See here. It is a good summary of last week's blogging conference, with commentary from sponsor Sheila Jasanoff, head of the science and technology studies program at the Kennedy School:
Throughout the day, panelists touched on topics including blogging as a business, the perks and pitfalls of the Web as a medium to distribute scientific information, what makes responsible blogging, how to handle false information spread through the blogosphere, and the norms and expectations of the science blogging community. The final panel explored the issue of “what needs fixing” in the blogosphere during which panelists discussed the responsibility and mechanisms by which the science journalism and law communities have to address these problems.
“It was interesting to see that speakers with law backgrounds were generally extremely reluctant to impose any controls on speech in the blogosphere, whereas some science writers felt that there was a need for stricter standards, and maybe even a system of independent ratings of the reliability of science blogs,” said Jasanoff. “Another interesting insight was that blogging under an assumed identity — ‘pseudonymous’ blogging — may allow socially valuable information to be conveyed that a blogger with a known identity might not risk communicating. This runs contrary to the normal idea that democratic deliberation requires face-to-face communication with known allies and adversaries.”
So what comes next? This was an "exploratory conversation," says Jasanoff. “I expect we will fold considerations of the nature and impacts of the blogosphere into future grant applications and teaching approaches.” In other words, look to this space for more down the line. For some other comments on the event, see Dr. Isis
and Seed's Page 3.14
.
