Communication, representation, and scientific knowledge: A conceptual framework and case study
Knowledge, Technology, and Policy, 5 (1):
6--28 (March 1992)Abstract
Abstract What is the significance of communication in science? Though the question has been addressed by researchers in a number of
fields, most have tended to see communication as an intermediary step on the way to some other phenomenon of interest, aprocess that is only interesting insofar as it produces some other structural or functionalproduct, e.g., documents, organizations, or social groups. From a communication research perspective, however, the communicationprocesses themselves are the object of study. The diversity and flexibility of scientists’ communication behavior, and thecomplexity of their communication channels, styles, messages and networks, have not been assessed as a set of related phenomena.Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to draw together several analytical concepts regarding scientific communication processesthat have been proposed by the author elsewhere, including the issue of social representations (Lievrouw, 1990), the scientificcommunication cycle (Lievrouw and Carley, 1991), and the scholarly research narrative (Lievrouw, 1989, and Mokros and Lievrouw,1991). The concepts are combined here into one conceptual framework and applied to the case of a single biomedical specialty,lipid metabolism research, which has developed from an esoteric biochemical subfield to a large and well-funded specializaitonwith a great deal of influence on American culture’s preoccupation with heart disease.
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