Thursday 15 October 2015

Invitation to participate in a PhD research project on climate blogging

My name is Giorgos Zoukas and I am a second-year PhD student in Science, Technology and Innovation Studies (STIS) at the University of Edinburgh. This guest post is an invitation to the readers and commenters of this blog to participate in my project.

This is a self-funded PhD research project that focuses on a small selection of scientist-produced climate blogs, exploring the way these blogs connect into, and form part of, broader climate science communication. The research method involves analysis of the blogs’ content, as well as semi-structured in-depth interviewing of both bloggers and readers/commenters.

Anyone who comments on this blog, on a regular basis or occasionally, or anyone who just reads this blog without posting any comments, is invited to participate as an interviewee. The interview will focus on the person’s experience as a climate blog reader/commenter.*

The participation of readers/commenters is very important to this study, one of the main purposes of which is to increase our understanding of climate blogs as online spaces of climate science communication.

If you are interested in getting involved, or if you have any questions, please contact me at: G.Zoukas -at- sms.ed.ac.uk (Replace the -at- with the @ sign)

(Those who have already participated through my invitation on another climate blog do not need to contact me again.)

*The research complies with the University of Edinburgh’s School of Social and Political Sciences Ethics Policy and Procedures, and an informed consent form will have to be signed by both the potential participants (interviewees) and me.



VV: I have participated as blogger. For science.

I was a little sceptical at first, with all the bad experiences with the everything-is-a-social-construct fundamentalists in the climate “debate”. But Giorgos Zoukas seems to be a good guy and gets science.

I even had to try to convince him that science is very social; science is hard to do on your own.

A good social surrounding, a working scientific community, increases speed of scientific progress. That science is social does not mean that imperfections lead to completely wrong results for social reasons, that the results are just a social construct.

1 comment:

  1. Science is not done on blogs but in forums where all participants have an equal footing. Look at the success of an earth sciences, math, and physics forum such as the Azimuth Project, where the following climate model was socialized:

    http://contextearth.com/2015/10/22/pukites-model-of-the-quasi-biennial-oscillation/

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