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Writing Science, Block 2- We got published!

28 November 2015 /

This weekend was the second block of Writing Science, and it was a challenging week (in a good way). The block was intense, and felt longer than 3 days as we were kept busy with loads of different tasks.

Thursday was the theory-focused day, as our main lecture was on framing science, while Friday was practical and focused on Magazine Anatomy. To learn about anatomy, we had to flatplan a magazine issue, which meant working out how to structure the issue, and what stories would be placed in what order to catch and keep people’s attention.

I liked the puzzle of planning out the route through the pages and deciding how many pages we would use to tell each story. That was a taste of how many decisions working in a field like this requires about almost every aspect. A lot of what we were talking about, like magazine structure and using a variety of features so people don’t get bored of one topic, will be useful for our group magazine projects too.

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The Lion’s Den of Broadcasting

9 October 2015 /

This week has been bad in terms of anxiety and depersonalisation; simple things like a busy bus or a doubting thought, that normally I can deal with absolutely fine, have been sources of fear and thought-loops instead.

Considering this was also the week where I started the Broadcasting module, I was worried. While the course as a whole is outside of my comfort zone, a module where I’d potentially have to appear on microphone and on camera is lightyears away from comfortable.

But today, I woke up feeling calmer. Then something happened that put the last few years in perspective.

Today was the second day of our broadcasting group, and we were focusing on radio. Our first task was trying out voice recorders to interview a classmate. I returned our voice recorder to my lecturer as we were finished, only to find the next task was analysing an interview as a full group.

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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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