Instagram, TikTok, Clubhouse: Today, researchers who want to share their work with non-academic audiences can choose between a vast array of digital platforms. Some of them vanish as quickly as they appear. Others attract an audience that is looking  for something other than scientific content.

Our lab is growing! In our Three Questions series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. In this week’s post we’re highlighting Cecilia Rozemblum, a PhD student in the ScholCommLab based at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP), Argentina. With two degrees under her belt already—one in librarianship and documentation—she’s excited to be almost done her third.

This post is a collaboration between ScholCommLab member Alice Fleerackers and SFU Knowledge Mobilization Officer Lupin Battersby. It was first published on November 18, 2020 at SFU Library’s Radical Access blog and has been reposted here with permission. Curious about research blogging, but not sure where to start? In this post, we answer common questions about why, when, and where to blog about research.

Jayat Joshi An old yet powerful principle has emerged from the COVID-19 crisis. It was introduced to the West in the writings of Carl G. Jung, and has its roots in the works of the pre-Socratic Greeks: enantiodromia (enantios – opposite and dromos – running course) (Jung 1968). Put simply, this means when something is pushed to the extreme, it tends to turn into its opposite.

Q: Are there particular features to the Corona pandemic that makes it more attractive to conspiracy theories or conspiracy theorists? Or are we just much more aware of these theories because everyone is living through this at the moment? Mike S. Schäfer MS: In general, conspiracy theories are not a new phenomenon.

Communicating Science in Covid Times During the Corona crisis, the value of science and science communication has been clearly demonstrated.

The impact of bioenergy research Bioenergy production (liquid biofuels for long haul transportation, for instance) and use has come to be seen as an essential component of our energy matrix and it must be expanded if we are to avoid climate change [1]. It is the only available option for fossil fuels substitution for a large sector of our economies.

Over the past 10 years, my colleagues and I have been doing research on research, on how academic knowledge is created (i.e. scholarly communication) and disseminated (i.e. research communication). We have been looking at how researchers collaborate and share data (here, here and here), how they perform quality checks (here), where they publish and how they engage with the public (here and here). Perhaps the most important insight I have gained

This interview is done in personal capacity and based on insights such as recently published in the “International Handbook on Responsible Innovation: A Global Resource”. In 2013, you introduced a vision for Responsible Research and Innovation.

What is the value of social science today? Arthur Lupia, University of Michigan, Photo: Svetluša Surova For me, the value of social science is ultimately about the quality of life. What social science does is that it helps us to take observations of the world and put them into a form where we can understand more about how the world works. We can then use social science to anticipate likely consequences of our actions.