The demand from our universities, our funders and our government that our research impact on society by changing policy and practice, has brought researchers into ever-greater contact with an increasing-variety of ‘non-academic users’. This raises tensions. In another post, Heather discussed how our research got lost in translation between us, as researchers, and a journalist. In this post, she looks at how we’ve found that we have a different conception of evidence than that which predominates among policymakers.

While the CelebYouth team didn’t set out thinking we were ‘digital sociologists’, the project was designed to engage with people online through the project website, Twitter and Facebook. In this second blog post on our contribution to the recent digital sociology seminar, Laura explores some of the tensions, opportunities and challenges facing the CelebYouth team in communicating about their research online.