Visibility Cycles, (In)Visible Institutions and the Making of Scandals

The proposed contribution is concerned with phenomena of negative visibility, such as stigmatization, scandals, and public shaming. Looking not at the processes following and enhancing scandalization and shame penalties, but at the processes that precede it, we ask how this type of visibility relates to existing social or symbolic structures and the configurations of visibility they entail. Punishments and public notifications for scientific misconduct, which are highly symbolic in nature and rely almost exclusively on the negative effects of visibility to sanction scientists, shall serve as a case in point. By tracing the procedures and working conditions of the actors and institutions that form the (newly developing) system for social control in science, we aim to show how visibility features as a central concern and structuring element throughout this system. While these actors, e.g. offices of research integrity or ombudsman, struggle to make their work visible and transparent to the scientific community, they are threatened by a feedback loop of invisibility: By design, they solely rely on cases being reported to them and do not actively initiate investigations themselves; at the same time, cases are relatively rare and do not allow for continuous, day-to-day activities that could be made visible to an audience. The more the visibility of the institution subsides, the less cases will be reported, leading in turn to a further decrease of (potentially) visible activities. For such a system without stable representation or permanent visibility, convictions and the following upsurge of attention present the only way to gain visibility in the scientific community. Unable to produce visibility for themselves, these institutions feed off of the visibility of the scandals they incite. Visibility appears thus not as a situational feature, but as a complex cycle running through various situations, actors, and institutions.