Michelle Riedlinger, University of the Frazer Valley Brenda Moon, Queensland University of Technology Presented at 2018 PCST conference, Dunedin

1. +
Science advocacy in
Australia:
A Twitter analysis of
#March4Science
2018 PCST Global Network conference, Dunedin
Michelle Riedlinger
University of the Fraser Valley
michelle.riedlinger@ufvlca
Brenda Moon
Queensland University of Technology
brenda.moon@qut.edu.au

2. March for Science in Portland, Oregon. Photograph: CNN online

3. March for Science day at Martin Place in Sydney. Photograph: The National

4. +
Science and advocacy
Science for advocacy
Kotcher, Myers, Vraga,
Stenhouse &. Maibach
(2017)
Weitkamp (2017)
Lamberts (2017)
Roche and Davis (2017)
Conde (2015)
Isopp (2015)
Advocacy for science
Weingart & Guenther
(2016)
Schiele (2018)
Freedom to speak

5. +
Participants, and others who are
interested, would do well to
communicate the relevance and
impacts of scientific
advances…(Berg, Science, 2017)

6. +
Policy makers, beholden to the
public, must be informed of the
latest scientific research as they
create legislation, establish new
programs, and allocate
funding…(Cohen and Mendleson,
International Journal for Infectious
Diseases, 2017)

7. +
… evidence must be the starting
point of a larger, integrated,
cyclical evaluation and decision-
making and legislative
procedures…Health care should
be based on science (Marino,
Journal of Oral Research, 2017)

8. +
Who is publicly
advocating for science in
Australia?
What are they advocating
for?

9. +
Research site and data
 TrISMA infrastructure (Bruns et al 2016)
 Approx. four million Australian Twitter
accounts identified & tweets tracked on an
ongoing basis
 Keywords “marchforscience” or
“march4science”
 April 2017
 28,134 Tweets
 7,822 different Australian Twitter accounts

10. +
Twitter, science and society
Bennato (2017)
The Vaxxed case
McKinnon, Semmens, Moon, Amarasekara &
Bolliet (2016)
Science, Twitter and election campaigns: Tracking #auspol in
the Australian federal elections.
Kahle K, Sharon AJ, Baram-Tsabari A (2016)
Footprints of Fascination: Digital Traces of Public
Engagement with Particle Physics on CERN's Social Media
Platforms

11. +
Who is advocating for science in
Australia?
 Long tail - top ten Twitter accounts sent over
11% of total Tweets (~3,400 Tweets)
 These 10 accounts profiles identify them as:
 Researchers (science and social science)
 Advocates (environment, health and gender
equality)
 Public service.

12. 4m known Australian accounts
Network of follower connections
Filtered for degree ≥1000
255k nodes (6.4%), 61m edges
Edges not shown in graph
Teen Culture
Aspirational
Sports
Netizens
Arts & Culture
Politics
Television
Fashion
Popular Music
Food & Drinks
Agriculture Activism
Porn
Education
Cycling
News &
Generic
Hard Right
Progressive
South
Australia
Celebrities
Horse Racing
AustralianTwittersphere Map
TheAustralianTwittersphere in 2016: Mapping the Follower/Followee` Network
A Bruns, B Moon, F Münch,T Sadkowsky - Social Media+ Society, 2017

13. +
What are Australian Twitter users
advocating for?
Deontic modality (Giltrow, 2005; Glass, 2015; Johansen,
2010; Vihla, 1999)
 calls to act (or not to act) ; author to imagined others.
 demanding, or prohibiting action (Giltrow, 2005; Johansen, 2010;
Vihla, 1999)
Should Need/s toMust
NecessaryOught to Have to
Linguistic tactLess More
Face threatening LessMore

14. + Obligations to act
Agent Modal Tweets Modal:Agent
Obscured Must 18 .78
Should 5 .21
Policy Should 12 .6
Must 8 .4
Public Need/s to 33 .79
Should 6 .14
Must 3 .07
Science Need/s to 83 .63
Must 28 .21
Should 21 .16
Society Need/s to 51 1.0
TOTAL 268
Table 1: Modals “must”, “should” and “need to” presented by agent

15. +
Ontological concerns
Policy
Policies should be based on facts and
rational thinking
Politicians should be more scientific

16. +
Ontological concerns
Obscured agents
We should be marching for science
every day
We should all be able to communicate
science to the person standing next to
us
Everyone should be able to do
science

17. +
Ontological concerns
Science
Science should be in the driver’s seat when making policy
and laws
The social contract between science and society must be
constantly renewed
Science’s important, but it must not become a religion, nor
can scientists be free of moral values
All data should be provided online
Journal articles should be freely available if any public
money is used
Science should be intellectual
Science needs to be inclusive because science belongs to
everyone

18. +
Discussion
Advocacy efforts in response to:
 perceived decline in science’s cultural
authority
 disappointment with social transformative
power of science
Imagined future for science
Socially-engaged, open, intellectual, inclusive
and common good
Forums for discussion?
Roles for science communicators?

19. March for Science day in Sydney. Photograph: Getty