Author: Lourdes Mateos Espejel – Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla, Mexico

Co-authors:

  • José Luis Estrada Rodrí­guez – Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Mexico
  • Haydeé Margarita Hernández Ruí­z – Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla, Mexico
  • Helga Ochoa Caceres – Tecnológico de Monterrey Campus Puebla, Mexico

The state of agriculture had already been in crisis before COVID-19 due to food security and nutrition. However, the outbreak of the pandemic added challenge on primary agriculture specially in developing countries because businesses increased their capacity to manage larger inventories, moving to on-line platforms and hiring temporary staff. In the case of Mexico, the country is in eleventh place in food worldwide production. Therefore, Mexico’s biggest challenging tasks come from the measures need to contain COVID-19 in agricultural labor-force. The main objective of this article is to highlight the perceptions of Mexican farmers about Covid-19 and their views on scientists’ role in society. Based on a qualitative approach, five focus groups were conducted with 30 farmers in total. We identified Mexican farmers have been exposed to the virus without enough scientific information and critical understanding of the serious threat they are facing. Main perceived barriers to access to scientific information were lack of interest and credibility in daily TV press conferences conducted by scientists and public workers. Besides, extensive labor hours and limited access to internet were obstacles that inhibit voluntary searches of scientific information. The realization of the present work contributes to generate hypothesis about perceptions of science in the agricultural labor force and provides a starting point to generate science communication strategies to prevent COVID-19 in the agricultural sector.

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

Presentation type: Individual paper
Theme: Time

Author: Lourdes Mateos Espejel – Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla. Mexico

Co-authors:

  • S.R. Casolco – Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos
  • Helga Lissette Ochoa Cáceres – Tecnológico de Monterrey Campus Puebla
  • Helios José Roberto Valencia Ortega – Benemérita Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Puebla

Although science communication in various forms likely predates the institutionalisation of science, the formal academic research of science communication goes back some 50 years. While there are three academic journals dedicated to the field, many relevant research articles are scattered over thousands of journals.

Science communication research, like science communication practice, is a very diverse field. Scholars from different disciplines often work more in parallel than together.

Despite it being almost impossible to capture the developments of the whole research field over the last decades, the participants in this roundtable will discuss their studies, which have attempted to analyse various parts of the science communication research picture. These studies shed light on the general trends and opportunities offered by science communication research to-date, but also identify significant gaps and needs in the research field.

Lars Guenther and Marina Joubert will discuss their study, which identified the trends, challenges and gaps by analysing research papers from the three journals dedicated to the field, Public Understanding of Science, Journal of Science Communication and Science Communication.

Alexander Gerber and Jenni Metcalfe will discuss the unpublished research results of the INSCICO team’s content analysis of more than 3,000 texts, review of grey literature, and two-stage interviews with 34 leading science communication researchers from all continents.

Luisa Massarani will present the results of a study, which identified and analysed 609 science communication papers from 80 journals that were written by 1,081 authors from 232 Latin America or related institutions.

The studies explore the opportunities and needs, and trends and gaps of the current science communication research field. The presenters will also discuss the relevant outcomes of discussions on science communication research being held at the Rockefeller Foundation-supported mini conference being held in November 2017.

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

Presentation type: Individual paper
Theme: Stories
Area of interest: Building a theoretical basis for science communication