Science and South Park, Reddit and Facebook, Leonardo da Vinci and the Vitruvian Man, and modern fairy tales about emerging technologies: science communication and popular culture
The prevalent lack of research on the interrelations between science, research and popular culture led to the organization of the first International Conference on Science and Research in Popular Culture #POPSCI2015, which took place at Alpen-Adria-Universität in Klagenfurt, Austria, from 17--18 September 2015. The aim of the conference was to bring together not only science communication researchers with an interest in popular culture, but also other scholars, scientists and researchers, artists, media professionals and members from the general public. In this issue of JCOM we present four invited commentaries which are all based on presentations at the conference.
Interest in the possible role for comedy as a medium for communicating and engaging the public in science is growing. However, current research …
"People seem to really enjoy the mix of humour and intelligence": science humour in online settings
This commentary considers the topics of humour and online settings. Both have received increasing attention amongst researchers and practitioners of science communication, and …
While the use of scientific visualisations (such as brain scans) in popular science communication has been extensively studied, we argue for the importance …
Hollywood heroes in high tech risk societies: modern fairy tales and emerging technologies
Science, research and emerging technologies often play a key role in many modern action movies. In this contribution we suggest to use genre …