Setting the Agenda: The Mass Media and Public Opinion

The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance

Behind closed doors.

The Mathematical Association of America, 1993 372 pages $35.00 "A Cat That Can't Be Caught" is the first chapter of this quite readable story of the life of Eric Temple Bell. Constance Reid carries us along on her private-eye-like search for the truth about his early years, which he had kept secret from his friends, his family, and even from his beloved wife, and which he had even distorted (the polite word) when filling out a form for the Cal tech administration in 1943. By a combination of diligence and luck the author has discovered that when Bell was about a year old his father moved the family from Scotland to San Jose, thence south to the farm country of Santa Clara County, where he began a fruit orchard. It was here that Bell spent his boyhood, and images of an idealized pastoral countryside find their way into many of his poems and stories. Why was it necessary for him to keep these years secret? Reid never finds this out. He was a teenager when his father died, and his mother rerurned the family to England, where Bell entered what we would call a high school and fell in love with mathematics. But it was back in the United States that Bell did his university work-Stanford, Washington, and Columbia. After finishing his PhD, he began his teaching career and for many years seemed to want little more. Mathematical research was a minor activity. Poetry demanded more attention, and it was the time for beginning an epic work, The Scarlet Night, the revision of which was to occupy the last years of his life. It was also the time for his marriage, at the age of 27, to his beloved Toby. The author said to Bell's son Taine: "The thought has passed my mind that your father might have preferred being a poet to being a mathematician," to which Taine replied, "I think he might have ifhe had had any success." Bell found no conflict between his dual interests, and wrote that "mathematics and poetry are simply isomorphic." His mathematical research began to expand in original directions, which were, however, apparently not very well described in his publications. One of the reviewers contacted by Reid had two favorite instances of Bell's style: "the following complete sentence: 'Hence, etc.' and my very favorite footnote: 'A set of elements form a semi-group if they have the group property, etc. ", A few years later his "recreational writing" began under the name of John Taine (the basis for the name is obscure-it is not in his family history) in the genre we now call science fiction. A friend suggested that it served "as a relief from the grind of mathematics." Although Reid comments clearly on Bell's fictional products, her descriptions of his mathematics is another matter; for

The Golem: What Everyone Should Know about Science

2017 Annual Report

CITATION: Guenther, L. & Joubert, M. 2017. Science communication as a field of research : identifying trends, challenges and gaps by analysing research papers. JCOM: Journal of Science Communication, 16(02):1-19, doi:10.22323/2.16020202.

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Science communication as a field of research : identifying trends, challenges and gaps by analysing research papers

We explore and discuss the diverse motives that drive science communication, pointing out that political motives are the major driving force behind most science communication programmes including so-called public engagement with science with the result that educational and promotional objectives are blurred and science communication activities are rarely evaluated meaningfully. Since this conflation of motives of science communication and the gap between political rhetoric and science communication practice could threaten the credibility of science, we argue for the restoration of a crucial distinction between two types of science communication: educational/dialogic vs promotional/persuasive.

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The conflation of motives of science communication — causes, consequences, remedies

There is a renewed interest amongst science communication practitioners and scholars to explore the potential of storytelling in public communication of science, including to understand how science storytelling functions (or could fail) in different contexts. Drawing from storytelling as the core theme of the 2018 conference of the Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST) Network, we present a selection of papers, essays and practice insights that offer diverse perspectives. Some contributions focus on the cultural and structural qualities of science stories and its key success factors, while others explore new formats, platforms and collaborators in science storytelling activities.

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Storytelling: the soul of science communication

‘Public engagement with science’ has become a ‘buzzword’ reflecting a concern about the widening gap between science and society and efforts to bridge this gap. This study is a comprehensive analysis of the development of the ‘engagement’ rhetoric in the pertinent academic literature on science communication and in science policy documents. By way of a content analysis of articles published in three leading science communication journals and a selection of science policy documents from the United Kingdom (UK), the United States of America (USA), the European Union (EU), and South Africa (SA), the variety of motives underlying this rhetoric, as well as the impact it has on science policies, are analyzed. The analysis of the science communication journals reveals an increasingly vague and inclusive definition of ‘engagement’ as well as of the ‘public’ being addressed, and a diverse range of motives driving the rhetoric. Similar observations can be made about the science policy documents. This study corroborates an earlier diagnosis that rhetoric is running ahead of practice and suggests that communication and engagement with clearly defined stakeholder groups about specific problems and the pertinent scientific knowledge will be a more successful manner of ‘engagement’.

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Public engagement with science-Origins, motives and impact in academic literature and science policy.

Against the backdrop of the increasing relevance of social media in public science communication and engagement, this study aimed to expand our understanding of the relationships and interactions between social media users and scientific outputs. In order to do so, we explored the identities, characteristics and activities of South African science tweeters (or ZA science tweeters)—i.e. Twitter users in South Africa who tweet about research articles. The growing number of ZA science tweeters, both overall and in relative terms, suggests that Twitter users are increasingly using this social media platform as a tool to share and discuss scientific outputs. ZA science tweeters are actively contributing to the sharing of information about new research articles, but, in line with global trends, the bulk of science tweets amongst South African Twitter users comes from a small number of active tweeters, and only 1% of ZA science tweeters had more than 20,000 followers. About 6.6% of ZA science tweeters are scholars (or researchers) themselves. Compared to science tweeters who are not scholars, the scholar-tweeters sent out tweets about research articles more frequently, are active on Twitter over longer periods of time, publish more original tweets and use hashtags more frequently to increase their engagement on Twitter. In their Twitter bios, these scholars typically use academic terms to describe themselves, thereby presenting themselves as experts on this social media platform. Astronomy, astrophysics, ecology and the environment emerge as the research topics that are most popular amongst ZA science tweeters.

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Marina Joubert

Papers

Science communication as a field of research : identifying trends, challenges and gaps by analysing research papers

The conflation of motives of science communication — causes, consequences, remedies

Storytelling: the soul of science communication

Public engagement with science-Origins, motives and impact in academic literature and science policy.

Getting to Know Science Tweeters: A Pilot Analysis of South African Twitter Users Tweeting about Research Articles