Paper short abstract:

This study examines researchers' use of public communication in scholarly publishing, exploring its role in the accumulation of symbolic capital in the academic field. It uses problem-centred interviews and qualitative media analysis in sociology to explore sociologists' perceptions and practices.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the role of individual researchers’ public communication practices regarding a transformation of scholarly publishing. I argue that researchers direct their public communication not only to external audiences, but also to different actors within the academic field. On the one hand, individual researchers may use public communication to meet the visibility expectations of different (organizational) stakeholders. On the other hand, preliminary data suggest that it is also used to increase researchers’ own visibility among their peers.

Examining public communication as scholarly publishing draws on Bourdieu's concept of two forms of symbolic capital within the academic field. This notion of the academic field also opens up a perspective on public communication for negotiating the competitive structures of the field. In this respect, the study addresses the transformation of scholarly publishing towards public communication both at the individual level and also in terms of the concurrence of academic and media rationalities in the field. The latter refers to Weingart's concept of the medialization of science.

The guiding research question is "To what extent do individual researchers use and consider public communication as a form of scholarly communication?". I explore this through a combination of problem-centred interviews and qualitative media analysis in the field of sociology. This reflects sociologists' views on their communication activities and their perceptions of publicly visible peers. As this is work in progress, I will conceptualise the role of public visibility in relation to pure scientific capital accumulated through peer-reviewed academic publications, also drawing on preliminary findings.