The academic poster genre: Friend or foe?

Although poster sessions are generally considered less prestigious than paper sessions (Swales & Feak 2000; Swales 2004), they play an important part in scientific conferences and constitute a valid alternative to paper presentations and an interesting and engaging event to participate in. Although systematic analyses based on poster corpora are rare, a number of studies have revealed which communicative strategies are employed where, which communicative strategies (visual and textual) are allowed and finally, which communicative strategies should be well-known to novice authors attempting to enter the academic community (Wittich & Schuller, 1973; Dubois, 1985; Woolsey, 1989; Matthews, 1990; Tham, 1997; Gosling 1999; Purrington, 2004; Stoss, 2010; D’Angelo 2012, 2014).
The present chapter will provide an analysis of the available literature on the poster genre, highlighting main findings and the relevant changes the genre is currently undergoing. Because of its multimodal nature, this genre is in fact bound to continually change and evolve with technology: several disciplines are experimenting with different ways of facilitating presentation and discussion of posters (MacIntosh-Murray 2007), through poster projections followed by two-three minute oral presentations, online poster sessions, Digital Interactive Poster Presentations (DIPP) and virtual science fairs with online conferencing or weblogs (De Simone et al. 1991; Powell-Tuck et al. 2002). Based on the available literature, this chapter will therefore also consider how the genre is evolving electronically, and if and how the communicative event itself is affected.