Don't forget the blogosphere

Abstract

Communicating results and ideas to a wider audience has been an important, but challenging component of scientists working in an academic environment. Particularly in recent decades, various social media platforms have become increasingly important to facilitate this. In addition, many scientists have used blogging platforms to communicate and discuss their work. Although the online dynamics of science communication are continuously changing, blogging has been used in a remarkably stable form for several decades. For this work, we brought several ecology bloggers to reflect on blogging as a science communication medium. We argue that blogging can be a powerful way to present new ideas and discuss them with a wide audience. Although blogs are not the same as scientific articles, they often serve as the initial brainstorm session. Importantly, we argue that blogs are most effective when bloggers and readers actively engage in conversations. We believe that blogging will be here to stay in science communication because of its unique and independent form of outreach.