Online Media and the Sciences

Online media are many and varied. They can be defined as those media that are networked (for example, via the Internet, an intranet, or SMS, a short message service that supports text messaging). In simple technical terms, networking requires interconnectedness and interoperability between computing devices, and it also involves digital information that can be efficiently stored, searched [Page 547]for, and then retrieved and shared (either simultaneously or asynchronously). Where required, this takes place from multiple locations and different time zones.

Developments with online media have had profound implications for the accessibility of all areas of knowledge, not least the sciences. For example, online digital information (such as the home page of a scientific institution) can now be retrieved from a number of geographically distributed locations via a uniform resource identifier (URI) or uniform resource locator (URL), a codified address that points to a resource on the World Wide Web. This information is sent to the user via a network. Applications (such as Web browsers) hosted on compatible devices (including personal computers, personal digital assistants or PDAs, and mobile phones) then read and reformat this digital content (for example, the title of the home page always goes at the top, left aligned; the search function at the bottom, left-aligned; and so on).

Such is the ubiquity of online media for the sciences that these forms of communication are now routinely used. Users of online media, such as scientists, media professionals, other stakeholders (patent lawyers, journal editors, and so on), and individual citizens, have adapted (and are continuing to adapt) their social practices in how they communicate science via online media. To study contemporary science communication therefore requires some understanding of online media.

This entry provides an initial definition of online media and the sciences. The entry will draw on several examples to illustrate some of the concepts being used to analyze and describe online media and the sciences. Of course, this is a rapidly developing area in science communication. It will be up to the reader to apply these ideas, seek out new ones, and locate additional examples.

There is one note of caution, however. People should be wary of characterizing online media as new. In fact, although online media forms continue to emerge, the terms online and new are not always synonymous. Many forms of online media are well established. Electronic mail (e-mail), for example, has been in existence for over 40 years. Other new media forms are extensions of their former selves. For example, whether it is streamed or downloaded, a Web video illustrating a scientific experiment conforms to many of the same stylistic conventions as an analog film of the same event. What is different is how the Web video is hosted and then accessed by different users; the social practices in relation to online media are changing, not necessarily the media forms.