Category: Posts

All non–archived posts, regardless of topic.

Lecture Notes: History of Science Communication

29 September 2015 /

Our first Science and Society lecture covered a history of science communication. For many of us, considering the history was surprising; we’ve got so used to scicomm being a cutting-edge interdisciplinary mess that following the trail of people who led us here hasn’t crossed our minds.

While a lot of familiar faces and names appeared on the timeline, such as Darwin, Galileo, and the Royal Institution, a lot of supporting roles were unexpected. Also, the amount of progress made between the 1500s and 1600s was astounding.

Back To Uni!

29 September 2015 /

After a year of saving up, I’m back at UWE for a Science Communication Msc.

So far it looks like an amazing opportunity, but also an incredibly scary one. The sheer amount of things I’m going to learn this year, and the amount of new experiences I’ll get to have, feels awesome. On the first teaching block, just being in a room with people who care about similar topics and ideas was enough to get me feeling more motivated.

On the other hand, I’m not confident in my ability to progress. I feel a bit overwhelmed by how challenging many of the assignments will be for me. Also, I feel like I rushed into the course; the other students are already older and have professional experience, while I only have my first degree and no evidence of what I can do.

So right now, I’m not sure what I’m going to be doing, or whether I’ll succeed. And not knowing isn’t something I’m good at.

Agenda-setting theory and the autism-vaccine controversy.

23 September 2015 /
This article is focusing on the legacy of the controversy, so for more information about what happened in Andrew Wakefield’s experiment, have a look in text-form here, or comic-form here.

Of all the pesudoscience in all the world, why did this case stay? What about this story has let it live as many people’s truth for almost 20 years, when finding out what happened takes little more than an online search?

There are a few possible answers: celebrity backing, scientists not effectively dispelling inaccuracies, or just people hearing the message so many times that it gains a veneer of truth. All of these have some merit, and all are involved.

But there are two other ideas I want to throw into the pile as well, the first being;

What if psychological biases influence us away from fully rejecting Wakefield’s story, despite the facts?

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Mental Health Online: Forums

23 June 2015 /

In 1994, Dr Phillip Long founded www.mentalhealth.com aiming to create a cross-cultural encyclopaedia of mental health conditions. The site is looking a little archaic now, using older DSM categories not commonly used now, and containing diagnostic ideas that didn’t really catch on, such as analysing all mental health symptoms through Greek personality dimensions.

While the site may not be entirely relevant these days, it’s a fascinating and detailed read. Moreover, it’s attached forum has been consistently running since 2005. In internet terms, this is an incredibly long time. Imagining friendships possibly extending for 10 years, its easy to see the best part of forums; their ability to connect people with others across time and space, providing friendships built on common experience and support.

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Mental Health Online: Tumblr

11 June 2015 /

Of all the major social networks, Tumblr is the one I wanted to write about the most, because its a dramatic difference from the stoicism of Twitter and the envy-inducing highlight reel of Facebook. Just like most of its users, its young, bold, and easily misunderstood.

# history

For the uninitiated, Tumblr is a microblogging site with a very “anything goes” attitude towards content: drawings, videos, music, gifs, longform text, links and pretty much anything else you can think of are all found there. Its major feature is reblogging, which is reposting someone else’s content onto your own feed and adding commentary, opinions, or a visual response- a cross between a Twitter retweet and a standard blog’s comment chain. Posts are organised and collected using hashtags, which are essential for posts being discovered and read.

Part of Tumblr’s appeal is how it conveys the impression of a private, almost clandestine association. (In reality, there are over 100 million tumblr users, and it got bought by Yahoo! for over a billion dollars). Unlike most social networks, pseudonymity can prevail; a user can change their name as often as they want and hide all personal information, while the lacking search function works solely on tagged words, effectively making untagged content invisible except for to followers. Because of this, Tumblr can seem far more private than other social networks. Many posts are made seemingly without considering a potential audience- often off-the-cuff, reactionary, self-depreciatingly, or holding nothing back about mental health difficulties.

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Mental Health Online: Twitter

1 May 2015 /

Compared to Facebook, I didn’t think of Twitter as a useful place for discussing mental health issues. This was partly due to the 140 character limit; I couldn’t see the use of tweets for in-depth discussion compared to something like a blog post or video.

However, when I looked through my twitter feed more closely, there was a lot of talk about mental health. Most of the people talking were advocates; either they wanted to start conversations, to support mental health organisations, or start their own campaigns. And most of these advocates were survivors, using their experiences with mental health to show others why researching mental health matters.

#Academia

Twitter doesn’t have the same kind of scare-headline news stories as Facebook, and there isn’t any research saying it affects people negatively. However, there is some research on  responses to individual hashtags. Shepherd et al studied the #DearMentalHealthProfessionals thread, a conversation set up by Amanda O’Connell in August 2013, and found there were four main types of discussion:

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Science Communication on Youtube: A Missed Opportunity?

9 April 2015 /

While looking up different viewpoints for my last post on the definition of science communication, I noticed something unexpected.

I’m interested in science communication, and love to learn more about it.
I also spend a lot of time on YouTube, including on educational channels.
However, I’ve never used YouTube for finding out about scicomm specifically.

I didn’t know if it was just something I had overlooked, or if there was a reason for this. So I decided to investigate where YouTube stands on scicomm – whether its popular with science communicators, and whether science communication videos and channels are popular with YouTube users.

Method

My first tactic was to go with the obvious; to search for “science communication” on YouTube and see what kind of channels and videos come up. As this is a likely approach for someone who has just heard the term “science communication” and wants to explore it, this seemed a sensible place to start.

I looked at the 5 most relevant channels and videos according to YouTube’s search algorithm, then the 5 highest viewed channels and videos.

Videos

The most successful section in my opinion was the 5 most relevant videos.

Two of the 5 were from the same channel- Did Someone Say Science?- a channel I’d never watched before but was really impressed by. Science Communication; It’s No Joke! explains why scicomm is important using famous historical science such as the discovery of penicillin as reference points. “Top 5 Science Communication Moments in Films” is interesting because of the film references and because its format promises an easy, entertaining watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxyox9s3luM
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Mental Health Online: Facebook

7 April 2015 /

Everyone, their mum, and their cat has Facebook, or so it can often seem.  As one of the most subscribed-to places online, and perhaps some people’s only online connection, looking at what Facebook has to do with mental health could be important on a large scale.

Simply searching for “Facebook” flags up a New Yorker headline- “How Facebook Makes Us Unhappy”. Narrowing it down to “facebook and mental health” adds BrainBlogger’s  “Facebook is no friend to mental health”, and “7 Ways Facebook is Bad For Your Mental Health, from Psychology Today.

The BrainBlogger and Psychology Today articles were almost uniformly negative, showing research that connects Facebook use to envious friendships, jealous relationships and decreased life satisfaction.

The New Yorker article included its fair share of research on the unhappy consequences of Facebook usage, but also included some optimistic findings. Their best answer was: it depends what people are actually doing on Facebook. People actively using Facebook to keep in contact and engage with loved ones benefit from the social connection. People passively browsing their timelines, however, are often left feeling worse after using Facebook.

Facebook as a mental health resource

If actively participating on Facebook is generally beneficial, does that make Facebook a good resource for people with mental health issues?

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Dissociative Disorder Diagnosis Adventure

20 March 2015 /

For people in the UK, there are two ways to go about investigating dissociative disorders (using that as the catch-all term for everything on the dissociative symptom spectrum).

The first option to to straight-out ask your GP, if you have an alright relationship with them. As the majority of GP’s won’t be knowledgeable about dissociation, that will probably involve bringing some information about it to the appointment. It would also be best to specifically asking for a referral to the Clinic for Dissociative Studies, rather than a local psychologist.

If you’re not sure how your GP will respond, or want extra support in the decision beforehand, then another option is to contact the Pottergate Centre, a dissociation-focused organisation with an office in Norwich, UK. They have an online contact option, where you can get two dissociation screening tests from them, and send the tests back to them to be analysed, all for free. You can then take the results, and their analysis, to your GP- they will also include extra information about dissociation with the results.

This method, asking the Pottergate Centre, is how I’m taking my first steps into exploring whether my experiences fit a dissociative disorder, and if so, whether getting a diagnosis is a good idea.

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Facebook Suicide Prevention Initiative

12 March 2015 /

On February 25th, Facebook’s safety division announced an extension of their suicide prevention initiative. They describe the initiative as being based on work with suicide prevention organisations, clinical research, and lived experiences from mental health survivors.

From what I’ve seen so far, parts of this initiative seem beneficial,  and useful for helping people through a bad night or self-destructive impulse. However, there are still some concerning areas, and there has already been at least one example of just how this initiative can be dealt with wrongly.

The Benefits

Firstly I’ll go through its helpful aspects. The idea of pointing out that the post suggests someone is upset or distressed could be effective. Receiving this message might be the shock that lets someone realise they are having difficulties beyond typical ups and downs, and so might encourage them to see what the offered help is.

From the other side, allowing people to send an anonymous “someone thinks you might be in trouble” message reduces one of the barriers people often have in talking about mental health issues. It starts the conversation in a low-risk way, without requiring the face-to-face questions that many people just don’t know how to carry out.

Facebook’s post showed some pictures of the support options.  The support page offers the following message:

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