Suchergebnisse

International organizations are important participants in the realm of world politics. An area in which this has become highly visible is the field of United Nations peace operations. Since the end of the Cold War, UN peace operations have increased in number, geographical focus, as well as in their overall complexity.

Public communication of science has increasingly been recognised as a responsibility of scientists (Leshner, Science p. 977, 2003). Climate scientists are often reminded of their responsibility to participate in the public climate debate and to engage the public in meaningful conversations that contribute to policy-making (Fischhoff 2013). However, our understanding about climate scientists' interactions with the public and the factors that drive or inhibit them is at best limited. In a new study, we show that it is the most published and not necessarily the most senior, which often talk in public, and it is primarily intrinsic motivation (as opposed to extrinsic reward), which drive them to engage in public communication. Political orientations, academic productivity and awareness of controversy, the topic raises in the public domain, were also important determinants of a climate's scientist public activity. Future research should explore what is required to protect the intrinsic motivation of scientists. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion

Leading academic institutions, governments, and funders of research across the world have spent the last few decades fretting publicly about the need for scientists and research organisations to engage more widely with the public and be open about their research. While a global literature asserts that public communication has changed from a virtue to a duty for scientists in many countries and disciplines, our knowledge about what research institutions are doing and what factors drive their 'going public' is very limited. Here we present the first cross-national study of N = 2,030 research institutes within universities and large scientific organisations in Brazil, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. We find that institutes embrace communication with non-peers and do so through a variety of public events and traditional news media-less so through new media channels-and we find variation across countries and sciences, yet these are less evident than we expected. Country and disciplinary cultures contribute to the level of this communication, as do the resources that institutes make available for the effort; institutes with professionalised staff show higher activity online. Future research should examine whether a real change in the organisational culture is happening or whether this activity and resource allocation is merely a means to increase institutional visibility. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion