Presentation made at PCST-2018, International Network on Public Communication of Science & Technology, University of Otago, Dunedin, NZ, 3 April 2018. Includes bibliography.
A Critique of the Proposed National Education Policy Reform
The Past, Present, and Future (!) of Science Communication Research
1. The Past, Present, and Future (!) of
Science Communication Research
Bruce V. Lewenstein
Professor of Science Communication
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853 USA
b.lewenstein@cornell.edu
Presented at PCST 2018 Science Communication Career Skills, Knowledge
and Networking Workshop, Univ. of Otago, Dunedin, NZ, 3 April 2018
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
2. Lab/
Field Formal paper
Preprints
Meetings Policy
documents,
etc.
Textbooks
Media (web, TV
magazines, radio
newspapers, blogs,
Twitter, books, etc.)
Is this science communication?
Grant proposals
3. Sphere of Science Communication
From: Lewenstein, Bruce V. (2011). Experimenting with Engagement. Commentary on "Taking Our Own Medicine:
On an Experiment in Science Communication."Science And Engineering Ethics, 17(4), 817-821.
13. Issues in PCST, 1
Defining “it,” whatever “it” is, before we
can do research
– Science literacy
– Public understanding of S&T
– Public awareness of S&T
– Public engagement in S&T
– Public communication of S&T
– Culture scientifique
– Apropiación social de la ciencia
– Etc.
14. Issues in PCST, 2
What is the topic?
– Basic information/education about S&T
– Breaking news about S&T
– Information about social/political issues
involving S&T
– Entertainment using S&T
» Or using entertainment for the first three items on
the page?
» Including exciting people (and potential students)
about science
15. Issues in PCST, 3
Understanding audience needs and interests
– Information, education, and entertainment
– People focus or science focus?
16. Issues in PCST, 4
Institutional needs
– Media (journalism): attract audience, sell ads
– Media (entertainment): attract audience, sell
tickets
– Museums: attract audience, sell admissions
– Scientists: recruit young people, get money
from government
[Notice the pattern?]
19. PCST Hist
Sci
SSS Sci Ed Sci
jour
Sci
mus
Vis
stud
Risk
Comm
Other
Pre
1940
x x
1940s x
1950s x x x
1960s xxx x xx x
1970s xxx xxxx xxx x xx xx
1980s xxxx xxxxx
xxx
xxxxx x xxxxx xx xxxx xx
1990s xxxx xxx xxxx xxx xxxx xxxx xx xxxx xx
2000s xxxx xxx xxx xxx xxxx xx xxxx xx
2010s xxxx xxx xxx xxx xxxx x xx xxxx xx
20. Major categories of literature
Public comm of S&T (PCST)
History of science
Social studies of science
Science education
Science journalism
Science museums
Visitor studies
Risk communication
Environmental, health, citizen science, etc.
21. History of science
Public context for development of
systematic research in 19th century
Public responses to science issues in 20th
century
Many cases of scientists interacting with
publics as scientists sought resources and
authority
22. Social studies of science
Science as public knowledge
Mechanisms of public display to create
knowledge
Political uses of knowledge display; public
knowledges vs. expert knowledge
Acquisition of authority by new groups
(citizen science, responsible research and
innovation); Shaping of research by
demands of public science (medialization)
23. Science education
1958: 1st definition of science literacy
Occasional attempts to define
Since 2000s: Adding “informal science
education” to educational research
“Learning science in informal
environments”
24. Science journalism
Institutional contexts and forces
– Differences between scientists and journalists
Distribution of topics: change over time
Accuracy
– Sins of omission rather than commission
Creation and training of (science)
journalists
– Identification with scientific community
25. Science museums
Eternal tension between research and
education
Relation of knowledge display to
knowledge production
Changing audiences
[And note that we’re seeing overlaps – e.g.
with informal science education]
28. Other (an un-ending list)
Environmental comm, health comm, citizen
science
Science of science communication
– Political context matters
– Behavior change instead of knowledge and
attitude change
– Changing media environment
Learning by doing – both learning science
and learning politics
29. PCST: Recurring themes, 1
Recording what exists
Individual knowledge
– Needed for action
– Relationship to attitudes and emotions
– Mechanisms and contexts for learning
Institutions and people for PCST
– Their needs and goals
– Creating and training them
Interactivity, dialogue
30. PCST: Recurring themes, 2
Role of public communication in
production of reliable knowledge
Public authority of expert knowledge
– And resistance to delegation of expertise
Trust
31. Missing (mostly) themes
Collective knowledge
– Families, communities
Role of politics and activism in both
individual and collective knowledge
Literary/narrative analysis
Gender, class, race, and other dimensions of
diversity
These exist in other literatures; we just
haven’t brought them in well
32. Present and future (!)
Listen to the others at this workshop and
conference!
Integrate the themes, find others
Future: Fill in the missing areas!
33. The following bibliography expands on the
chart above that I use in some talks showing the
history of research on “public communication
of science and technology” (PCST). The
bibliography is not intended to be complete, or
representative, or indeed anything other than a
tool for glimpsing the wide range of research
traditions that have contributed directly to
contemporary research on PCST. (For example,
the citations below do not precisely match those
listed in the attached chart – as I compiled this
list, I discovered errors in the chart and a few
references I felt I should have added as
exemplars.) Researchers interested in the field
might use these citations to begin finding more
comprehensive understandings of these research
traditions.
--- Bruce Lewenstein, 17 April 2018
Public understanding of science/PCST
(Bucchi & Trench, 2008, 2014; Cheng, Metcalfe, &
Schiele, 2006; Davis, 1958; Fischhoff & Scheufele, 2013;
Goodell, 1977; Lewenstein, 1992; Miller, 1983; Miller,
Prewitt, & Pearson, 1980; National Science Board, 1991;
Royal Society, 1985; Schiele, 1994; Shen, 1975; Snow,
Dibner, & Committee on Science Literacy and Public
Perception of Science, 2016)
History of Science
(Kevles, 1978; Shapin, 1974; Shapin & Barnes, 1977;
Tobey, 1971) (Turner, 1980) (Cooter, 1984; Cooter &
Pumfrey, 1994) (Robert W Rydell, 1984; Robert W.
Rydell, 1993) (Sheets-Pyenson, 1985, 1988) (Boyer,
1985) (A. Secord, 1994; J. A. Secord, 1985) (Burnham,
1987) (Bensaude-Vincent & Rasmussen, 1996)
(Lightman, 2007)
Social Studies of Science
(Gerald Holton, 1974; G. Holton, 1965) (Garvey, 1979)
(J. M. Ziman, 1968) (Meltsner, 1979) (Shinn & Whitley,
1985) (Clemens, 1986) (Collins, 1987, 1988) (Irwin &
Wynne, 1996; Wynne, 1989) (Hilgartner, 1990) (J. Ziman,
1991) (Irwin, 1995) (Rödder, Franzen, & Weingart, 2012)
34. Other (including extension, environmental
communication, public health communication, citizen
science, etc.)
(Griffiths, 1960) (Hungerford & Lemert, 1973)
(Schoenfeld, Meier, & Griffin, 1979) (Brossard,
Lewenstein, & Bonney, 2005) (Bonney, Phillips, Ballard,
& Enck, 2016)
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Editor's Notes
Amazing to see so many people here. 31 years ago this week I interviewed, 5 of us. Today, there are a hundred of you – and you’re the ones who made it to the southernmost university in the world. Tremendous growth in the field.
But with rapid growth comes some chaos. My hope to identify some of the common threads in that chaos, and perhaps to give you suggestions about where to look for interesting questions.
Goal:
Overview of field, and issues in research. Sometimes, will feel like I’m giving you a laundry list. But hold on, I think there’s something at the end to tie it together.
History is written by the victors.
That’s another way of saying that whoever writes the history is defining the boundaries. I recently read a biography of Simon Bolivar. At one point, he decided not to invite Brazil to be part of his Gran Colombia, because he worried about uniting with what was then a monarchy. If he had decided to challenge the monarchy and won, the stories we would tell about what makes Brazil a great country would read very differently.
So, in the case of PCST, talking about the history of PCST research is also a way of claiming what PCST is.
Michael Faraday (1791-1867) delivering his Christmas lecture on 27 December 1855 before Prince Albert (1819-61), Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) (1841-1910) and Prince Alfred, http://www.wikigallery.org/wiki/painting_333461, retrieved 29 July 2017.
I heard Kaori Kodama on Saturday give a very nice paper at the International Congress of History of Science and Technology on Ferreira and his Science for the People magazine of the early 1880s.
Also: divulgacion, vulgarization, scientific temper,
Don’t want to get stuck in labels, but as researchers we do need to be aware of assumptions in the labels.
Notice something about this list: It’s all about “science and technology”
What’s missing?
Environment
Sustainability
Health
More important: AUDIENCE
I think there’s a single session at this meeting on activists, and one on gender issues.
Chen et al. 2006, 1st to use “science comm” in current sense?
Cheng, Donghong, Metcalfe, Jenni, & Schiele, Bernard (Eds.). (2006). At the Human Scale: International Practices in Science Communication. Beijing: Science Press.
This is important because we keep hearing about “increasing public interest” or “increasing public need.” Those statements have been made since at least the mid-1800s.
My web diagram fits here – It’s about the ways that PCST affects the production of reliable knowledge about the natural and constructed worlds.
Examples:
Grasshoppers
IMAX film
Until recently, this was a missing connection. Now, there’s LSIE report and Science Literacy report – which Dominique and John were on?
The point about overlaps is that these categories are not very rigid