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The Science Communication Challenge explores and discusses the whys – as distinct from the hows – of science communication. Arguing that the dominant science communication paradigm is didactic, it makes the case for a political category of science communication, aimed at furthering discussions of science-related public affairs and making room for civilized and reasonable exchanges between different points of view. As civil societies and knowledge societies, modern democratic societies are confronted with the challenge of accommodating both the scientific logic of truth-seeking and the classical political logic of pluralism. The didactic science communication paradigm, however, is unsuited to dealing with substantial disagreement. Therefore, it is also unsuited to facilitate communication about the steadily increasing number of science-related political issues. Using insights from an array of academic fields, The Science Communication Challenge explores the possible origins of the didactic paradigm, connecting it to particular understandings of knowledge, politics and the public and to the widespread assumption of a science-versus-politics dichotomy. The book offers a critique of that assumption and suggests that science and politics be seen as substantially different activities, suited to dealing with different kinds of questions – and to different varieties of science communication.

Europe has a rich heritage of diverse languages, political cultures, enlightenment traditions and, consequently, frameworks of journalism idea(l)s based on different understandings of its tasks, audiences and position in society. As yet, however, the addition of a cross-border dimension to journalism has not resulted in the development of cross-border collaborations along correspondingly diverse lines. The recent rise of journalistic cross-border collaboration seems much indebted to the muckraking tradition of reporting, rooted in the decades when populism was coined as a positive, anti-elitist term in the United States. Targeting corrupt practices, muckrakers have traditionally been committed to exposing liars, frauds, crooks - wrong ones - in politics and business. This is useful to society at large but insufficient if compared to aims of stimulating, across borders, critical public reflection and exchange about international public affairs. Because it may generate self-righteousness in its practitioners and audiences, it might even hamper such practices, dependent as they are on a capacity for self-critical appraisal among participants. What would cross-border collaboration look like if connected to, for instance, the logic of publizist journalism with its affinity for intellectually challenging political debate and its capacity for scrutinizing stereotypes? Why has it not evolved? What might be done to further a diversity of approaches to journalistic cross-border collaboration? Also, might shared attention to the concept of cosmopolitanism be helpful to that purpose?

The Science Communication Challenge explores and discusses the whys – as distinct from the hows – of science communication. Arguing that the dominant science communication paradigm is didactic, it makes the case for a political category of science communication, aimed at furthering discussions of science-related public affairs and making room for civilized and reasonable exchanges between different points of view. As civil societies and knowledge societies, modern democratic societies are confronted with the challenge of accommodating both the scientific logic of truth-seeking and the classical political logic of pluralism. The didactic science communication paradigm, however, is unsuited to dealing with substantial disagreement. Therefore, it is also unsuited to facilitate communication about the steadily increasing number of science-related political issues. Using insights from an array of academic fields, The Science Communication Challenge explores the possible origins of the didactic paradigm, connecting it to particular understandings of knowledge, politics and the public and to the widespread assumption of a science-versus-politics dichotomy. The book offers a critique of that assumption and suggests that science and politics be seen as substantially different activities, suited to dealing with different kinds of questions – and to different varieties of science communication.