Twenty years of research in science communication Challenges and transformations

Author: Susana Herrera – Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (ITESO), Mexico

This paper presents an overview of the transformations and trends in the topics and problems of research in public communication of science addressed by students and academics of the Master in Communication of Science and Culture of ITESO, in Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, Mexico, throughout its twenty years of its operation.

The distinctive aspect of this postgraduate program is the sociocultural approach for researching and questioning the practice of science communication. This approach considers both, structural and subjective dimensions of communication in society. In this work I identify changes in topics, contents and ways of addressing research problems in public communication of science through time.

I also review the challenges that a postgraduate program of this nature, which studies communication from a sociocultural perspective, has faced to identify, define and rigorously address the research problems that fall within this area, with its consequent turns, transformations and emergencies. That is, how it has been part of the formation of an academic field that is developing, and what contributions it has made from this space of training and research, especially within the Latin American context.

The corpus for the review was integrated with the thesis of the students and the research works of the professors of the Masters, in the line of Public Communication of Science. The emphasis has been on the issues and problems that over the course of these twenty years have attracted the interest of students and academics, or those that have emerged and demanded their attention from CPC research.

The continuities and emergencies in the theoretical and methodological proposals with which the research problems in the projects have been addressed are also analyzed. I expect to contribute to show the panorama of the transformations in a space of professional formation of researchers in CPC in Latin America.

The author has not yet submitted a copy of the full paper.

Presentation type: Insight talk
Theme: Time