Science and the Internet ─ Communicating Knowledge in a Digital Age

The essays collected in Science and the Internet consider the effects of digital technologies on scientific argumentation and the circulation of scientific knowledge. In Communicating Science, Gross, Harmon, and Reidy argued that the fundamental interaction between verbal and visual elements that defines scientific argumentation will not change significantly as technology changes: “While the ‘computer revolution’ will undoubtedly continue to facilitate this interaction, we do not think this heart will look, or beat, very differently at the end of the twenty-first century.” Nothing could be further from the truth.The Internet has transformed how science is practiced, and it is accelerating the pace of scientific communication both among peers and to the public. Among peers, the Internet promotes wider and more fruitful collaborative networks. Fully evolved, the scientific article is becoming a portal through which knowledge flows. The scope of peer review is being expanded by the full documentation and immediate scrutiny that the Internet permits. But the Internet’s influence extends beyond peer-to-peer communication to the communication of science to wider publics. Institutions must adapt to the just-in-time behaviors of information seekers, and the participatory features of Web 2.0 allow non-experts to comment on scientific research in unprecedented ways.The contributors to Science and the Internet analyze digital developments in science communication—from “open” notebooks and live-blogged experiments to podcasts and citizen-science projects—to assess their rhetorical implications.Intended Audience: The book will appeal to a broad audience consisting of teachers of technical and scientific communication, professors of science studies, and academics and others with an interest in the Internet; also useful as a central or supplementary text for courses in technical and scientific communication or in digital media studies.

ALAN GROSS is a professor at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. He is the author of The Rhetoric of Science and its extensive revision, Starring the Text. With his long-term collaborator Joseph Harmon, he has written Communicating Science, The Scientific Literature, The Craft of Scientific Communication, and Science from Sight to Insight: How Scientists Illustrate Meaning. JONATHAN BUEHL is an associate professor and director of Business and Technical Writing in the Department of English at The Ohio State University. His research interests include the rhetoric of science, visual rhetoric, research methodology, and digital media studies. He is the author of Assembling Arguments: Multimodal Rhetoric and Scientific Discourse (forthcoming, University of South Carolina Press) and essays (published or forthcoming) in College Composition and Communication and Technical Communication Quarterly.