hypotheses.org: posts, links, internal links per year0

2000

4000

6000

8000

1000

012

000

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Hypotheses.org: mean outgoing links per blog & year

aver

age

links

per

blo

g

05

1015

Hypotheses.org: outgoing links by target

university/govnewsblogs/wikipediahomepage

0 50 100 150 200 250

050

100

150

200

250

Hypotheses.org: incoming vs. outgoing internal links

incoming

outgoing

guerre-froide.hypotheses.org

leo.hypotheses.org

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

internal links

self−citations

Hypotheses.org: self−citations vs. internal links0

100

200

300

400

500

600

Hypotheses.org: internal and self-linking (2008)

Hypotheses.org: internal and self-linking (2008-2009)

Hypotheses.org: internal and self-linking (2008-2010)

Hypotheses.org: internal and self-linking (2008-2011)

Hypotheses.org: internal and self-linking (2008-2012)

rank betweenness centralitybetweenness centrality eigenvector centralityeigenvector centrality

1 leo 5760.6 penseedudiscours 1

2 tcp 1538.5 leo 0. 976

3 phonotheque 1175.6 tcp 0. 905

4 dhdi 956.7 phonotheque 0. 846

5 dhiha 534.2 infusoir 0. 787

Network characteristics

Observations1. Different platforms are very heterogenic in terms

of disciplines, languages, blogging style, ...

2. Hypotheses.org has both grown over time and the blogs in it have become more closely connected

3. Subgroups emerge based on different factors (topic, language, geography)

4. Bloggers link to a variety of sites, but a large proportion is academic

5. Self-citation is very widespread

Thank you for your attention!

Bibliography1. Bar-Ilan, J. (2004). An outsider’s view on topic-oriented blogging. Proceedings of the 13th international

World Wide Web conference on Alternate track papers & posters (pp. 28–34). New York: ACM. doi:10.1145/1013367.1013373

2. Fausto, S., Machado, F. a, Bento, L. F. J., Iamarino, A., Nahas, T. R., & Munger, D. S. (2012). Research blogging: indexing and registering the change in science 2.0. PloS one, 7(12), e50109. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0050109

3. Gregg, M. (2009). Banal Bohemia: Blogging from the Ivory Tower Hot-Desk. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 15(4), 470–483. doi:10.1177/1354856509342345

4. Kjellberg, S. (2010). I am a Blogging Researcher: Motivations for Blogging in a Scholarly Context. First Monday, 15(8). Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2962/2580

5. Kouper, I. (2010). Science blogs and public engagement with science: practices, challenges, and opportunities. Journal of Science Communication, 9(1), A02. Retrieved from http://jcom.sissa.it/archive/09/01/Jcom0901(2010)A02/

6. Luzón, M. J. (2009). Scholarly hyperwriting: The function of links in academic weblogs. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(1), 75–89. doi:10.1002/asi.20937

7. Mortensen, T., & Walker, J. (2002). Blogging thoughts: personal publication as an online research tool. In A. Morrison (Ed.), (pp. 249–279). Oslo: InterMedia/UniPub.

8. Shema, H., Bar-Ilan, J., & Thelwall, M. (2012). Research blogs and the discussion of scholarly information. PloS one, 7(5), e35869. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0035869

9. Walker, J. (2006). Blogging from inside the ivory tower. In A. Bruns & J. Jacobs (Eds.), Uses of Blogs (pp. 127–138). New York: Peter Lang Publishers.