Public images of scientific researchers –as reflected in the popular visual culture as well as in the conceptions of the public- combine traditional stereotypic characteristics and ambivalent attitudes towards science and its people. This paper explores central aspects of the public image of the researcher in Greek students’ drawings. The students participated in a drawing competition held in the context of the ‘Researcher’s Night 2007’ realized by three research institutions at different regions of Greece. The students’ drawings reveal that young people hold stereotypic and fairly traditional
Guglielmo Maglio is Manager of Exhibitions at the science centre “Città della Scienza” of Naples. With “Città della Scienza” he took part in the creation of “Decide”, which he appreciates for its ability to create an informal atmosphere favouring discussion. As concerns the involvement of scientists and policy-makers in the debate, though desirable, it sometimes may influence negatively the spontaneity of the debate among non-experts. In the participants, the main differences can be ascribed to personal experience, rather than to other factors such as age, nationality or social groups. Though
Frank Burnet, now an independent consultant, was the director of the unit of Science Communication at the University of the West of England, and his work and research experience has mainly focused on the communication relation between science and society. In addition, Frank contributed to the development of the project “Meet the Gene Machine”, a discussion format concerning topical science issues. The positive aspect of participation games is the increase in the participants’ awareness of important issues, provided that the game experience is followed by structured discussion. In this case a
Barbara Streicher is the executive manager of the Austrian Science Center Netzwerk, a network grouping over ninety Austrian institutions committed to science communication activities. Barbara used discussion games on many different occasions, all of which were outside a museum, and took place in places such as cafés, libraries, schools, but also shelters for homeless people and prisons. The communication exchange among participants always proved to be very open and respectful at the same time, even when the topics dealt with were especially sensitive and in social distress conditions. The game
Sally Duensing previously worked at the Exploratorium in San Francisco and is now based in London where she carries out research on science communication. In this interview, she tells about her experience as an evaluator of the Decide project, one of the most successful discussion games ever designed. Years after its creation, Decide is still used nearly all over the world. Its main strong point is that it allows to grasp the standpoint of the others and, at the same time, to express your own standpoint in a mutual exchange of experience; in addition, the interface and the game rules allow to
Museums have a great potential to facilitate the political engagement of citizens, intended not in the sense of taking part to the “party politics”, but as full participation in the systems that define and shape society.
The first 18 volumes of the International Scientific Series published in both London and New York were reviewed to assess their contribution to transatlantic communication of popular science. The dominant flow of ideas was westwards on topics such as science versus religion, empiricism in psychology, survival of the fittest, jurisprudence versus mental illness, economics and development of cinematography. There was an eastward flow in philology. The preparation of volumes was rushed and many authors merely expanded previous notes, articles and pamphlets. Commercial and idealistic motives
This article sums up key results of a web-based questionnaire survey targeting the members of the Danish Science Journalists' Association. The association includes not only science journalists but also other types of science communicators. The survey shows that science communicators have a nuanced and multidimensional view on science communication, science, and technology. Science communicators are thus more than the "mountain guides" of science, as a recent definition describes it. The survey respondents are not just interested in helping the public at large to a wider recognition of
“From Earth to the Universe” (FETTU) is a collection of astronomical images that showcase some of the most popular, current views of our Universe. The images, representing the wide variety of astronomical objects known to exist, have so far been exhibited in about 500 locations throughout the world as part of the International Year of Astronomy. In the United States, over 40 FETTU exhibits have occurred in 25 states in such locations as libraries, airports, nature centers, parks and college campuses. Based on preliminary evaluations currently underway, this project – a large-scale, worldwide
Many communication researchers expect that the diffusion of the new media in modern societies creates new channels of communication that can be used as alternatives or supplements to traditional forms of science communication. Conclusive empirical evidence of scientists' appreciation and use of these new channels for public communication is rare, however. This study aims to contribute to the understanding of the role the new online media – in particular blogs – play for public science communication compared to traditional science communication in journalistic mass media. The focus of this
Online knowledge production sites do not rely on isolated experts but on collaborative processes, on the wisdom of the group or “crowd”. Some authors have argued that it is possible to combine traditional or credentialled expertise with collective production; others believe that traditional expertise's focus on correctness has been superseded by the affordances of digital networking, such as re-use and verifiability. This paper examines the costs of two kinds of “crowdsourced” encyclopedic projects: Citizendium, based on the work of credentialled and identified experts, faces a recruitment
This essay reflects on three figures that can be used to make sense of the changing nature of public participation in the life sciences today: outlaws, hackers and Victorian gentlemen. Occasioned by a symposium held at UCLA (Outlaw Biology: Public Participation in the Age of Big Bio), the essay introduces several different modes of participation (DIY Bio, Bio Art, At home clinical genetics, patient advocacy and others) and makes three points: 1) that public participation is first a problem of legitimacy, not legality or safety; 2) that public participation is itself enabled by and thrives on