Collaborative Research: HCC: Small: Science communication in the ecosystem of digital media platforms

这项研究将调查有关科学进步如何在数字媒体平台生态系统中传播的公开问题。在过去的几十年里，科学传播经历了巨大的变化。在线平台，如社交媒体网站，电子新闻媒体，博客和维基现在被大多数学者和公众用来分享科学发现。更好地了解科学进步的在线传播是必不可少的，因为这些与公众联系的新渠道在处理信息不受控制的扭曲方面带来了新的挑战。此外，由于耸人听闻地介绍科学成果的情况越来越多，仍然难以确定可靠的知识。这项工作将融合信息科学、传播学和新闻学的思想、方法和技术，以解决许多具有重大社会和经济影响的问题：（1）促进公共服务科学新闻的改进;（2）根据社交媒体上的集体线索，提供科学传播的实用和可操作的早期预测;（3）通过更好地了解和跟踪真实世界的信息歪曲活动，丰富地球仪各地人们的在线体验;（4）通报与错误信息有关的当前主要危机;（5）在数字媒体平台生态系统中，用科学传播的新知识指导科学政策。虽然大多数关于信息传播的研究都集中在单个平台上，该项目将为科学传播制定一个重要的多平台分析框架。主要目标是发现以下基本知识：（1）科学文章跨平台传播的典型轨迹，（2）这些轨迹如何与工作的影响，其新奇以及学者和公众的反应联系起来，（3）预测早期报道模式的最终反应;以及（4）点击诱饵和信息失真对传播的影响。该项目将阐明科学发现是如何在网上分享、讨论和扭曲的，并提供经验证据，说明如何通过计算利用从社交媒体线索推导出的早期信号来预测科学文章的覆盖范围。互动工具的设计将展示如何在真实的报道场景中向科学记者展示集体反应的痕迹。这项工作将得到现有的关于在科学传播中使用新媒体的理论和实证研究的推动，评估在线有意和无意的信息失真，利用基于网络的平台的集体线索进行早期预测，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值进行评估，被认为值得支持和更广泛的影响审查标准。

This research will investigate open questions about how scientific advances spread in the ecosystem of digital media platforms. Science communication has undergone dramatic changes over the past decades. Online platforms such as social media sites, electronic news outlets, blogs, and wikis are now used by most scholars and the public for sharing scientific findings. A better understanding of the online circulation of scientific advances is imperative because these new channels of connecting with the public have brought novel challenges in dealing with the uncontrolled distortion of information. Additionally, it remains difficult to identify reliable knowledge, given the increase of sensationalist presentations of scientific results. This work will merge ideas, approaches, and technologies from information science, communication, and journalism to address numerous issues of significant social and economic impact: (1) contributing to the improvement of public serving science journalism; (2) providing practical and actionable early predictions of science dissemination from collective cues on social media; (3) enriching the online experience of people around the globe with a better understanding and tracking of real-world message distortion campaigns; (4) informing key current crises related to misinformation; and, (5) guiding science policy with novel knowledge about science communication in the ecosystem of digital media platforms.While most research on information diffusion has focused on individual platforms, this project will develop a critical multi-platform analysis framework for science communication. A primary goal is to discover fundamental knowledge about: (1) typical trajectories in the cross-platform dissemination of scientific articles, (2) how these trajectories connect to the impact of the work, its novelty, as well as the reactions from scholars and the public, (3) predictions of eventual reactions from early coverage patterns; and, (4) effects of clickbait and information distortion on dissemination. This project will illuminate how scientific findings are shared, discussed, and distorted online and provide empirical evidence of how early signals deduced from social media cues can be harnessed computationally to predict the coverage of scientific articles. The design of an interactive tool will demonstrate how traces of collective reactions can be compellingly and usefully presented to science journalists in real reporting scenarios. The work will be fueled by and will further existing theoretical and empirical research on the use of new media in science dissemination, assess intentional and unintentional information distortion online, harness collective cues from Web-based platforms for early prediction, and design information interfaces for journalists.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.