76. Making science in public: Studying science communication and public engagement
Noriko Hara, Indiana University; Sarah R Davies, University of Vienna
Posted: February 28, 2022 Accepted Languages: English/Inglés/Inglês
Science communication and public engagement with science are key mechanisms by which scientific knowledge is mediated, negotiated, and transformed. Over the past decades, STS research has outlined the ways in which science and society are co-produced through public communication activities and catalysed a shift towards dialogue and engagement in science communication practice. More recently, issues of representation, exclusion, and contestation have risen to the fore in discussions of science in public, as well as concerns about public (dis)trust in expertise, the dizzying impacts of social media, and debates about science’s role in political activism and resistance.
This open panel invites paper proposals that analyse these ways that science is represented, transformed, contested or negotiated in public venues, in particular by paying attention to how this was reconfigured during the COVID-19 pandemic. Papers may explore, for instance, science and technology-related activism; science in social media; science in museums; deliberative experiments; popular science writing; science podcasting; news media; or science comedy – as well as the myriad other sites and mechanisms by which science is done in public. We invite critical analysis of these sites and mechanisms that consider their relationalities and how particular futures are enacted and negotiated within them. For example, papers might analyse the constitution of technoscientific futures within particular science communication activities; discuss affective or temporal regimes of public engagement with science; or give accounts of experimental practice that show how STS might contribute to doing science in public in just, generous, and collaborative ways.
