Focusing on the genre of scientific blogging, particularly the subgenre that takes concepts and questions and uses analogy, humor, common vernacular, and drawings/animations to explain concepts, this particular body of work serves as an intermediary between the public at large and more technical scientific documents and publications. The genre is by definition designed to meet the needs of wider consumption, as it is difficult even for scientifically minded individuals to extract the takeaways from many publications if they are not trained in deconstructing them. Typically, it takes a particular type of person to be able to compose this genre, as they need to be able to read and digest technical documents such as scientific writings (publications, books, etc.) and create analogies and images that are easy to understand, thus “simplifying” the concepts, taking care not to loose the main ideas from the work in the process. Those who read and use this genre are those who have questions or wonder about scientific principles, but find the primary sources difficult to break apart and draw conclusions from, either from lack of technical training, or lack of time/energy to do so.
The genre is in part by definition a response to the relative inaccessibility of the more technical scientific genres. Most often, such documents are written by scientists for scientists, and are often field-specific, meaning it’s difficult for a materials scientist to easily break apart a molecular biology publication due not only to the specific jargon of the science involved, but also the formatting, flow, and structure/layout of the publications. The genre in question is designed to take findings or explanations and put them in terms that every human can comprehend, regardless of their field, profession, or level of experience (more or less), arising from the demand for a more easily digested intermediary between the public at large and technical documents.
This genre can be thought of in the Genre Repertoires perspective, in which it would be important to examine or be familiar with the foregrounded genres of official scientific documentation, and understanding the communitarian action of the genre itself, in which members of the community with particular fields of expertise explain their areas of interest to others in terms they can understand. Over time, the demand for the genre creates some individuals who devote their times to specializing in multiple fields, but the root of the genre comes from the community as a whole, sprouting from individuals who span the gap between technical science and public. It would also be interesting to examine if there is overlap and interplay, wherein, in response to this genre, if any scientific documentation take from this model and summarize their conclusions in a similar fashion in the original publications or in supporting documentation.
