New potentials in the communication of open science with non‐scientific publics: The case of the anti‐vaccination movement

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: There is persistent pressure on science to be more open. But for all the fervour, scant attention hasbeen paid to the full gamut of the potentials of openness, both positive and negative. Thesepotentials are, in many cases, linked to open access to the formal communications of science madepossible by digitisation, the internet and developments in information and communicationtechnologies. A consequence of direct access to the formal communications of science is thattraditional channels of communication are no longer the gatekeepers to the public's understandingof science. Instead, new and different types of channels for the communication of science areproliferating in a society that is increasingly online and networked, and it is therefore reasonable toexpect attentive non‐scientific publics to access the communications of science. If this is the case,then open science introduces new trajectories in its communication that are best understood withreference to flows of information in the communication networks that define the network society.It is the direct access to the communications of open science by non‐scientists that this thesisexamines in order to answer the question 'What are the potentials of open science in thecommunication of science?'. It does so by investigating the presence of two products of science –open research data and open access journal articles – in the online communications of a specificnon‐scientific community: the anti‐vaccination movement. Specifically, it determines (1) whether theproduct is being accessed by the anti‐vaccination movement as indicated by references in threeonline spheres (Twitter, Facebook and the web); (2) whether the product is being used by the antivaccinationmovement as indicated by the movement's level of engagement in each online sphere;and (3) whether there are intermediaries in the online communication networks of the antivaccinationmovement as indicated by mapping the movement's online communication networkscentred around the products of open science.Findings show that the anti‐vaccination movement is not accessing open research data. In the caseof open access journal articles, findings show that online social networks allow the anti‐vaccinationmovement to amplify its minority position by being selective in terms of the vaccine science it feedsinto its online communication networks, and by being highly active without engaging closely withthe scientific knowledge at its disposal. In part, the amplification was found to be attributable to thepresence of different types and a disproportionate number of intermediaries.The consequences of the anti‐vaccination movement's use of open access journal articles in itsonline communications is the production and amplification of uncertainty around the safety ofvaccinations. Science communicators will need to develop new strategies to counter the potentiallydetrimental health outcomes of increases in uncertainty and vaccine refusal in the broaderpopulation. This first foray into the potentials of open science shows that the development of suchcommunication strategies will require further research to understand better how attention,influence and power function in a society increasingly defined by its global communication networks.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University