scholarly journals Public understanding of environment and bioenergy resources

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (03) ◽  
pp. A03 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gauhar Raza ◽  
P.V.S. Kumar ◽  
Surjit Singh
Keyword(s):  
Science Communication ◽  
Cultural Distance ◽  
Cognitive Structure ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Survey Study ◽  
Energy Technologies ◽  
Communication Processes ◽  
Dialectical Relationship ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
Meta Analyses

There exists a distinct disconnect between scientists’ perception of nature and people’s worldview. This ‘disconnect’ though has dialectical relationship with science communication processes which, causes impediments in the propagation of scientific ideas. Those ideas, which are placed at large cultural distance, do not easily become a part of cognitive structure of a common citizen or peoples thought complex. Low level of public understanding of bio-energy technologies is one such sphere of understanding. The present study is based on assumption that public debate on bio-energy is part of the larger human concern about climate change. In this paper we present meta-analyses from published literature and take a look at the surveys that have been carried out at national and international level. In the second section of the article we also present analysis of the survey study carried out in India and locate the shifts in public understanding of science.

scholarly journals The shift from public science communication to public relations. The Vaxxed case

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (02) ◽  
pp. C02 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davide Bennato
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Public Science ◽  
The Public ◽  
Communication Processes ◽  
Scientific World ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
Communication Dynamics ◽  
Dynamics Of Science

Social media is restructuring the dynamics of science communication processes inside and outside the scientific world. As concerns science communication addressed to the general public, we are witnessing the advent of communication practices that are more similar to public relations than to the traditional processes of the Public Understanding of Science. By analysing the digital communication strategies implemented for the anti-vaccination documentary Vaxxed, the paper illustrates these new communication dynamics, that are both social and computational.

scholarly journals Studying behaviours and attitudes towards science and technology

Impact ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (4) ◽  
pp. 27-29
Author(s):  
Naoko Kato-Nitta
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Data Science ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Communication Model ◽  
Statistical Mathematics ◽  
Understanding Of Science

What makes research important is an important philosophical question that is a consideration for many researchers. Further important considerations are the public's perception of science and how an individual's perception of science and technology is shaped. These are some of the complex ideas that social scientist Dr Naoko Kato-Nitta, Department of Statistical Data Science, Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Japan, is exploring. She is working on a series of projects related to public perceptions and attitudes towards different scientific disciplines and fields. She hopes that answering such important questions will facilitate the creation of a science communication model for the public understanding of science. Kato-Nitta's research focuses on human behaviour and psychology and how it relates to issues at the interface of technology and society. A key question that she is seeking to answer from the standpoint of cultural capital is how the extent of the general public's participation in science communication can be determined. In the first research to connect social stratification theory and science communication research, Kato-Nitta divided the concept of Bourdieu's cultural capital into two sub-concepts: scientific and technical cultural capital and literary and artistic cultural capital. She went on to consider how these two types of cultural capital affect the exhibit-viewing behaviours of the general public.

scholarly journals Identifying diffusion patterns of research articles on Twitter: A case study of online engagement with open access articles

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Pablo Alperin ◽  
Charles J Gomez ◽  
Stefanie Haustein
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Research Evaluation ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
The Public ◽  
Online Engagement ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
Limited Diffusion

The growing presence of research shared on social media, coupled with the increase in freely available research, invites us to ask whether scientific articles shared on platforms like Twitter diffuse beyond the academic community. We explore a new method for answering this question by identifying 11 articles from two open access biology journals that were shared on Twitter at least 50 times and by analyzing the follower network of users who tweeted each article. We find that diffusion patterns of scientific articles can take very different forms, even when the number of times they are tweeted is similar. Our small case study suggests that most articles are shared within single-connected communities with limited diffusion to the public. The proposed approach and indicators can serve those interested in the public understanding of science, science communication, or research evaluation to identify when research diffuses beyond insular communities.

Muslim Perceptions of Biological Evolution: A Critical Review of Quantitative and Qualitative Research

2019 ◽  
pp. 147-170
Author(s):  
Jessica Carlisle ◽  
Salman Hameed ◽  
Fern Elsdon-Baker
Keyword(s):  
Science Communication ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Or Education ◽  
Deficit Model ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Research ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
Science In Society

The topic of Muslims’ attitudes towards the theory of biological evolution has received increasing attention at the margins of the fields of public understanding of society, science communication or education and science in society. The methodology and methods employed in this work are primarily informed by research on attitudes towards evolution in the ‘West’, particularly in the US where the issue is highly politicized. Small, interview based qualitative and larger, survey based quantitative studies have explored degrees of acceptance or rejection of non-human and human evolution in a number of Muslim majority and Muslim minority contexts. The underlying rationale for these studies is often underpinned by a ‘deficit model’ in which Islam, or being Muslim, is usually posited as a particular obstacle to public understanding and acceptance of theory of evolution. This chapter summarizes these studies, analyzes the particularities of how deficit model approaches might be implicitly informing their findings, and reflects on the lack of reflexivity in much public understanding of science research on Muslim contexts.

scholarly journals How to take non-knowledge seriously, or “the unexpected virtue of ignorance”

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristian H. Nielsen ◽  
Mads P. Sørensen
Keyword(s):  
Science Communication ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Public Understanding Of Science ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
Understanding Of Science

This commentary argues that we need to take ignorance and non-knowledge seriously in the fields of science communication and public understanding of science. As much as we want ignorance to disappear, it seems that it is here to stay—in the sciences and in the rest of society. Drawing on the vast but scattered literature on ignorance and non-knowledge, we suggest that paying closer attention to these phenomena could be beneficial for science communicators. Despite the fact that ignorance and non-knowledge, just like knowledge, today are highly politicized fields, they may also open up for new lines of inquiry and may be key to more pluralistic and equal democratic deliberation about science and technology.

scholarly journals A Place for Space: The Shift to Online Space Education During a Global Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Roche ◽  
Laura Bell ◽  
Mairéad Hurley ◽  
Grace D’Arcy ◽  
Brendan Owens ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Engagement ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
Online Engagement ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
Dramatic Shift

The COVID-19 global pandemic has transformed the relationship between science and society. The ensuing public health crisis has placed aspects of this relationship in harsh relief; perceptions of scientific credibility, risk, uncertainty, and democracy are all publicly debated in ways unforeseen before the pandemic. This unprecedented situation presents opportunities to reassess how certain disciplines contribute to the public understanding of science. Space education has long provided a lens through which people can consider the intersection of the natural world with society. Space science is critical to understanding how human activity and pollution affect global warming, which in turn, inextricably links it to perceptions of the natural world, environmental change, science communication, and public engagement. The pandemic has caused a dramatic shift in how space education projects connect with public audiences, with participation pivoting to online engagement. This transition, coupled with the renewed societal examination of trust in science, means that it is an ideal time for the field of space education to reflect on its development. Whether it evolves into its own distinct field, or remains an area that straddles disciplinary boundaries, such as science education, communication, and public engagement, are crucial considerations when scientific trust, accountability, and responsibility are in question. This paper describes the current state of space education, recent advances in the field, and relevant COVID-19 challenges. The experience of an international space education project in adapting to online engagement is recounted, and provides a perspective on potential future directions for the field.

scholarly journals How messages about behavioral genetics research can impact on genetic attribution beliefs

F1000Research ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 2744 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandre Morin-Chassé
Keyword(s):  
Science Communication ◽  
Human Genetics ◽  
Behavioral Genetics ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
The Public ◽  
Genetics Research ◽  
Social Traits ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
The Media ◽  
Understanding Of Science

Science communication has the potential to reshape public understanding of science. Yet, some research findings are more difficult to explain and more likely to be misunderstood. The contribution of this paper is threefold. It opens with a review of fascinating interdisciplinary literature on how scientific research about human genetics is disseminated in the media, and how this type of information could influence public beliefs and world views. It then presents the theoretical framework for my research program, providing a logical basis for how messages about human genetics may influence people's beliefs about the role of genes in causing human traits. Based on this reasoning, I formulate the genetic interpolation hypothesis, which predicts that messages about specific research findings in behavioral genetics can lead members of the public to infer greater genetic causation for other social traits not mentioned in the content of the message. While this framework offers clear, testable predictions, some questions remain unaddressed. For instance, what kind of message formats are persuasive enough to alter people's views? The third contribution of this paper is to begin to address this question empirically. I present the results of a survey experiment that was designed to test whether a simple, short paragraph about behavioral genetics is a powerful enough stimulus to cause the genetic interpolation effect.

scholarly journals Science museums as political places. Representing nanotechnology in European science museums

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (04) ◽  
pp. C02 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brice Laurent
Keyword(s):  
Science Communication ◽  
Public Understanding Of Science ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
The Political ◽  
Science Museums ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Role ◽  
European Science ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
Global Public Policy

Science museums perform representations of science and that of its publics. They have been called to intervene in nanotechnology within global public policy programs expected to develop the field. This paper discusses the case of European science museums. It starts by examining the case of a European project that involved science museums working on nanotechnology. This example illustrates a "democratic imperative" that European science museums face, and which implies a transformation of their public role. It offers a path for the analysis of the current evolution of European science communication perspective – from "public understanding of science" to "scientific understanding of the public" – and of the political construction this evolution enacts.

Promoting Popular Understanding of Science and Health Through Social Networks

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian G. Southwell
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Diffusion Of Information ◽  
Context Factors ◽  
Scientific Institutions ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Understanding Of Science

To explore how interpersonal interactions affect popular understanding of science, this chapter discusses the ways in which social interaction affects understanding of science among individuals outside of scientific institutions, the emergence of scientists as important social network hubs and nodes, dimensions of social networks that affect discussion of science, and message and context factors that appear to facilitate or temper the diffusion of information related to science, including rumor. Interpersonal communication concepts and evidence offer much to science communication scholars and practitioners concerned with public understanding but important work remains to be done. The review concludes with several research questions that warrant future attention and hold implications for policymakers.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document