Our group decided to explore the genre of scientific blogging, in which an author attempts to break down complex scientific topics into layman’s terms so a broader audience can digest it easily. A “science blogger” would typically be an individual with a background in a scientific field but also has experience in explaining ideas unique to a field to individuals not involved in it. When trying to choose a topic to describe, they will typically wait for a breakthrough to happen that generates a buzz and sense of excitement within a field, which might spread and peak the curiosity of individuals in other disciplines. Their skill set allows them to parse through the jargon of any journal article or academic paper, and be able to extract key ideas to let the others know what happened and what sort of future impact it might have. It is common for them to use easily comprehendible mediums of explanation, such as comics, diagrams, or analogies in order to convey their idea as quickly and succinctly as possible.
While reading through the genre frameworks outlined by Spinuzzi, I immediately thought about scientific blogging while reading the description of Genre Systems. Spinuzzi describes the framework as “made up of sequences of genres that hand the baton of communication onward”, which is exactly what happens in the field of scientific blogging. A team of academics will put out some sort of publication that describes their findings to their peers in that field, and these bloggers will grab the “baton of communication” to create a blog post that spreads these findings and ideas to a wider audience. In this case, the “source genre” would be a journal article or scientific paper and a chain of communication branching from it might go to a scientific blog, and it can continue further to other genres such as comics related to the scientific blog post to aid in an explanation, or scientific video blogs where complex topics are broken down in video form. In order for our group to understand the genre we are studying, it is important to look at this chain of communication, to see how the explanation of ideas mutate at each link.
