Scientific Communication on the Web: Vox Populi or Vox Dei?

1. Scientific Communication on the Web: Vox Populi or Vox Dei? Stephen Yeosyeo@cepr.org Centre for Economic Policy Research

2. I will explore three questions • How has the web changed over the past decade? Users create content - bottom up, not top down Users’ actions help organize content • Has economics on the web changed as well? Yes, but not nearly as quickly Science is inherently conservative and hierarchical, relying on peer review, journal publications Mistrust of a “bottom up” web • How do you know what to read and who to believe on the web?

3. Outline Background – changes in the web since 1997 User generated content – wikis and blogs User organized content – RSS feeds and tags How have these changes affected communication in the natural sciences? And in economics? Why have these chances been slower to take place in the sciences? The tension between scientific authority and web democracy

4. Economics on the web - 1997 The state of the art was reflected by Bill Goffe in “Resources for Economists on the Internet” ¹ Everything is top down Many “institutional” websites, almost no individual websites Data available on the web, usually produced by official agencies, a few other data sets (Penn World Tables) A few examples of code for Gauss routines No mention of user generated content such as "blogs" and wikis, RSS feeds ¹ http://rfe.org/

5. Something happened on the web in the late 1990s The terms "weblog" and "blog" were first used in late 1997 Initially a US phenomenon Political blogs emerged in the US in 2001 - Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) Initially a phenomenon of the political right? Impression (not backed by any serious research) is that blogging emerged on “the right” of the political spectrum initially Is this surprising?

6. “Web 2.0” – the web in 2007 The (virtual) landscape looks very different today Has shifted from from a "read only" to a "read/write" web “Web 2.0” At a technical level this is Ajax, sophisticated client side interfaces, open source software “Enterprise 2.0” "blogs, wikis, tags and feeds” ¹ … and in addition audio (iTunes, Odeo) … and more recently video (YouTube) ¹ McAfee, A P. 'Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration' Sloan Management Review, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Spring 2006), pp.

7. The four elements of “Web 2.0” Blogs best known Wikis Wikipedia is an example, obviously, but less familiar RSS or Web Feeds Not widely used yet, but a key element in web-based communication, especially blogs Tags Like keywords in a library catalogue If on the web, can be shared across individuals Shared tags connect you to information discovered by other users Pooling information in shared tags is the basis of social bookmarking sites such as technorati and del.icio.us ¹

8. The natural sciences are changing, but more slowly Changes have been slower than in the IT community itself, or in business. Why? Declan Butler in Nature 1 suggests this is due to the conservatism of scientists and their habit of communicating via seminars and peer-reviewed journals 1 Butler D., 'Science in the web age: Joint efforts' Nature 438, 548-549 (1 December 2005) www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7068/full/438548a.htm

9. Nevertheless, some important changes have taken place Wikis OpenWetWare (www.openwetware.org) Biology - A field where experiments and experimental protocols are very important Share data, protocols etc on the web Nature Magazine's own web presence The most advanced use of web techniques for science-based communication Connotea online tagging and shared bookmarks (www.connotea.org) Scintilla collaborative bookmarking and filtering mechanism for (RSS based) scientific material on the web (www.scintilla.nature.com) Podcasts (www.nature.com/podcasts) weekly podcast of Nature articles attracts 45,000 downloads

10. Is there an “Economics 2.0”? Look at the use of Web 2.0 elements in economics Wikis Blogs Feeds Tags

11. Wikis Wikis CEPR has launched 3 or 4 only moderately successful - tend to be more successful for more "data intensive" topics and participants may not be so different from physical sciences - experimental, lab-based fields have wikis

13. Individual and group blogs Two obvious categories “Individual blogs” slow start, but now a large number in the US - preponderance of conservative bloggers still, but balance has been shifting slowly (e.g. Paul Krugman and Dani Rodrik) not clear whether bloggers are representative of views of economists as a whole in the US – are they more of a think tank than a university phenomenon? in Europe - still relatively few "one person" blogs by university economists “Group blogs" Typically 2-3 authors posting Examples - Crooked Timber, Marginal Revolution

14. “Platforms /Portals” A third category? Something between a blog and a web-based magazine LaVoce in Italy the pioneer Economists Voice in US … and now at the European level Vox (www.voxeu.org) “A platform for the analysis and discussion of key European and global policy issues by leading European economists.” Aims to be the leading web-based portal for economic policy issues Parallels in traditional media Personal View in The Financial Times “Economics Focus” in The Economist

16. Vox Generates its own content Columns by a set of eminent contributors on policy relevant topics 500-1500 words at a level that is generally higher than a newspaper column Federates or syndicates the EU-oriented content of national policy portals in Europe La Voce www.lavoce.info Telos www.telos-eu.fr Sociedad Abierta (launched in July) Netherlands site will launch in December German, Swedish and South African sites under discussion

17. Some statistics Launched in June 1,166,258 page views or 4,097,004 hits since launch, from 90,000 distinct IP addresses 132,000 “visitors” in September How many individuals does this represent? Depends on how often an individual visits the site We estimate between 5000 and 10,000 individuals who read the articles One third of readers in the US, 5% in Asia, the rest in Europe Has risen from #27 to #17 among economics blogs since July (www.26econ.com)

18. Feeds and Tags in economics Feeds Surprisingly little use Audio and Video The next big thing? Tags Will become increasingly important

22. Final theme: scientific authority versus web democracy Vox Populi “Vox populi, vox Dei” The voice of the people is the voice of God Vox Dei “Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.” And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness. A letter from Alcuin to Charlemagne in 798

23. Vox Dei? The importance of authority and reputation clear for individual blogs It’s clear that many of the most popular blogs are written by good economists – Levitt, Krugman, Mankiw, Rodrik So the academic authority of the author has some impact in the economics blogosphere Rodrik: “a weak but statistically significant positive correlation between citations and blog rankings” http://www.26econ.com/?p=56 also seems to be the case for group blogs – the reputation of the contributors is important Eurointelligence RGE Monitor Marginal Revolution For an argument in favour of Vox Dei, see Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur (2007)

24. or Vox Populi? Vox Populi? tagging, folksonomies automatic voting - but who controls the franchise? Slashdot handles this through moderators, and ranking the performance of moderators David Weinberger (2007), Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder You might be skeptical of this as internet hype, but isn’t this something economists believe in? Prediction markets James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds (2005)