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Dr. Ellen Wayenberg

"A knowledge democracy is a political system in which knowledge drives, stimulates but also question...


 Iina Hellsten and Sarah Cummings

Boundaries of trans-disciplinary communications: bibliometrical  analysis of development cooperation

Development cooperation is currently governed by separate actors and domains. For example, the World Health organisation (WHO) plays a role as a global organizer of the communications related to health while Ministries organize national communications on development research. While ministries of development and foreign affairs are for policy-making while various non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are focussed on the practical implementation of development. Science is also providing knowledge focusing on development. The general public also plays a role in this and their attitudes are reflected in the media. All of these domains are generating knowledge which is applied in development but they have different responsibilities. So far, the different topics in communications have not been analysed systematically. Our aim is to shed light on the various sub-topics in the communications within the four domains.

In this paper, we will compare the communications in the domains. We will apply scientometrics methods (co-authorship, citation and semantic maps method, see e.g. Leydesdorff 2001, Leydesdorff & Hellsten, 2005) for the analysis of the communications at global level (e.g. WHO news), national level (e.g. the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs), the academic institutions (e.g. Web of Science), and the mass media (e.g. newspapers). The different actors have their own organs for publication: Governmental organizations are publishing in policy documents; NGOs are publishing in their own internal documents, some of which are published for a wider audience; while science is publishing in academic journals.

We will concentrate on debates around the term ‘Millennium Development Goals’ in the key documents of the four domains. Semantic maps make it easier to compare the semantics across the four domains, and reveal implicit frames within the domains. This approach is novel.

The paper is a first effort for examining the potential of scientometrics analysis to the field of development. It will be something of an ad hoc analysis, pragmatically based on data that is easily accessible, to demonstrate the power of these tools for development in the first instance. This paper will be based on literature research and collection of scientometric data to test the design, and reach preliminary conclusions.

References

Leydesdorff, L. A (2001) Sociological Theory of Communication: The Self-Organization of the Knowledge-Based Society. Parkland, FL: Universal Publishers / uPublish.com; at http://www.universal-publishers.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1581126956

Leydesdorff, L. & Hellsten, I. (2006) Measuring the Meaning of Words in Contexts: An automated analysis of controversies about 'Monarch butterflies,' 'Frankenfoods,' and 'stem cells.' Scientometrics 67(2),  231-258.

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