Consolidated vs. Fragile Science Communication Culture: A Comparison of Science Coverage of the BBC and Israeli Media

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Consolidated vs. Fragile Science Communication Culture: A Comparison of Science Coverage of the BBC and Israeli Media

Author: Yael Barel-Ben David, Technion, Israel

Co-author: Ayelet Baram-Tsabari

The case of science communication in Israel is a very perplexing one. On the one hand, Israel is positioned 22nd in the world regarding its scientific research and publications (Getz et al., 2013). On the other hand it was classified as having a “fragile” science communication culture (Mejlgaardet al. 2012). One aspect of this categorization is science journalism infrastructure that affects the science and technology coverage in the daily news media reaching the public.

Comparing this aspect between Israel as a case study of a “fragile” science communication culture and the “consolidated” culture of the UK, may highlight differences between the two cultures, and may hint for steps needed in order to advance from one category to the other.

A systematic examination of the scope and characteristics of science and technology coverage in the Israeli news media was conducted over a period of six consecutive months. STEM items published in four news media (newspapers, news sites, TV and radio news shows) were collected and catalogued according to a codebook based mainly on Mellor’s (2011) BBC study, which was used for comparison, regarding the BBC as a role model for science coverage a “fragile science communication culture” should aspire to.

During 183 days a total of 1,064 items were collected and catalogued from 20 media sources. Findings point to similarities to findings from the BBC study in scientific fields covered (mostly medicine and life sciences) and focus on local research. The main difference was found in regarding to the frequency of science coverage between the two countries. The overall frequency of science items comprised a total of 1.8% of the news published at that time in Israel. These numbers are much smaller than the 4.6% reported in Mellor’s BBC study.

Science communication impact on journals visibility in Brazil

Author: Germana Barata, UNICAMP, Brazil

Co-authors: Carolina Medeiros, Katia Kishi

Some prestigious science journals have invested in science communication strategies to boost readership and to share results with society. Although Brazilian journals have improved their quality within the last decade, their visibility and quality perception still remains limited. On one hand, the national media underestimate the importance of Brazilian journals (some with international standards and others with great national performances), and on the other hand science policy remains focused on international publications. Meanwhile, international science policy has paid attention towards alternative indicators of science impact on society – as Altmetrics that evaluates papers appearance in blogs, News, social media etc. This paper aims to enrich and strengthen the evidence that communication strategies in Brazilian science journals can contribute to change the current overview. We have analysed the ten most popular posts about papers published in Brazilian journals through Facebook, the most used social media in Brazil. The fanpages of 4 Brazilian journals with good performance (up to 1,000 likes each) and weekly activity at Facebook were selected: Revista Brasileira de Educação Física e Esportes-RBEFE (Physical Education); Revista de Medicina (Medicine); História, Ciências, Saúde de Manguinhos (History) and Psicologia USP (Psicology). The same analysis was done in Divulga Ciência fanpage, a project dedicated to the science communication of Brazilian journals. The papers downloads were then analysed in the months previous and after communication on Facebook. The results show a direct impact of social media communication in the papers visibility, with a clear increase on downloads in the month of Facebook communication. For instance, a post about a RBEFE paper jumped from 51 downloads monthly on average to 397 in the post month. This research highlights Brazilian journals potential to draw public interest, which could be enhanced by investing in communication strategies to increment journals value and visibility.

What are we trying to teach? A conceptually based approach to science communication training

Author: Ayelet Baram-Tsabari, Faculty of Education in Science and Technology, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Israel

Co-author: Bruce Lewenstein

The rapid growth in public communication of science and technology has led to a highly diverse and large number of training programs. Each of these programs engages in teaching. Where there is teaching, there are learners. That shift to learning-centered approach is the focus of our project, asking: what are the learning goals of science communication training? As the PCST field matures, we believe it will be useful to identify a comprehensive set of learning goals for future trainings, ones that draw fully from the range of fields that comprise PCST. Learning goals identify what the teacher or trainer is trying to achieve. They provide a framework for deciding what will be counted as success and how evidence of learning will be gathered and analyzed at the individual level (assessment) and the course level (evaluation). We base our work on a set of six strands of learning developed for “learning science in informal environments” (Bell et al. 2009). Our adapted list includes learning outcomes in affective issues, content knowledge, methods, reflection, participation, and identity. We reviewed dozens of research articles describing and reviewing science communication training for scientists. From them we identified both explicit and implicit learning goals. These were classified according to the conceptual framework described above. We identified gaps in the outcomes especially in the areas of affective learning and identity formation. Ideas for evidence of success and items to evaluate them are suggested. We do not expect that any one program would attempt to achieve all the learning goals. But we believe that conceptual coherence can help course designers identify important goals. Creating a common language will increase the ability to compare outcomes across courses and programs, identifying approaches that best fit particular education, training, and communication contexts.

Mitigating school dropout with science

Author: Enrico Balli, Sissa Medialab, Italy

Co-authors: Simona Cerrato, Elena Canel

Higher education institutions can have a major role in changing the life perspectives and improving the science capital of many children and young people who are kept at the margin of the educational system, as experienced during the Sis Catalyst project. In this paper we present a case study of the Children University Programme at SISSA (Trieste, Italy) run with a small group of teenagers who have
interrupted the school before the terms of the obligation. The aim of the project was exploring the potential of science to mitigate school drop out and facilitate social inclusion. It was done in collaboration with the SMAC School, an alternative school that helps young people at risk of marginalization and deviance to complied with the compulsory school.

After a preliminary period of mutual understanding and acquaintance with the research activities of SISSA, we carried out three workshops on coding using Scratch! the software developed by MIT to introduce children to programming. Eventually the SMAC pupils were invited to become mentors of a CoderDojo event organized at SISSA with a group of 30 children aged 9-11. They participated to the briefing before the meeting with the other experienced mentors, and then took care of the children with utmost care and responsibility, sharing with them their expertise, helping and encouraging when there were difficulties.

A series of in-depth interviews have been conducted with the educators and the facilitators of the workshops, and two focus groups have been carried out with the young participants. The preliminary outcomes are very encouraging: through the active engagement, the young participants have succeeded in completing a complex project, taking responsibility, dealing with other people external to their usual circle (both children and adults), in a context in which they have been valued and respected.

Science cafe in a digital age

Author: Balint Balazs, ESSRG, Hungary

The SciCafe 2.0 Consortium and the European Observatory for Crowdsourcing proposes to hold this workshop for exchanging insights on approaches to social innovation community support management. The SciCafe 2.0 project has aimed to support a social engagement eco-system with an adaptive participative engagement platform plus community management support providing specific observatory services for Best Practice sharing on Community Engagement Support amongst real communities with real societal challenges and specific problems to resolve.

The SciCafe2.0 Platform as integrated with Citizens’ Say knowledge exchange tool was adapted to serve the specific engagement requirements of two communities: the Municipality of Rome Second district (“Osservatorio Scienza per la Società del Municipio 2 di Roma) and the Florence Science Cafe Network. Some of our results have already been reported in our Handbook of Online Participatory Methodologies: Analysis of Community Network Interactivity and Participative Engagement Models and Methods available online.

We invite participants to an open setting to freely drop in and out of the session and benefit from an informal style of interaction and discussions inviting contributions on the topic from all participants.

As a start we will outline the SciCafe 2.0 mission and its achievements to-date essentially as promoting and facilitating the uptake and customisation of the SciCafe 2.0 platform to suit the preferred modes of participative engagement of various communities.

We will also present the SciCafe2.0 Platform in action through a quick online demonstration. After the demonstration we will discuss the practical issues of building and maintaining social engagement communities and the scale up challenges e.g. privacy protection, flexibility in engagement modes (offline, online), transparency of proceedings, raising the floor for the ICT-non-savvy to be able to have access to the session reports and contribute as they wish.

A Sight of the Life Molecule

Author: Marcela Angola Bañuelos Cedano, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México, Mexico

Co-authors:

  • Laura Isabel González Guerrero
  • Roberto Hinojosa Nava
  • Klaudia Bañuelos Cedano
  • Víctor Iván Hernández Molina

The workshop entitled “Una Mirada a la Molécula de la Vida” (A Sight of the Life Molecule) addresses different aspects to human heritage, and these are put forward trough touch sense using pedagogical materials developed by the “Cascabel” divulgation group of the Facultad de Ciencias of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México (UNAM). The main objective of the workshop is to sensitize society about the blindness and to make available to the blind people scientific information through the proposed activities. The participants in the workshop are short-sightedness and general people. In the activity, each participant gets a box containing 20 pairs of chromosome models and three single ones.

All the 20 pairs are different so by touching them they can be differentiated. The eyes of the normal seeing participants are covered with a mask so they can to know the situation of the blind people; at the same time we said about the history and some important aspects about the human heritage.

Science Centers and Operations in Turkey

Author: Ece Özdoğan Özbal

As steadily increasing awareness of science education importance, the researches about the centers in which science education is carried are fastened. Alternative learning platforms for science education are brought up and the number of the places in which science education is performed like science museums, interactive science centers, and field study centers increased over last 20 years. In particularly, science centers and science museums assume a great role in performing science education and, likewise science centers seem to have strong connections with universities, research centers and other institutions which are related to science. It could be claimed that science centers are ones of those learning platforms which have sufficient equipment for science learning. Instructor and teaching programs carry importance in addition to physical environment which is maintained for science education. Instructors may sometime remain incapable of responding to students’ intriguing and exciting questions because of the fact that instructors who are responsible of science fields in schools are not able to have enough details for the related science field, not able to follow recent researches which have been carried out for the related field, not able to give applied answers for the questions in different difficulty levels, moreover instructors may have difficulty on resource usage. Furthermore, created teaching programs are not able to excite students’ attention and may remain insufficient to meet their questions. The need of getting education in the centers which have sufficient equipment from the experts who got specialized in the related science field arose in order to remove the misunderstandings, shortcomings and flaws in science education. In recent years, science education has been tried to be performed in science centers as one of the alternative learning platforms. In the concept of this study, the creation and operations of Feza Gursey Science Center, Sisli Municipality Science Center, ITU Science Center, Eskisehir Science Experiment Center, Karsiyaka Municipality Science Museum, Gaziantep Planetarium and Science Center, Bursa Science and Technology Center, Konya Science Center, Kocaeli Science Center, Polatli Municipality Science Center will be analyzed.

Urban Geology and Paleontology – examples and opportunities in Science Centres

Author: Luis Azevedo Rodrigues

Since 2011, three distinct science outreach activities were planned, produced and performed in three Algarve (Portugal) cities – Faro (GeoStories of Faro’s Downtown), Lagos (Geology at the Corner) and Tavira (From the Museum to the Convent). Churches, monuments, buildings and urban equipment were the starting point of the geological and paleontological stories that constitute the core of these informal education visits and books which also combine Art History and Heritage views. Beyond the natural science element, the analyzed objects have relevant aesthetical, historical or symbolic dimensions, allowing simultaneously two levels of interpretation to the stories: the Geosciences level; the other, the Historical and Architectural Heritage. As a result of these visits three bilingual books (Portuguese and English) of the Geosciences walks were edited. The guides, with 120 pages each, focus on the geological and paleontological characteristics of the visited places as well as the art history framework of the different monuments and urban areas. With these visits and books, different classifications of possibilities in science communication as well as of formal and informal education are allowed, based on three vertices: Science, Heritage and Geotourism. Promoting and contribute to the Geosciences outreach (Geology and Paleontology) was the main objective of these visits and books, as well as: – modify the way that the general population looks at urban buildings; – contribute to the informal education of a general public especially among the public which is interested in Architecture, History and Heritage; – integrate different areas of human knowledge – Geosciences and Architecture, History and Heritage. Visits were tested and implemented and presently constitute one of the science outreach activities of the Algarve Ciência Viva Science Centres.
 

Five ways to sell the tsetse fly – How both science and institutions are sold in press releases

Author: Charlotte Autzen

In their daily hunt for a good news story journalists subscribing to the international online media platform for research news EurekAlert! have a lot of readymade science news to choose from. On an average day more than 100 different press releases on newly published research is posted by universities, scientific associations, societies, journals and PR companies. Sometimes the journalists can even choose between several versions of the same research story. One could therefore have the hypothesis, that institutions have more reasons for sending out press releases than just making sure the press is well informed about the newest research achievements. By applying a discourse text analyze to these press releases one extra reason turns out to be ‘communicating the institutions’ who took part in the research. This paper investigates a handful of cases where up to five different press releases are published about the same research result, all posted on EurekAlert! in 2014. By comparing the different press release texts on the exact same research result this paper shows how the way ‘the science’ and ‘the institution’ are sold to the news media is showing both similarities and differences dependent of who submitted the press release. The differences are seen in positioning, voices and who gets to run with the credit for the results presented, while the overall manuscript for communicating science in the news media turns out to be very similar and more independent of the sender of the press release. Effects of and reasons for this observed practice of multiple press release postings is discussed by including a media search from the online media database Meltwater to show how many online news stories were generated in the news media, who was cited and how, all related to the chosen cases.

Controversy Inside Out – Museum Visitors’ Experiences in a Provocative Exhibit

Author: Daniel Atkinson

Historically, science museums have developed exhibitions that highlight a particular view of science as objective, unproblematic, without context, separated into disciplines, and supported by a top-down model of knowledge creation (Bradburne, 1998; Delicado, 2009; Janousek, 2000; Pedretti, 2002). However, in recent years a provocative direction has been observed in the development of controversial exhibitions – sometimes referred to as critical exhibitions (Pedretti, 2002). Such displays often approach complex issues in the interface between science, technology, society and environment (STSE) and tend to be emotionally and politically charged due to their subject matter (Pedretti, 2002) or format (Jagger et al., 2012). Borrowing from Hodson’s (2013) framework, we understand how the controversy in such exhibitions can be internal to science, when the information required to create an opinion is incomplete, inconclusive, contradictory or extremely difficult to interpret; or external to science, rooted, for example, in potentially conflicting sociocultural, ethical, moral, and/or aesthetic concerns, values and beliefs. In this paper, we present initial findings from an ongoing research project that uses a naturalistic approach to study controversial science exhibitions across Canada. Using a multiple case study methodology (Merriam, 1988; Yin, 1984), we focus here on an individual case related to Animal: Inside Out (Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa), an exhibit created by the makers of Body Worlds. This installation creates a provocative environment wherein plastinated cadavers of animals are displayed alongside information related to their anatomy, physiology and ecological circumstances. Initial findings, gathered through interviews, observations, and exit comment cards, suggest that the exhibit generated some internal controversies (most notably conservation issues), but mostly controversies external to the scientific community prompted by the visitors’ ethical, moral and emotional responses (e.g. technology- and innovation-oriented issues surrounding the creation of the object displayed, ethics of cadaver acquisition, and educational implications).

Characteristics of an authentic scientific discourse in social networks – The case of drinking water fluoridation

Author: Doris Asakly

Science popularization is conventionally viewed as external to the world of practicing researchers and to the production and validation of scientific knowledge (Whitley, 1985). Yet sociologists of science demonstrated that scientists communicate research via a plethora of scientific and popular channels in order to gain public recognition and support (Whitley, 1985, Lewenstein, 1995, Allan, et al., 2010). But while the narrative strategies of media actors and professional popularizers have been widely explored (Scott, 2007, Mellor 2012, Journet, 2010, Kirby, 2011, Gouyon, 2015) scientific rhetoric is examined primarily as drawing a boundary between science and popular culture (Gieryn, 1999, Hilgartner, 1990, Myers 2003). More needs to be done in examining how ‘ordinary’ scientists engaging the public link their research with prevalent social and cultural contexts. Rather than focusing on selected cases this paper explores a broad corpus of televised interviews broadcasted live in the Israeli media for the story-worlds that experts rely upon in constructing their narratives. The findings indicate that interviewees use and intercalate the story worlds of the laboratory (Latour, 1987), the clinic (Atkinson, 1995), the natural environment (Myers, 1990), and draw upon science fiction as well as current affairs (Haran et al., 2008). But rather than blurring the boundaries between science and popular understanding (Myers 2003) their narratives align with professional norms of the communication of scientific results. A detailed analysis of their narratives (Georgakopoulou, 2007) reveals their structuring as highlighting the generality of the events narrated rather than their idiosyncratic and particular characteristics. Scientists communicating with the mass media are advised to package their research as a compelling story, avoid technical descriptions and the contingencies they encountered (Gregory and Miller, 1998, Baram-Tsabari and Lewenstein, 2013). These recommendations will be discussed in light of the media practices that this paper will report.

Crossing the boundary while sustain the borderline – The story-worlds of scientific experts

Author: Rony Armon

Science popularization is conventionally viewed as external to the world of practicing researchers and to the production and validation of scientific knowledge (Whitley, 1985). Yet sociologists of science demonstrated that scientists communicate research via a plethora of scientific and popular channels in order to gain public recognition and support (Whitley, 1985, Lewenstein, 1995, Allan, et al., 2010). But while the narrative strategies of media actors and professional popularizers have been widely explored (Scott, 2007, Mellor 2012, Journet, 2010, Kirby, 2011, Gouyon, 2015) scientific rhetoric is examined primarily as drawing a boundary between science and popular culture (Gieryn, 1999, Hilgartner, 1990, Myers 2003). More needs to be done in examining how ‘ordinary’ scientists engaging the public link their research with prevalent social and cultural contexts. Rather than focusing on selected cases this paper explores a broad corpus of televised interviews broadcasted live in the Israeli media for the story-worlds that experts rely upon in constructing their narratives. The findings indicate that interviewees use and intercalate the story worlds of the laboratory (Latour, 1987), the clinic (Atkinson, 1995), the natural environment (Myers, 1990), and draw upon science fiction as well as current affairs (Haran et al., 2008). But rather than blurring the boundaries between science and popular understanding (Myers 2003) their narratives align with professional norms of the communication of scientific results. A detailed analysis of their narratives (Georgakopoulou, 2007) reveals their structuring as highlighting the generality of the events narrated rather than their idiosyncratic and particular characteristics. Scientists communicating with the mass media are advised to package their research as a compelling story, avoid technical descriptions and the contingencies they encountered (Gregory and Miller, 1998, Baram-Tsabari and Lewenstein, 2013). These recommendations will be discussed in light of the media practices that this paper will report.

How the science-media gap is managed in practice – The use of news interviews in science communication trainings

Author: Rony Armon, King’s College London, United Kingdom

Though new media channels offer new venues for open and dialogical science communication (Trench, 2012, Liang, 2014), the news media remains is a major source of scientific information to the general public. As science coverage is largely attuned to traditional news values and news frames (Nisbet & Huge, 2006, Verhoeven, 2010), scientists are often trained to frame their research as engaging and clear accounts (Baram-Tsabari, & Lewenstein, 2013).

Rather than focusing on packaging science for popular consumption this workshop focuses on the interactional dynamics in which these accounts need to be embedded. While science communicating
training makes a broad use of role-play scenarios this workshop exploits naturally occurring media interactions as a way of capturing potential sources of trouble and their handling by scientific experts (Stokoe, 2014). A focused and detailed examination of such interactions enables the tracing of how participants analyse, interpret and reference each other’s stories (Georgakopoulou, 2007), contend over their respective agendas as the interaction progresses.

The workshop will be based on the presentation of news interviews engaging health risks in which scientists were found to disagree with interviewers’ assessments. Workshop participants will be asked to discuss in small groups what the interviewer’s questions were implying and how they would respond. After obtaining feedback from the group the responses that experts actually provided will be presented and evaluated for their handling of these particular interactions. The workshop is geared at preparing researchers to their interactions with journalists. However, this training could also be useful for communicating science in the conversational web media, where discussions are often steered by other agendas and claims (Laslo, Baram-Tsabari, & Lewenstein, 2011) or contestations of scientists’ credibility (Trench, 2012).

Building a Physics Institute’s Outreach Programme from Scratch

Author: Erik Arends

We present the findings of our case study around building an outreach programme from scratch at the Leiden Institute of Physics, The Netherlands. Before we started, the institute had no official outreach programme, giving us a unique opportunity to do a clean case study, with no pre-existing factors that influence our data. We have been measuring and analysing the effects of our outreach activities towards our main goal – create more (positive) visibility for the institute and physics in general. We have focussed on the key question: What effects do our activities have towards our goal, and how do they interrelate? A quantitative analysis of Twitter, website statistics and Google Alerts gives us insight into the relationships between timing, retweets, newsletters, reach, engagement, media appearances and subject (discovery, grant or upstream communication). Furthermore, we investigate physicists’ engagement with their institute in time, by monitoring their website visits and participation in outreach, such as communicating their research to the institute’s outreach professionals. We look for a cascade effect, in which more outreach leads to more visibility amongst the researchers themselves, leading to a culture of more outreach participation. In the absence of a prior outreach programme, we have a rare, clear view on the effects of our actions. We are in a unique position to perform this clean case study at a large physics institute. From there we provide valuable do’s and don’ts for science communication practise, which is the aim of the study.

Design of a Battery of Indicators of Social Appropriation of Science and Technology in Colombia

Author: Tania Arboleda

The Colombian Observatory of Science and Technology recently begun a project to design a battery of indicators of Social Appropriation of Science and Technology (SAST) to respond to the need that the Administrative Department of Science, Technology & Innovation of Colombia has to advance processes of measuring and evaluating these initiatives. The notion of SAST is defined as “a process of understanding and intervention of the relations between technoscience and society which is constructed based upon the active participation of the various social groups that generate knowledge”. The methodological path that is being followed to complete this purpose has the following steps: (1) definition of a ‘universe’ of types of initiatives that respond to SAST – it is expected that this universe also includes initiatives not funded by the government; (2) identification of information needs based upon a review of policy documents, academic literature on SAST, and interviews to policy makers, researchers and diverse agents participating in the initiatives; (3) Preliminary design of the structure and content of the battery of indicators; (4) Workshops to validate the preliminary design with representative groups of actors participating in initiatives (public or non public funded), policy managers, researchers; (4) a work to prioritize a baseline of indicators to be initially measured, with the understanding that the remained proposed indicators also could be used in context based initiatives as a means to evaluate their processes, outputs or impacts; (5) Design of a methodological path to the information collecting and construction of the indicators; (4) Definition of the datasheet of each indicator. It is expected that the project ends on March 2016. In the paper we expect to present the final battery of indicators and some of the challenges presented during the defining process.

Trends in the Measurement and Evaluation of Social Appropriation of Science and Technology in Colombia

Author: Tania Arboleda

Ten years have passed since the National Policy of Social Appropriation of Science and Technology (SAST) was launched in Colombia (COLCIENCIAS, 2005), and another five years since the proper was done with its National Strategy (COLCIENCIAS, 2010) whose purpose is to “broaden the understanding of the dynamics of knowledge production and use, beyond the synergies between academic, productive and government sectors to include the communities and groups of interests of civil society. The notion of SAST is defined in the latter as “a process of understanding and intervention of the relations between technoscience and society which is constructed based upon the active participation of the various social groups that generate knowledge”. The four lines of action of this strategy are: (1) Citizens’ participation in Science, Technology and Innovation policies; (2) communication from the perspective of science, technology and society relationships; (3) knowledge transfer and exchange; knowledge management for social appropriation of science and technology. These policies urge the need to advance processes of monitoring, measuring and evaluation of the SAST initiatives and propose some mechanisms to do it. In this work we examine the presence of processes of monitoring, measuring and evaluation in the development of SAST initiatives and programs in the Colombian contexts, in terms of its actors, approaches and purposes reflected, as well as the underlying understanding of the relationships between science and society. In order to do that we are analysing papers presented in academic and networks events in the Latin American region related to these topics between 2005 and the first semester of 2015. To date we have registered 77 papers related to Colombian SAST initiatives presented in 11 events. At the present moment we are analysing them through a protocol with various categories.

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The Network for the Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST Network) is an organisation that promotes discussion on the theory and practice of communicating science, and of public discourses about science and technology and their role in society.

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