Linguists first used the term backchannel to refer to the spontaneous responses and signals that provide interactivity to what is only apparently a one-way communication. Social media users have adopted the term to refer to the unofficial, multi-directional online conversation that parallels formal academic exchange at a lecture or conference. The Backchannels blog is intended to have a similar relationship to scholarly discourse in STS. It provides an outlet for alternative-format scholarly communications, publishing shorter, timelier, media-rich communiques of interest to the global STS community. The editors welcome proposed contributions.
Mar 17 2025
This report on an EASST/4S 2024 panel introduces a three-part series about interspecies agencies, highlighting territorial conflicts first.
Mar 3 2025
In this post, Kim M. Hajek, Paul Trauttmansdorff, Sabina Leonelli report on the “Understanding Misinformation” international symposium held on December 9th, 2024, at the Technical University of Munich (TUM).
Mar 1 2025
Kai River Blevins argues for the development of a critical phenomenology of care to better understand hype around psychedelic science
Feb 24 2025
In this post, Juan Ortiz Freuler presents a need for a wide collective structure beyond central players to reclaim digital sovereignty for nations in the Global Majority
Feb 10 2025
Images depicting dark skin tones are significantly under-represented in the educational materials used to teach primary care physicians and dermatologists to recognize skin diseases. In this piece, Celia Cintas introduces an open-source initiative to fight this issue.
Feb 9 2025
Reflecting upon the Alphafold as the recent recipient of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize in Chemistry, this post examines the role of artificial intelligence and new ways of 'doing science' aligned toward gamification, contests and awards.
Jan 20 2025
In this post, Rachel Yang reports on the "Critical Social Science Approaches to Epidemic Intelligence" workshop held at the University of Sydney on 21 and 22 March 2024.
Dec 30 2024
In this post, Mariana Pitta Lima discusses contributions from and with feminist STS from the South, drawing on a recently published chapter on technologies, health, and gender based on fieldwork in Brazil.
Dec 23 2024
In this post, Anja Klein, Catharina Lüder and Britta Acksel consider what it is that research methods in sustainability science seek to "transform" and how those methods might themselves be transformed along the way
Dec 9 2024
This conversation reveals how traditional frameworks of dispossession, while valuable, may not fully capture the complexities of exploitation in today's digital economy.