This article examines the 1935 Science Museum temporary exhibition on Noise Abatement, situating it in the sound historical context of inter-war Britain, and making an argument that the ‘way of hearing’ it advanced was part of an attempt to shape auditory perception in the interests of a class-bound culture of acoustic civilization. Further, the article uses this exhibition to mount an argument that museum scholars should consider sound not simply as a medium of engagement, but also as a politically interested and socially active field.
In January 1885, the Glaswegian Professor of Chemistry Dr Robert Carter Moffat organised a special operatic concert at St James’s Hall, London, to which he invited around two thousand scientists and musicians. The point of this invitation concert was that all the singers used bottled air. Moffat himself appeared between the various performances, wielding his mysterious Ammoniaphone, or bottled-air machine, a long silver tube which he flourished in the faces of his audience while describing its virtues with considerable animation. The premise of the Ammoniaphone was that since Italian opera
This article provides a starting position and scene-setter for an invited commentary series on science communication and public intellectualism. It begins by briefly considering what intellectualism and public intellectualism are, before discussing their relationship with science communication, especially in academia. It ends with a call to science communication academics and practitioners to either become more active in challenging the status quo, or to help support those who wish to by engendering a professional environment that encourages risk-taking and speaking-out in public about
This letter reflects on how the role of science in society evolved in 2016. While there were plenty of groundbreaking scientific discoveries, the shifting political landscape cultivated a tempestuous relationship between science and society. We discuss these developments and the potential role of the science communication community in political activism.
This paper provides an analysis of the implementation and the outcomes of Scienza Attiva, an Italian national project for secondary school students, that makes use of deliberative democracy tools to address socio-scientific issues of great impact. The analysis has required a mixed method including surveys of students' pre- and post-project opinions, focus groups and interviews with students and teachers. The results from this evaluation study provide evidence that the project improves students' understanding of socio-scientific issues, strengthens their awareness of the importance of
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Federica CornaliGianfranco PomattoSelena Agnella
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The scientific community has been under increasing pressure from policymakers and the public to explain how research contributes to the public good. The community has emphasized two distinct approaches to explaining its operations and value. The first is the use of narratives that can make the work of science more accessible and engaging to nonscientists. The other is the use of new data mining and analysis methods to document quantitatively the complex paths by which research progresses and eventually contributes to a variety of societal goals. While both of these approaches have proved useful, the goal of this workshop is to explore ways that they might be combined into a hybrid approach that will be even more effective.
This workshop will assemble experts in the narrative and data-driven science communication approaches with leading science researchers to discuss how these various perspectives can be merged to define a template for a type of communication that encompasses the appeal of narrative, the rigor of new analytic data, and the understanding of how science works in practice.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kevin Finneran
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
How should we convey science—both its findings and its value to society—to the many members of the public who lack either scientific training or intense interest in scientific progress? In October 2016 the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a workshop to explore ways of better presenting science—both specific findings and the processes of discovering and confirming—to the public. Participants discussed ways to develop data-enriched narratives that communicate to the public and policy makers in an engaging and rigorous way the work of basic research. They also
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National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Attached is the final report for an initiative that develops outreach tool to communicate the results of basic science research to the public. “Incipient Species Project” was funded by a National Science Foundation Connecting Researchers and Public Audiences (CRPA) award (#1212753) to develop a documentary and permanent website on the work of J. Albert C. Uy, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Miami. The documentary and website explores Uy’s work on the evolution of new species (“speciation”) in birds of the Solomon Islands. The documentary, in particular, explores the science of
Differences in viewpoints between science and society, like in for example the HPV-vaccination debate, should be considered from a socio-technical system perspective, and not solely from a boundary perspective between the lay public, medical doctors and scientists. Recent developments in the HPV-vaccination case show how the debate concerning uncertainty amongst scientists and the lay audience is mostly focussed on the improvement of understanding of lay people about why vaccination is important. This boundary thinking leads to the idea that once the boundary is crossed, the problem is solved
The academic interest in 'science and technology communication' has evolved from different societal domains and fields of application, giving rise to different scholarly traditions. This contribution introduces current issues and agendas in a field that has its origin at the interface of (agricultural) innovation studies, rural development sociology and the communication sciences. The paper starts with a brief sketch of the history of the field. When compared to earlier approaches, current thinking about 'communication, innovation and development' pays greater attention to limitations in the
In response to Weingart and Guenther [2016], this essay explores the issue of trust in science communication by situating it in a wider communications culture and a longer historical period. It argues that the popular scientific culture is a necessary context not only for professional science, but also for the innovation economy. Given that the neutrality of science is a myth, and that science communication is much like any other form of communication, we should not be surprised if, in an innovation economy, science communication has come to resemble public relations, both for science and for
Social media is increasingly being used by science communicators, journalists and government agencies to engage in discourse with a range of publics. Despite a growing body of literature on Twitter use, the communication of science via Twitter is comparatively under explored. This paper examines the prominence of scientific issues in political debate occurring on Twitter during the 2013 and 2016 Australian federal election campaigns. Hashtracking of the umbrella political hashtag auspol was used to capture tweets during the two campaign periods. The 2013 campaign was particularly relevant as a
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Merryn McKinnonDavid SemmensBrenda MoonInoka AmarasekaLea Bolliet