Bibliometrics in Press. Representations and Uses of Bibliometric Indicators in the Italian Daily Newspapers

TL;DR

This study analyzes how Italian newspapers from 1990 to 2020 depict bibliometric indicators, revealing their role in shaping science policies, constructing scientific facts, and the limited presence of expert voices in media.

Contribution

It provides the first systematic analysis of bibliometric indicators' representation in daily newspapers, highlighting their social functions and influence on public discourse.

Findings

Newspapers foster a favorable environment for science policies based on bibliometrics.

Bibliometric indicators help construct scientific facts in media, especially in medical science news.

Expert bibliometric voices are underrepresented in the press.

Abstract

Scholars in science and technology studies and bibliometricians are increasingly revealing the performative nature of bibliometric indicators. Far from being neutral technical measures, indicators such as the Impact Factor and the h-index are deeply transforming the social and epistemic structures of contemporary science. At the same time, scholars have highlighted how bibliometric indicators are endowed with social meanings that go beyond their purely technical definitions. These social representations of bibliometric indicators are constructed and negotiated between different groups of actors within several arenas. This study aims to investigate how bibliometric indicators are used in a context, which, so far, has not yet been covered by researchers, that of daily newspapers. By a content analysis of a corpus of 583 articles that appeared in four major Italian newspapers between 1990 and 2020, we chronicle the main functions that bibliometrics and bibliometric indicators played in the Italian press. Our material shows, among other things, that the public discourse developed in newspapers creates a favorable environment for bibliometrics-centered science policies, that bibliometric indicators contribute to the social construction of scientific facts in the press, especially in science news related to medicine, and that professional bibliometric expertise struggles to be represented in newspapers and hence reach the general public.