We are pleased to organize a session on “Digital contestations of openness: dynamics and frictions in science communication” at the STS conference in Graz, 4-6 May, 2022. The session aims to explore with which problems and challenges practices of science communication are encountered on digital platforms.
Several events in the context of the recent pandemic have shown that debates about science and technology are becoming emotional. Scholarly communication is increasingly confronted with institutional mistrust while at the same time researchers are expected to communicate their results and participate in decision making processes. Many of such frictions in science communication can be observed online, with dynamics specific to particular platforms.
This session invites contributions focusing on questions such as the following:
- How do we deal with frictions and challenges of open communication of scientific results in light of the digital transformation?
- How does scholarly communication deal with the different affordances and dynamics of social media and digital platforms?
We welcome theoretical, methodological as well as empirical papers dealing with challenges of digital science communication that address dynamics and frictions of scholarly communication on the web.
The call for abstracts for the session can be found here.
Abstracts can be submitted here.
The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 22 January 2022.
General information on the conference can be found here.