Connecting Genres and Languages in Online Scholarly Communication: An Analysis of Research Group Blogs

Abstract

Blogs provide an open space for scholars to share information, communicate about their research, and reach a diversified audience. Posts in academic blogs are usually hybrid texts where various genres are connected and recontextualized; yet little research has examined how these genres function together to support scholars' activity. The purpose of this article is to analyze how the affordances of new media enable the integration of different genres and different languages in research group blogs written by multilingual scholars and to explore how various genres are coordinated in these blogs to accomplish specific tasks. The study reported in this article shows that the functionalities of the digital medium allow research groups to incorporate myriad genres into their genre ecology and interconnect these genres in opportunistic ways to accomplish complex objectives: specifically, to publicize the group's research and activities, make the work of the group members available to the disciplinary community, strengthen social links within their community and connect with the interested public, and raise social awareness. Findings from this study provide insights into the ways in

“Meet our group!”:

“…This intentional self-representation involves making several decisions (Lupton et al, 2017) (Crowston & Williams, 2000). These composing and linking affordances of digital genres allow the producers to integrate a variety of documents (in various modes, formats and languages, and from different platforms) in a single text, which facilitates uptake by multiple audiences simultaneously (Luzón, 2017). Websites, in particular, are complex or composite objects, which may be used to meet various communicative purposes at the same time (Catenaccio, 2012;Tomaskova, 2015).…”

“…Academics are increasingly resorting to digital genres to enhance their visibility, publicize their research activity and reach various audiences (Bukvova, 2011;Herman & Nicholas, 2019;Hyland, 2012;Kjellberg & Haider, 2018;Kousha & Thelwall, 2014;Luzón, 2017 literacies to reconsider what it means to produce academic texts in the 21 st century. They stress the need to address the changes that digital genres "imply for academic literacy practices" (Hyland & Hamp-Lyons, 2002: 9), to consider academic texts from a multimodal perspective and to recognize the salience of linguistic diversity in academic production (Lillis & Tuck, 2016).…”

“…Following previous research on online scholarly communication (e.g. Bukvova, 2011;Hyland, 2012;Luzón, 2017), I analyze the content included on the websites (i.e. the type of information provided).…”

“…Research on the factors that lead scholars and research groups to choose particular languages for their online writing is scarce (e.g. Han, 2017;Luzón, 2017), but essential to understand digital academic communication.…”

The Circulation of Climate Change Denial Online: Rhetorical and Networking Strategies on Facebook

“…These Facebook pages represent just two of the many social media communities that promote scientific and environmental skepticism. Previous scholars have examined how scientists and the public use the Internet as a platform for sharing scientific information (e.g., Cagle & Tillery, 2018;Lee, VanDyke, & Cummins, 2018;Luzón, 2017). Other work has focused on the circulation and reception of climate change information in website comments.…”