Cyberscience 2.0 / Interaktiva Bd.11 (PDF)

1 Introduction In the early part of the 21st century one of us coined the term "cyberscience" (Nentwich 2003) to describe the trend of applying information and communication technologies (ICT) to scientific research. Scholars tended increasingly to use the Internet not only to exchange e-mails, but also to participate in online debates, cooperate at distance, use remote databases, simulate and model reality on their computers, and teaching their students with the web. These developments have not come to a halt since the early days but have accelerated and diversified ever since. As will be discussed in section 1.1, the Internet has today become an essential tool for everyday scholarly communication; academic work without the use of the Internet is now as unthinkable as writing an academic paper on a typewriter, especially for young researchers. The emergence of Web 2.0 opened up new opportunities, seized not only by the general Internet community worldwide, but increasingly also by researchers and academic teachers. During the same period powerful commercial actors continued the development of the Internet and made it a different place compared to its early days. This book focuses on these latest trends and addresses two interrelated research questions: What role does the digital social culture triggered by Web 2.0 play in the academic world at present and what are the potentials of platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Wikipedia? What impact will the emerging socio-technical practices have? We approach an answer to these questions in three steps. First, we will review the status quo of how cyberscience developed (1.1) and which new tools and platforms evolved over the last decade with the potential to serve the academic communities (1.2); as a basis for our empirical research and subsequent analysis, we will present our conceptual framework (1.3). Second, we will present five empirical case studies, discussing promising fields of the developments in recent

Contents PrefaceIX 1 Introduction1 1.1 Cyberscience 1.0 Revisited2 1.2 Web 2.0 and Cyberscience5 1.2.1 The Internet is becoming a social space5 1.2.2 Social media, digital social networks and digital social culture7 1.2.3 On the path to cyberscience 2.0?9 1.3 Conceptual Framework and Methods11 1.3.1 Modeling scholarly activities and ICT impact on academia11 1.3.2 Methods applied15 2 Case Studies17 2.1 Social Network Sites19 2.1.1 Main functions26 2.1.2 Potential for science and research33 2.1.3 Usage practices and impact35 2.1.4 Interim conclusions48 2.2 Microblogging50 2.2.1 Main functions51 2.2.2 Potentials for academia54 2.2.3 Usage practices and impact57 2.2.4 Interim conclusions70 2.3 Collaborative Knowledge Production-The Case of Wikimedia72 2.3.1 Main functions and core principles74 2.3.2 Potentials for academia82 2.3.3 Usage practices and impact85 2.3.4 Interim conclusions97 2.4 Virtual Worlds-The Case of Second Life100 2.4.1 Main functions101 2.4.2 Potentials for science and research103 2.4.3 Usage practices and impact104 2.4.4 Interim conclusions112 2.5 Search Engines-The Case of Google113 2.5.1 Main functions116 2.5.2 Potential for academia125 2.5.3 User practices and impact127 2.5.4 Interim conclusions139 3 Cross-Cutting Analysis143 3.1 Interactivity as a Crucial Category143 3.1.1 Utopian and dystopian perspectives143 3.1.2 Insiders and outsiders: methodological issues146 3.1.3 Overcoming the barriers between utopians and dystopians149 3.2 New Windows in the Ivory Tower151 3.2.1 Bringing together the academic and the public sphere152 3.2.2 Blurring media formats155 3.2.3 Blurring roles158 3.2.4 Bridging the boundaries?161 3.3 Academic Quality and Digital Social Networks163 3.3.1 Recent developments in academic quality control163 3.3.2 Ex ante quality control for or through digital social networks?165 3.3.3 Ex post quality control in digital social networks168 3.3.4 Crediting and incentives171 3.4 Information Overload or Information Paradise?172 3.4.1 The

PD Dr. Michael Nentwich ist Direktor des Instituts für Technikfolgen-Abschätzung (ITA) der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien. René König, Dipl.- Soz., arbeitete dort im Projekt "Interactive Science".