Abstract:

This paper explores the art of creating buzzwords and their use in smart city concepts and in social sciences in general. The analysis aims at the importance of creating buzzwords, their beneficial and dismal use in academic research. The term fuzzword is a deliberately or intentionally adopted buzzword that aims to conceal an original or meaningful idea or goal. This paper introduced several examples of good and bad practice in science. External factors and noises, models of communication (structures and interactions), and the content of communication are also used as tools to analyze the issue from the information science perspective. Results of the critical review suggest that many authors start properly with clarifying the issue of the ambiguity of results and definitions but are not willing to contribute to decreasing the level of chaos in their field. Some buzzwords (innovation eco-system, intersectionality, and constitutionalism) contributed to some extent to the quality of science by disseminating the message about an issue or problem to be solved. Some buzzwords are not contributing much to the knowledge (sustainable growth, smart, virtual, resilience, etc.).