Engaging in digital multimodal composing for science communication online Female scientists' perspective

Writing in digital environments for professional and public communication of science has become increasingly important today. Previous research has indicated that it is beneficial for women scientists to communicate their research using emerging digital genres for science communication (graphical abstracts, video summaries, podcasts/videocasts, social networks, etc.). Involvement in producing these types of digital genres highlights digital writing practices for science dissemination. However, little LSP research has been conducted from a gender perspective and from the perspective of genres. Adopting a gender perspective, this paper aims to gain insight into female scientists’ writing experiences in digital environments and uncover the digital and communication skills needed to address the challenges posed by online science communication to diverse. The main research question guiding this study was what digital composing processes female scientists engage in, with a particular focus on digital writing technologies and multimodal resources. To collect data on digital composing processes, three instruments were used in four case studies: a self-evaluation checklist of digital and communication skills, a reflection diary, and a genre plot. The participants are members of a Spanish association of women scientists actively engaged in sharing research openly with diverse audiences online. The results provide evidence of writing as an ongoing, networked, multimodal text production at three stages: before, during, and after creating it. The writing skills these researchers employ involve intermediality and recontextualization strategies, as well as genre knowledge transfer and interdiscursivity. Best practices and strategies identified in the case studies will be presented.