Interactive Science – Internal Science Communication Via Digitial Media

Many of the new information and communication technologies, among these the World Wide Web, were originally conceived and developed in the academic field. E-mail, web portals, digital presentations, newsletters, discussion lists, digital libraries and repositories, more recently weblogs and collaborative formats of text production (‘Wikis’), are routinely used by scientists today. ‘New media’ affect all areas and phases of the process of knowledge management – from the generation and primary distribution to the processing, publication and storage of scientific knowledge.
Two aspects are characteristic of the present stage of development. On the one hand, different forms of use of digital science communication are being tested and dynamically developed, from which a growing pool of communication formats is arising that can be used by future providers and users. On the other hand, we perceive different communication cultures in respect of the form and amount of use of this potential, which are related to the specific culture of science of particular subjects or a particular field of disciplines. These different cultures of science also lead to differences in the assessments of the potentials, the barriers and the problems of digital scholarly communication.
The collaborative research network Interactive Science combines perspectives from linguistics, media studies, information science, sociology, the history of science and drama studies in a multidisciplinary view on the relevant phenomena. It focuses on the interactive potential of information and communication technologies with respect to two aspects under investigation: the collaborative and the performative dimension of scholarly communication. Within the last few years, science studies emphasized the communication of scientific results to third parties (politics, economy etc.) or in teaching environments (e-learning). In the present research network, it is the communication among peers by means of new media that forms the centre of interest. As interactive media provide effective and still underestimated potentials for the generation and distribution of knowledge in intra-science communication as well as in communication between scientists and the science-oriented public, ‘Cyberscience’ (Nentwich 2003) establishes a key topic in the humanities.
The working hypothesis of the research network is as follows: Interactive Science is able to convert technical potentials into social reorganisations in which the collaborative and performative aspects of scientific activity emerge more considerably by reinforcing each other. This hypothesis will be critically examined by means of three interconnected empirical studies on multi-media presentations, digitally mediated lectures and scientific controversies in Internet communities and a directly related project of more general scope, focussing on recent evolutional trends of 'Cyberscience', also investigating aspects of the history of science. The ITA contributes to sub-project I:

* Sub-project I: Collaborative knowledge management and democratisation of academia
* Sub-project II: Academic presentations – Textuality, structure and reception
* Sub-project III: The academic speech and its digital documentation and distribution
* Sub-project IV: Scientific information, critique and controversy in digital media

The Centre for Media and Interactivity (ZMI) of the Justus Liebig University Gießen is coordinating the project; further partners are teams around Prof. Kuhlen (University of Konstanz), Prof. Leggewie (University of Essen) und Prof. Bucher (University of Trier).