Courage and Respect in New Media Science Communication

Abstract

This article will articulate what it means to be morally courageous in online discussions of science by distinguishing between different fields of action appropriate to “technical deliberation” and “public deliberation,” while placing respect as a vital constituent of courageous action. These distinctions and focus help reveal the cowardice in superficially courageous action (e.g., “turning off the comments” to cut naysayers out of the discussion) as well as the hidden courage in actions that might seem cursorily to be rash (e.g., “turning on the comments” to allow nonexperts to chime in on science).

NOTES

Notes

1. Allowing individuals to comment on science, when ostensibly they are befuddling the science, or distracting from the real issue at hand, with shoddy nonsequiturs, red herring, or outright hate speech, seems problematic. This is especially so in light of research that shows such comments to further polarize individuals reading about, and discussing, science (Anderson, Brossard, Scheufele, Xenos, & Ladwig, 2013).

2. Burton (2007) defines anacoenosis as “asking the opinion or judgment of the judges or audience, usually implying their common interest with the speaker in the matter.” To perform anacoenosis with respect to technological choices might be done subtly through the act of “turning on the comments,” or as explicitly as outright requests for input. Thus, anacoenosis can foreseeably demonstrate courageous respect for one's audience via rhetorical acts embedded in the construction of an online space.

3. Some might think this line of argument myopic in that it overlooks the “digital divide” or the restriction of access to internet technology (usually privileging access to those who have statuses of wealth or fields of technological experience) in effect, silencing, or at least quieting underrepresented voices (Norris, 2001). While I do not wish to deny the existence of the digital divide here, I do wish to focus on new media as those that are rapidly changing the ways that we find and make science.

4. Matthew Pianalto (2012) gives a like-minded treatment of courage: “One cannot count as taking a moral stand unless one is facing other moral agents, and facing them as such” (p. 173, emphasis in original). To not face one's opposition as individuals as agents with their own moral obligations (i.e., to stand for, and represent, their own respective projects) is to enact a category error by treating those agents as moral means, instead of moral ends. To do so is to “be involved in both a kind of recklessness and a kind of cowardice” (p. 171).

5. I have argued elsewhere that to meet the “other-words” is to demonstrate a basic respect for other persons, even when we vehemently disagree with them (Coleman, 2015).