I enjoyed Science Online London 2009. One topic that seemed to come up in different sessions, particularly on Friday at the wonderful FringeFrivolous, is PR. Here is a loose collection of things that I heard people said about it:
- it’s a paid form of lying (ok, that was David Colquhoun)
- there should be funds in every project to do it
- PR needs better PR
- it’s frustrating that PR folks often get the science wrong
- there should be more science graduates (as opposed to arts graduates) doing it.
The topic ‘blogging for the man’ on Friday prompted a spirited discussion on what goes on when you’re not blogging for yourself but for your employer, or when your blog is on your institution’s website.
Almost everything that was said seemed to point to a fairly obvious inherent conflict: blogging is about saying what you want to say when you want to say it and in the words you choose – i.e. almost absolute freedom of expression. PR is about controlling the message – even if, in the case of science institutions, this may be happening with inherently ‘good’ intentions.
When I started this new job, I naturally thought that I’d like to blog about aspects of it. To gauge early on what would be acceptable, I went straight to our PR department. Who promptly suggested that, sure, I could blog about the European XFEL, but they’d just have a look at what I wrote beforehand.
At which point the floor seemed to open up beneath me.
Honestly: no way. Not on my personal blog, which I write in my spare time (and that does include lunch breaks). Instead, I have been focussing on the things I don’t suspect will need PR involvement. So far, so good. And by the way: if I sound enthusiastic in my posts, it’s because I actually am. So, unless bloggers and PR departments develop some mutual trust, I just don’t think the words will come easily.
What I do wonder more and more though is whether science blogging really is about science communication and outreach – I haven’t made up my mind yet, but this post is pretty interesting – oh, and look at how much of all this was already said in this discussion!
That’s two sides of the same coin. I think people like DC get upset because they associate ‘PR’ with The Man doing the control rather than him/you/me.
Yeah, I could have phrased that differently – both sides want to keep control of course.
By the way, I did just insert that bit on ‘trust’ while you weren’t looking…
Yeah, I could have phrased that differently – both sides want to keep control of course.
By the way, I did just insert that bit on ‘trust’ while you weren’t looking…
oops
Heh.
The 90% True blog post you linked to is a very interesting read. The remark:
Wouldn’t it be nice to see what scientists are really saying without the filter?
seems to me to identify an important benefit of blogging.
Do you think people still have a filter on, Stephen? In that case, I also wonder what would come out if it was removed.
I did miss this entire conversation, by the way. Life and work seem to be heavily interfering with my blogging at the moment…
Hm. Blogging about work – that’s been talked about before. Bottom line – if you work for an institution that has anything, anything at all, to gain or lose from comments made about it (and I would venture a guess that this includes all but perhaps the most anarchic of employers), then your PR department is going to have at least a passing interest in what is said about it. Institutions that compete for large pieces of funding pies, or that have high-value and recognizable brands cough not mentioning any names of course cough, are going to be understandably careful about how they’re represented in the
popular pressinterwebs, at least by people over whom they can exert some control.“Blogging for the man” may be one thing, but the bigger issue in my view is “blogging about the
manwomanperson who pays your salary”.Or, in the words of the inimitable Dooce – “My advice to you is BE YE NOT SO STUPID. Never write about work on the internet unless your boss knows and sanctions the fact that YOU ARE WRITING ABOUT WORK ON THE INTERNET.”
Your mileage, of course, may vary.
I think it is in part due to a lack of understanding from both sides and what is at stake. [and also assuming you are sane and most likely they wouldn’t change much of your text… but the other people in that cubicle there?? not so much]
I have to admit, I have thought a lot like “what, THEY have to read all I write about my work” but then I have met with people working and realized that I wouldn’t want some people to write ‘freely’ about my work and my stuff either… not to mention what would happen to the funding/charity money they need. Why? Because in my humble and honest opinion some employees don’t seem completely sane/‘non vindictive’/have all their marbles and would therefore make thing bad? That’s not even counting the people who would try and make things good but still drag the BRAND NAME into something…
I am not sure on how to go by this though. I had tremendous help from reading a bunch of “non cleaned” blogs about being a post doc. In fairness though, I didn’t need to know WHERE these people were, not more than “private institute in US” or “public uni in UK” since that helped a bit with broadening the picture. Not sure that it would help to know their names?! It might even make it less appealing, since then I would think that they “self censoured” more and make it more “clean”.
I guess what I am trying to say is that if I was the CEO of some company, I am not sure that I would allow my employees blog freely about the work either. That might say some about my micromanaging tendencies/control issues?!? ;)
Richard and Åsa: my bosses actually know and approve – I even talked briefly about this blog during my interview. Odd, I know.
Steffi> I don’t think bosses have as much a problem with it – since they know you. It’s the elusive HR/PR where they don’t know you from the next employee … ;)
Åsa – I couldn’t possibly comment on that…
I think Richard Wintle is spot on about blogging about work. One could also add that most large institutions are deeply averse to espousing a remotely contentious opinion about anything – or with being associated with such, even via it being on a website someone links to from within their system (more on this in the discussion thread here).
I very consciously avoid saying anything much about my workplace, and certainly anything specific, when I am blogging, even though my blog is pseudonymous. As Jack of Kent was saying at SciOnLon, there is no real anonymity if someone is determined enough to find out who you are, and post the Nightjack ruling there is no legal right to anonymity in England either.
Some people can and do get away with dissing the organisation, but I reckon this is mainly if they are sufficiently eminent that they have nothing to lose – and I don’t think most workplace bloggers feel that way. And that is true even in science, and with relatively “laissez faire” employers like Universities.
In “politicised” sectors, or those in the public eye – for instance healthcare – workplace bloggers are far more paranoid. Of course, there their unvarnished opinions “without the filter”, in the phrase quoted above, are actually all the more valuable. But most of the medical bloggers are anonymous/ pseudonymous, and post-Night Jack they are all worrying about whether they have revealed enough personal info to be identified.
But you all assume that blogging about work automatically means saying a lot of ‘bad’ things! It doesn’t have to be that way, you know… (and of course that would not only be stupid, but in a lot of circumstances also pretty rude – like talking behind someone’s back, but publicly).
Steffi> I hope I didn’t omce off as rude. I just tried to put myself in the other peoples’ shoes.
And no, I don’t assume everyone would blog “bad” things. But I would think that HR/PR goes after the “worst case scenario that will make things really bad for the institute”. Not to mention that many people blog in the middle of things, i.e. feelings, and might not always make the most objective desicions nor well versed things. that is what I think people are scared of. And it would take so much more energy to fix that after it emerged rather than to cap it from the start.
I guess that is why some institutions favour having some of their researchers blog openly in a spot the institute knows and pays for?! But then again, it might be more PR than blogging?
You weren’t rude, Åsa – I was talking about people who feel the need to vent about their coworkers on their blogs. I was being patronizing though, sorry.
What I am trying to say is: bad stuff happens everywhere. Everyone is frustrated in their jobs at times – sometimes more, sometimes less. Personally, I think there are a lot of interesting things one can blog about their job without reducing the whole thing to a rant – look at Jenny’s blog. It’s also what I’m now trying to do here.
I think you illustrate quite well how PR professionals may be afraid of something ‘slipping out’ that would need ‘fixing’ afterwards, and I can actually really understand that (I wouldn’t want to have to fix publicity messes made by someone else). But this is where that trust thing comes in – and yes, blogging somewhere openly that the institution knows about is PR, and it could be the best kind of PR – but only if there is trust in the blogger. If there isn’t and the blog is ‘PR-cleaned’ somehow, authenticity will rapidly loose out.
I wasn’t thinking about people badmouthing their co-workers, Steffi. Where I would anticipate problems is in the idea of people being (what the PR dept sees as) on message, to quote a recently popular British term. To give an example, how about the following hypothetical scenario:
1. Institution invests in research when times are good, spends out money, hires new staff. Bloggers blog about how good it is that institution is expanding, new colleagues arriving, nifty science being done. PR Dept and management pleased with “positive word of mouth buzz”
2. A few years later, global financial downturn means money gets tight and savings are sought. Idea floated that institution will be looking for voluntary redundancies, making probation harder to get through, not replacing people who retire etc.
Bloggers now blog same, feeling gloomy, muttering about “low morale” and making jokes like “will the last person out please turn off the lights?”. PR Dept (and management) gets antsy about possibly “bad publicity”, since every single Univ is busy saying that they are not affected much by the recession, even though their neighbours and competitors are.
Now, I find it hard to believe that the PR dept, and some University management, would be as relaxed about the bloggers blogging the second part of this scenario as about them blogging the “happy smiley” first part – though as written both would be equally “true” reactions to equally real events.
An interesting aspect of this, of course, is that anything workplace bloggers blog they will almost certainly also be telling other people in their field at conferences – that being the nature of scholars, including scientists. At the last big national meeting I went to a couple of months ago everyone was joking about the recession and how many academic redundancies were being touted at their particular institution. But PR Depts worry about what they can see, I think – the point perhaps being that once they can see it, so can trawling journalists.
Ok, so call me a hopeless positive-thinker*. Again, bad stuff happens everywhere, and the economy affects everyone – this will be pretty obvious to most people (unless they have a PR department that, well… anyway). So all I’m saying is that there are always other topics – like the actual work/science you’re doing – to write about besides how good you feel one day and how miserable the next. The former interests me greatly, the latter not always so much…
*I use that intentionally, rather than optimist: that would mean that you somehow assume things will get ‘better’, while positive thinking can mean ‘making the best of the situation’. I’m a big fan of that.
But of course a lot of people (including science bloggers) blog more about how they are feeling / what is going on around them than about the science they are actually doing…
To see the kind of thing we are talking about, take a look at David Colquhoun’s diary page. It is pretty funny, and also makes serious points at the same time, but I wonder if the UCL PR Department see the humour. And not everyone is as “bullet-proof” as David.
a lot of people (including science bloggers) blog more about how they are feeling / what is going on around them than about the science they are actually doing…
So are science bloggers generally just bloggers with a science background who go on about everything – or are we trying to communicate some science (or, in my case, what it can take to make science happen) to non-scientists or scientists in other fields? If the former, should we still call our blogs ‘science blogs’, or is that misleading?
See Eva’s post – we might be at the point where ‘science blogs’ as a category really just won’t do anymore.
I think they are bloggers with a science background who talk about some aspect of science in the widest sense – personal blogs also tend to be a “personal” Gemisch, as I have said over on Eva’s thread. I have certainly blogged much less about my specific professional discipline than I probably intended to do when I started blogging, mainly because I got sidetracked into other things, notably the bad science arena.