{"id":139,"date":"2016-03-30T06:00:19","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T10:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ecologybits.com\/?p=139"},"modified":"2016-03-31T11:31:14","modified_gmt":"2016-03-31T15:31:14","slug":"reddit-for-science-communication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ecologybits.com\/index.php\/2016\/03\/30\/reddit-for-science-communication\/","title":{"rendered":"Reddit for science communication (UPDATE: now with a link!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’ve dabbled in science communication you’ve likely come across the difference between communicating AT people and communicating WITH people. Or maybe you haven’t. After all, science has historically largely subscribed to the deficit model of teaching: the “general public” is a bunch of people who are empty vessels into which we should pour in knowledge. Want to do science communication? Give a public talk! Write an article for a popular science magazine or for a newspaper! Get interviewed on radio or TV!<\/p>\n

These things are all good. I won’t say they aren’t. Science communication can comprise many different methods. But these are all examples of communicating AT people. It’s a one-way street. It’s quite comfortable for the scientist. And it’s not clear that it’s particularly effective. I think that if we as scientists really want to engage the public, we need to start talking WITH people. And this is a lot less comfortable for us.<\/p>\n

So in keeping with my taste for things that make me uncomfortable, I’ve recruited a couple colleagues and we’re going to do a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Thursday (tommorow!) at 1pm Eastern<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: Here’s the link to our Reddit AMA<\/a>!<\/p>\n

\"reddit\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What is Reddit? Apparently, it’s a well-known online place where\u00a0people post links, comment, and have conversations. I just joined it. I’m obviously late to the party. But there are a LOT of non-scientists on Reddit who are really interested in science. So it’s a good place to start having these conversations.<\/p>\n

An AMA<\/a> is a particular type of Reddit discussion in a Q&A format, where someone (or a handful of people) answer questions on, well, anything. Many famous people have done AMAs, including celebrities, politicians, sports stars, musicians, etc. We are doing our AMA in a subreddit (a section of Reddit) called science<\/a>\u00a0which is subscribed to by millions of people. Importantly, the science subreddit is carefully moderated to suppress anti-science comments. Since I work on climate change research, this is a particularly nice feature. How it works is that starting at 8 am Eastern, people (including you!) can post questions for me and my colleagues to answer. Then at 1 pm, we will start answering them. People will hopefully keep posting questions and follow-ups to our answers. And we will have something like a discussion.<\/p>\n

So on Thursday,\u00a0come on over<\/a>, ask\u00a0us a question (about anything!), or just lurk and see what’s going on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’ve dabbled in science communication you’ve likely come across the difference between communicating AT people and communicating WITH people. Or maybe you haven’t. After all, science has historically largely subscribed to the deficit model of teaching: the “general public” is a bunch of people who are empty vessels into which we should pour in … <\/p>\n

Continue reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-communication","nodate"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p77WvP-2f","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ecologybits.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ecologybits.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ecologybits.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ecologybits.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ecologybits.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ecologybits.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144,"href":"https:\/\/ecologybits.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions\/144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ecologybits.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ecologybits.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ecologybits.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}