SciBeh Virtual Workshop 2.1

Managing Online Discourse

Session whiteboard | Discussion forum

Session overview:
Online environments are increasingly important spaces for research discourse, as review, critique, and discussion expand beyond journal peer review and publication to pre-print servers and even social media (e.g., Twitter). Discourse has important functions for research: Review, critique, and discussion of research help to refine new ideas and findings, correct errors, and increase the epistemic diversity of work. Knowledge needs to be well-communicated outside the academic sphere to avoid misinterpretation and misinformation. Online, transparent, constructive research discourse can take place quickly, raising the profile of research findings.

In open online spaces, critique and review may also not be as detailed as through the traditional processes. Uncertainty and disagreements are also unavoidable in science, and discourse can get heated and become unproductive. At worse, scientific disagreement may harm public perception of science and research. For these reasons, researchers may be reluctant to engage with critiques of their work, or publicly critique others’ work.

In this session, we address the issue of building sustainable, transparent, and constructive online discourse among researchers as well as between researchers and the wider public. Some of the questions we ask are:

• What levels of discourse support quality assurance in research?
• Why should researchers discuss work in online spaces, with each other and with the public?
• How should researchers engage in online research discourse to combat misinformation?

Speakers:
Pat Healey is a Professor and Turing Fellow at the Institute of Applied Data Science, Queen Mary University of London. In this session, he will talk about communication using digital technologies.

Namkje Koudenburg is an expert on group processes and communication. In this session, she will speak about her research on healthy discourse on- and offline, the microdynamics at play in such discussions, and how it could apply to discussing COVID-19 research.

David Garcia is an expert in computational social science and collective emotions in online spaces. He leads a research group on emotional well-being in the digital society at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna.

Robert Thibault is a Research Associate at the University of Bristol. He studies how to increase the reliability and efficiency of scientific research. He is an expert in promoting evidence-based decision making and encouraging the public uptake of science.

Darren Dahly is an epidemiologist and statistician at University College Cork. He is an active discussant of science and research on Twitter and will share his expertise and experience engaging in social discourse about science with the public using social media.

Session chair:
Ulrike Hahn is the director of the Centre for Cognition, Computation and Modelling at Birkbeck University of London. She researches the role of perceived source reliability for human beliefs as parts of larger communicative social networks.