Abstract
This study analyses researcher identity projection in two digitally mediated genres, both addressed to non-specialist audiences: three-minute thesis presentations (3MTs) by doctoral students and research group videos (RGVs) by researchers in university laboratories. Adopting a discursive, socially constructed view of identity, we compare the researchers’ identities by considering three dimensions: level of researcher expertise (novice researchers in 3MTs vs. senior researchers in RGVs), disciplinary area (science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) vs. social sciences and humanities (SSH)) and the different verbal and non-verbal affordances available for identity projection. Results show that in both genres, the researchers’ credibility or ethos is founded on non-technical arguments (social applications, practical outcomes) in a concern for proximity with the lay audiences. However, there are also numerous differences in the identities projected in the two genres in terms of the level of researcher expertise (novice vs. senior), in the identities performed in STEMM and SSH, reflecting each discipline’s epistemic culture, and in the embodied and filmic modes used.
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Notes
- 1.
Source: https://threeminutethesis.uq.edu.au/participating-institutions, last consulted 22 April 2022. The University of Queensland (UQ) launched the competition in 2008 and continues to keep a fairly tight hold on it, with 3MT being a registered trademark of UQ. Any institutions wishing to hold a 3MT contest are supposed to request permission, use the 3MT brand on any materials, and abide by the rules laid down by UQ.
- 2.
Space is lacking here to give a detailed analysis of the differences in rhetorical structure between the two sub-corpora. See Sect. 4.1, Positioning towards topic and audience, however, for a brief outline of this aspect.
- 3.
- 4.
As we were not doing a micro-analysis using multimodal analysis software, we did not take the more technical filmic modes such as cuts and types of camera shots or angles into consideration.
- 5.
Hyland (2001a), for example, in a cross-disciplinary study covering all self-mention forms in RAs found only five cases per 1000 words.
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We warmly thank Hai-Hsin Huang for producing the original drawings from screenshots of the videos.
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Rowley-Jolivet, E., Carter-Thomas, S. (2023). Research Visibility and Speaker Ethos: A Comparative Study of Researcher Identity in 3MT Presentations and Research Group Videos. In: Plo-Alastrué, R., Corona, I. (eds) Digital Scientific Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38207-9_12
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