Science about internet and society: concerns

Today’s post is my reflection on how knowledge has been organized in the themes we study within this universe of research on the internet and society. It is a call to conversation from the perspective of the one who writes to you – just a person with their experiences and dialogues – so counterpoints, additions and corrections are super welcome!

Mining research material

As a researcher and head of research who accompanies some stages of research – among them, the very important moment that is the publication – I wanted to share here some concerns of this work that is to choose how to bring the results of a research to the world.

Ironically, it all starts with the moment when we don’t have yet results. Imagine that you are starting a new research project on current topics involving the internet and society. That time has come to look for what is already published. After all, it is necessary to understand the area where we want to dialogue and contribute.

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to tell you what happens to me and a lot of people I know: the first sources of more accurate material are research and studies found by digging into the websites of institutes that we know or those found after a lot of searching through the networks.

And now comes something that might sound controversial: this is weird! After all, do we have something to rethink about these publishing formats? I propose to share here some questions about this and why I think there could be advantages in investing more in traditional academic publications.

Parentheses about academic publications

Imagine the following situation: a person you know says he will not get vaccinated because he thinks the vaccine tests were rigged. And she mentions a study she read about this, which is on a page from a renowned research institute. You go to this page and verify that, in fact, there was a text talking about this, but it was portrayed with several corrections, and one in particular: in fact, the sample where the possible fraud occurred is tiny and does not affect the reliability of the vaccine.

This is possible because this study is available to the public through a magazine, called a journal (for obvious reasons), which is committed to several parameters of research ethics. One of them is double-blind peer review (this means: people in the field, the “peers”, review the publication, without these people or the person who wrote it knowing the identity of each other). A second parameter is retraction by investigating aspects such as conflicts of interest, mathematical mistakes, errors in research design, which often go unnoticed by reviewers and are only identified by the public.

So, a journal publication is not something permanent and untouchable. And therein lies a beauty in the field of scientific publications: the possibility of contesting and comparing evidence, fundamental for the construction of reliable knowledge.

The internet allows this to be leveraged, with the publication – and indexing – of an unimaginable amount of information (we already talked about this in the post about research bases). Indexed articles are more accessible because we can just type the keyword into a database and there they are; available to all connected people (which is already an important constraint), without restriction to who knows which group of authors, institutions or events.

Science on internet and society in Brazil

Ironically, research on topics involving the Internet is not always included in this logic of indexing and insertion in research bases, at least in Brazil. In English, there is usually more material (but this is not always a reality either). We do have people publishing in journals independently or linked to research centers.

But I often observe the following: the most current topics and studies that have more direct investment are still published in a dispersed way on institutional portals, events, etc, without adequate indexing. That is, if we don’t know where to look, how are we going to find them?

And with that I don’t want to imply that they are not of quality or elaborated with sophisticated and grounded methodologies – as I mentioned at the beginning, they are often the ones that most speak to current themes and reflections. And there is a particular advantage in these publications: they seek to have a language that is more understandable by non-experts. It is the idea of ​​a refined and careful knowledge, but accessible to the general public. But to what extent are the tools to recognize the refinement of content also accessible?

In general, defending science also leads us to understand some aspects of how it works. We live two and a half years (and counting…) of a pandemic. During this period, we learned that it is possible to have a network of institutions and so-called “studies”, with a false guise of scientific concern, affirming and defending points that are not, at the end of the day, based on evidence. So if we encourage non-experts to trust accessible information, how can they sort out what is reliable and what is not?

This makes me think that the format of circulation and publication of scientific studies – even if imperfect – is important for the reliability of knowledge. Being able to compare studies with other evidence gathered, no matter who published it, but what interests were involved and how the study was conducted. There is confidence that, if submitted to peers, errors and slip-ups will be identified and corrected by the community.

The Scientific Community

And therein lies an important point of the scientific community: it needs to be, in fact, a community. If there is not this exchange, this collaboration, complementation between different studies in different places that work around knowledge on a certain subject, we have no science.

Another central element is openness, the availability of what is produced to the community, and the availability of the method to criticism. Although many (very large) howevers may be glaring here, science proposes itself as something that is directly independent of who is related or not to the people who produce knowledge. Yes, this would be more beautiful if there weren’t several communities that, because they are socially oppressed, do not have equal access to scientific training and are underrepresented – but science is also a tool that reveals this and is a first step to break this logic; the commitment to openness exists, even if it is not always honored in the way it should be.

But what does this have to do with indexed publications? As I said at the beginning, the first step we take when starting a research is trying to understand who we are talking to, what other people have already done. If I have to know in advance who these people are and where they published their research, a restriction on knowledge piles up on all those who are already structurally embedded in society.

When we restrict content to sites and institutions that need to be known in advance, or that require people to do real mining to find material, we are imposing yet another barrier to building this community. Only those who have had contact with the right people, or the right events, will be aware that these materials exist.

This does not match the idea of knowledge that is available and open to criticism and reinforces all the relations of inequality that make the community smaller and, therefore, less open and less adherent to the proposal of science. My proposal to reflect on these concerns is with the hope that we have more and more networks and the availability of our research in formats that allow the expansion of the research community on the internet and society and the reach of what we produce.