Suchergebnisse

Science communication has traditionally been seen as a means of crossing the boundary of science: moving scientific knowledge into the public. This paper presents an alternative understanding. Drawing upon a particular case of social science communication in the form of an interactive installation about the social responsibility of science, it develops the concept of boundary space where phenomena can simultaneously belong to science and nonscience. In addition, the paper describes how the installation functions as a space for interaction between knowledge communication and knowledge production. The paper argues that we should understand science communication as a social practice, which allows scientists and nonscientists to cooperate in performing science as an important part of society. The aim is to add a new kind of analysis to traditional criticisms of deficit-thinking and popularization by asking what can we say more about science communication if we understand it as part of (rather than separated in time and space from) science as a social activity.

The article combines a criticism of public understanding of science (PUS) with the sociology of expectations to examine how particular expectations toward scientific progress have performative effects for the construction of publics as citizens of science. By analyzing a particular controversy about gene therapy in Denmark, the article demonstrates how different sets of expectations can be used to discriminate among three different assemblages: the assemblage of consumption, the assemblage of comportment, and the assemblage of heroic action. Each of these assemblages makes medical science, scientific citizenship, politics, patients, doctors, and expectations toward the future emerge in particular ways. By their radically different expectations toward science and their different constructions of what it means to be a scientific citizen, the assemblages construct the objectives of the governance of science in three very different ways.

The 1998 announcement by American researcher Richard Seed that he intended to clone a human person for reproductive reasons created a large amount of journalistic attention and controversy in the Danish mass media. Developing a theoretical framework inspired by Bruno Latour, this paper analyzes the mass mediated articulation of this announcement as an exploration of the socially viable interpretations of human cloning within the controversial field of biotechnology. An inductive analysis of scripts employed by four national newspapers identifies four main scripts: scientific education, pragmatic regulation, absolute resistance and fatalistic irony. All scripts generally reject the idea of human cloning, but they are found to represent distinctively different forms of social response corresponding to the classification of different cultural dialogues on risk.

Afhandlingen undersøger massemedierede kontroverser om bioteknologi som politiske uenigheder ved at analysere argumenters konstruktion af problemer og løsninger. Det hævdes at ethvert argument i kontroverserne altid implicit artiku-lerer en eller anden bestemt forestilling om den sociale (og naturlige) orden og om, hvordan denne orden opretholdes eller kritiseres. En sådan forestilling er afgørende for at argumentet kan fungere som argument, dvs. som en menings-fuld sammenkædning af et problem og en mulig problemløsning. Kontroverser-ne om bioteknologi handler derfor ikke kun om teknologi og forskning, men er grundlæggende uenigheder om, hvilken rolle forskningen skal spille i samfun-det, og om social organisering i al almindelighed. En analyse af mønstre i disse argumenter kan derfor belyse de diskursive mulighedsbetingelser for regulering af bioteknologi i Danmark. Afhandlingens teoretiske grundlag er en relationel ontologi formuleret på bag-grund af den franske filosof og videnssociolog Bruno Latour, der giver anled-ning til at formulere en forståelse af offentlig meningsdannelse som en konstant produktion af italesættelse i netværk. For at kunne analysere denne strøm af ita-lesættelse inddrager afhandlingen den britisk-amerikanske antropolog Mary Douglas' kulturteori som et analysestrategisk redskab. Det empiriske materiale udgøres af dagbladsartikler fra Politiken, Jyllandsposten, Information og Ekstra Bladet. På baggrund af en række søgeord er der udvalgt 1575 artikler i perioden 1. august 1997 – 31. december 2001, der omhandler sundhedsrelateret biotekno-logi. En foreløbig indholdsanalyse af disse artikler er dokumenteret i et bilag til afhandlingen.

This book describes current practices in science communication, from citizen science to Twitter storms, and celebrates this diversity through case studies and examples. However, the authors also reflect on how scholars and practitioners can gain better insight into science communication through new analytical methods and perspectives. From science PR to the role of embodiment and materiality, some aspects of science communication have been under-studied. How can we better notice these? Science Communication provides a new synthesis for Science Communication Studies. It uses the historical literature of the field, new empirical data, and interdisciplinary thought to argue that the frames which are typically used to think about science communication often omit important features of how it is imagined and practised. It is essential reading for students, scholars, and practitioners of science education, science and technology studies, museum studies, and media and communication studies