Wednesday afternoon’s World Science Festival panel Telling Science Stories in Print and on the Web featured many of the big names in science writing and journalism, from the “blogfather” of science blogging, Bora Zivkovic, to the Guardian’s Emily Bell via author and PLoS blogger, Seth Mnookin.

The challenge facing the participants in such a discussion was always going to be avoiding falling into an echo chamber of enthusiastic cheerleading for the transformative powers of the internet, while communicating the many changes that are continuing to take place in this highly dynamic environment where more traditional publishing rules and roles no longer suffice.

Since the “Pepsigate” events of last summer which resulted in the fragmentation of the Scienceblogs network, there’s been a lot of activity in the science blogosphere – many new blogging networks have appeared, some independent and some affiliated with major publishers – and a lot of conversation around that. There’s a well-known joke that science bloggers write most about…science blogging and to extend the soft drink theme, it can seem at times like online science communication is a big can of sweet, fizzy liquid that’s been firmly shaken. We all know there’s a lot of energy there, energy that can be volatile and catalyse dramatic events, but are we in danger of being distracted by the froth and fizz when releasing the ring pull and over-estimating the real effects of the medium?

The panel was a mostly balanced sprint through some of the current discussion topics facing journalists and communicators, with a heavy emphasis on the online angle. These included Emily Bell’s paraphrasing of Dickens to declare that “It was the best of times and the best of times” while pointing out that online voices are changing how we view traditional media and once secure media jobs. It’s now no longer enough to state that you’re a reporter for a particular newspaper to earn an audience. Bora Zivkovic talked about the opportunities the internet has offered to younger people to have a louder voice, one that he believes is being recognised by traditional publishers as more and more blogging networks are founded. Comments were also made about how the internet has changed the nature of our interactions with written material such that there is a now a two-way flow of information; “we are now in conversation mode”.

Examples of the potential of online journalism to change the way science journalism is carried out, described by Carl Zimmer and others, are the arsenic life blog conversations and the recent coverage of the Fukushima crisis. The former shows that scientists have the ability to respond more quickly to published results online than via traditional routes. However, time constraints meant an in-depth discussion of how exactly the conversations unfolded and evolved were not touched upon and so failed to highlight the non black-and-white nature of the online events.

Zimmer confidently suggested that the “only thing changing as rapidly as online journalism is peer reviewed literature” a quote that was enthusiastically retweeted on Twitter with only a few comments about whether Open Access and initiatives such as Open Peer Review are really being introduced as quickly as claimed. Are we living through a sudden revolution or a slow chipping away at the traditional foundations? And do these definitions of the speed and reach of change matter anyway?

Seth Mnookin was the most cautious about his online experiences, explaining how he found it difficult to engage in productive conversation with anti-vaccination believers in the comment threads on his blog posts. He talked about the challenges of finding balanced conversation online – commenters on blogs are most likely to be those who disagree with the author’s thesis while the pitfalls of Twitter include self-reinforcing aggregations of like-minded people.

Judging by the enthusiastic reunions and first time meetings following the panel, the energy of the times that we live in is certainly appealing to those already engaged in science communication online. It would be interesting to hear the reactions of the non-tweeting/blogging members of the audience to see whether our enthusiasm is appealing, in need of mixing with a stiffer spirit, or a fizzy drink that is best handled at a distance.

If you want to read more highlights from the World Science Festival, you can find a summary of all our coverage here.