New Media and Astronomy
I notice that Aaron Price (Slacker Astronomy) has just published another paper in Astronomy Education Review where he reviews (appropriately enough given the journal) the use of new media in communicating astronomy.
The main section starts with a list of astronomy blogs which I think is severely lacking in those by amateur astronomers (of which there are many excellent examples). I know that Aaron has experience of amateur astronomy so I was a bit surprised by that omission. He does remark that there is a striking absence of blogs by institutions (observatories/astrophysics institutes) but I'm not totally surprised by this. After all, very few non-astronomy institutions have blogs either. It somehow doesn't seem natural for an institution to be informal and blog. Plus, they can't say what they had for breakfast or what their cat is up to.
The next section in the paper is about podcasting. Aaron states that "most astronomical podcasts lack personality and are basically Web pages and blogs read into microphones". A bit harsh perhaps, but may explain the decrease in the number of Slackerpedia Galactica episodes (a new one just out). His advice is that video is the future. This may very well be true although I still think there is a place for radio (such as while driving!).
The rest of the article covers the advantages of social networking sites such as MySpace and LiveJournal, and the use of Second Life. I must admit that although the International Spaceflight Museum is great, I have lost interest in Second Life. That may be because I don't get enough of my real one though! Anyway, an interesting read and I wonder what he would make of pointless twittering.
Comments: New Media and Astronomy
His advice is that video is the future.
That's a coincidence. The other day I had an email from the chap behind this site, alerting me to its existence.
Posted by Dave Pearson on Thursday 10th May 2007 (23:21 UTC)
Dave, I did too. Phil Plait has also moved into a similar thing (not exactly the same) with astronomybuzz.com.
Posted by Stuart on Friday 11th May 2007 (07:15 UTC)
The amateur aspect of blogs was left out simply because it is beyond the scope of the article, which was about integrating various new media technologies to get your message out. The amateur blogosphere is its own beast. They usually aren't in the marketing business and more into the communication side of thing.
On a side note, the paper is based on a talk I gave at ASP last year and this week at KICP. In it I mention working with amateur clubs and using their newsletters for grassroots organization. I kept it out of this article because it wasn't specifically "new media", though it's darn effective!
Posted by Aaron on Tuesday 15th May 2007 (22:15 UTC)
They usually aren't in the marketing business and more into the communication side of thing.
Aaron, by communication do you mean communicating with other bloggers or communicating astronomy (or both/neither)? What do you mean by the marketing business? To be honest, I think that the astronomy bloggers (both amateur and professional) behave in quite similar ways.
Posted by Stuart on Wednesday 16th May 2007 (01:47 UTC)
I meant both. A blog run by a professional site is likely only going to be focused on the work done at that institution. It is mainly going to be a PR channel for them. (I'm not saying that is bad, BTW, they serve a purpose.) And they tend to be unidirectional: from the institution to you.
Amateur blogs, tend to be about communicating. They like an omnidrectional back and forth discussion with their readers, other blogs, etc. That is why forums, comment threads like this, etc. tend to never occur on institutional blogs.
My audience for that paper, based on who reads the journal, is those institutional people. I advocate that they should setup their own PR blog, then work with the amateur blogs/new media channels to create a conversation.
Posted by Aaron on Friday 25th May 2007 (03:53 UTC)
Aaron, I think you're right that most institutional blogs are about communication in one direction. Isn't this just because it is difficult for it to have a personality? Responses have to be considered as they can affect the reputation of the whole organisation. Personal blogs (or small group blogs) that are not affiliated to an institution have much more freedom of expression and are able to have some kind of personality. Examples which spring to mind of group blogs with personalities are Cosmic Variance and Slackerpedia Galactica.
By the way, I think our podcast is one of the few (astronomical) institutional podcasts which doesn't exclusively cover work done by the institution or that is directly associated with it. The only other one I can think of is Urania from INAF (Italy) and that is in Italian.
You are also right that it is important to make the communication two-way. We have been including more listener feedback on recent shows and have made changes based on comments from a survey we carried out.
Posted by Stuart on Friday 25th May 2007 (09:41 UTC)