Publications

Science communication experiences major transitions: alongside science journalists, scientists, their institutions, and public relations departments increasingly select and communicate science information to publics, thereby stepping into gatekeeping roles. To better understand this “shared gatekeeping” and how different science communicators select topics, this article investigates relevance criteria that guide selection and communication decisions of science information. Drawing on 57 interviews with German-speaking science journalists, science public relations practitioners, and scientists, the study identifies and compares relevance criteria for each group based on the hierarchy of influences model. Findings reveal a wide range of relevance criteria as well as similarities and differences at individual, communication routines, organizational, and social institutional levels. Although all groups seem to be guided by similar, partly journalistic, relevance criteria (e.g., overlapping goals, topic characteristics), they operate within distinct professional contexts and thus weigh these criteria differently.

Hostility towards science has emerged as a significant challenge in contemporary science communication, particularly in increasingly politicised and digitally mediated public environments. Scholars across diverse disciplines are confronted with harassment, delegitimisation, political interference, disinformation, and personal attacks, especially when engaging in public communication. This editorial introduces the JCOM commentary set “Scholars Under Attack” and situates hostility towards science within broader transformations of media ecosystems, political polarisation, and contested epistemic authority. The article argues that current debates remain conceptually fragmented and empirically underdeveloped, with limited comparative and longitudinal evidence regarding the scope, forms, and consequences of hostility directed at researchers. To address these gaps, the editorial proposes a working definition of hostility towards science as practices, discourses, and actions that undermine the authority, credibility, or integrity of scientific actors, knowledge, and institutions in politicised public arenas. The commentary set brings together interdisciplinary and international perspectives from Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Australia, highlighting how experiences of hostility vary across political systems, institutional contexts, disciplines, and social identities. The contributions examine online harassment, gendered hostility, misinformation, academic freedom, institutional shortcomings, and the paradoxical dynamics of visibility in digital communication. Collectively, they emphasise the need for more systematic empirical research, stronger institutional support structures, and nuanced conceptual approaches that distinguish hostility from legitimate critique while recognising the democratic importance of public science communication.

This study examines how information sources are indirectly related to support for quantum science. Results from a national survey of quantum science aware publics in the United States (n = 919) showed that TV news use was negatively associated with interest and knowledge and positively associated with benefit and risk perceptions. By contrast, print/online media use and social media use were positively associated with interest and knowledge. Social media use was also positively associated with risk perception. Notably, benefit perception had the strongest association with support for quantum science. These findings suggest complex relationships between media use and attitudes toward quantum science.

Invisible Rainbows is a popular astronomy book by astrophysicist and science journalist Alfredo Carpineti, organised around the electromagnetic spectrum and built around conversations with LGBTQIA+ astronomers from around the world. It is, at the same time, a celebration of modern astronomy and a clear argument about the relationship between science and the society that produces it. The book is rigorous and warm in equal measure, never letting one undermine the other, and offers science communicators a strong example of how popular science writing can hold technical depth and political clarity on the same page.

This response to the commentary “Does science communication have its goals wrong? From persuading science skeptics to promoting scientific empowerment” argues that the field would benefit from more attention to the persuasion literature, not less. A primary element of this argument is that a nuanced understanding of persuasion research can provide opportunities to achieve a wide range of goals — including empowering others — in ethical, evidence-based ways.

Publisher's note: this letter refers to Does science communication have its goals wrong? From persuading science skeptics to promoting scientific empowerment

This report presents an analysis of the communication efforts of the XXXII International Astronomical Union General Assembly, the first held on the African continent. For the first time in its history, the conference provided a fully streamed, open access experience on YouTube, complemented by a robust, multi-platform social media outreach campaign. Through metrics analysis and survey results, our study evaluates the effectiveness of diverse digital initiatives in enhancing engagement on different social media platforms to democratise scientific discourse. These findings offer critical insights for future hybrid and virtual conferences, providing social media metrics, best practices analysis and evaluation for social media scientific global communication of large-scale scientific gatherings.

This paper analyses the communication activities conducted within the framework of research projects funded under Horizon 2020, with more than €1M in funding, and led by Portuguese or Polish institutions. A total of 221 initiatives (68 Poland-led and 153 Portugal-led) are examined. The primary finding is that the majority of projects do not engage in communication activities. Web presence is observed in 41.1% of Poland-led projects and 41.8% of Portugal-led projects. In turn, social media presence is more common among Portugal-led (44.4%) than among Poland-led (29%) initiatives. Outreach activities are not very prominent, with a frequency of 28.1% and 23.5%, respectively. These figures improve slightly to moderately when controlling for projects' end date. Binary logistic regression analyses were conducted to test the influence of funding on communication activities. The relationship is positive across the board and reveals a potential effect, although it is statistically significant only for Portugal-led projects. These findings invite us to reconsider `legal obligation' to communicate the project and its outcomes that has become the norm in most grant funding, and provide a more nuanced understanding of the differences between `developed' and `developing' science communication landscapes.

Awe-inspiring science events—from astronomical phenomena to scientific breakthroughs—are increasingly consumed through rich audio-visual formats that captivate global audiences. This study explores the psychological mechanisms through which the modality of science media events affects audience’s intention of science information-seeking. An online experiment (N = 356) reveals that experiencing a science event in a rich audio-visual format (vs. a lean textual-imagery format) evokes stronger awe which diminishes the sense of self. This awe-induced perception of small self, in turn, produces a paradoxical outcome: it simultaneously increases thought-provoking reflection, which boosts science information-seeking intention, while decreasing perceived self-efficacy, which suppresses the same intention. These opposing pathways cancel each other out, resulting in no net impact on science information-seeking intention. We discuss implications for science communicators seeking to leverage awe-inspiring media to foster public engagement with science.

Comunicar la ciencia en Iberoamérica: un sobrevuelo por la región is the first book-length, regionally authored history of science communication across twelve Ibero-American countries, published to mark the 35th anniversary of RedPOP. Written by practitioners and researchers from within the field, it traces how science communication has developed, and often survived, across vastly different political landscapes, from colonial-era natural history museums to today's social media ecosystems. Particularly striking is how several chapters frame science communication not just as public education but as a form of cultural resistance and democratic resilience. The book has geographical and thematic gaps, but it fills a long-overdue space in the literature and should be on every science communicator's shelf.

Guidance for researchers seeking to contribute science to the policymaking process typically focuses on technical training, such as how to write op-eds and policy briefs. An under-discussed but vital additional consideration is how to navigate the ethical challenges that arise at the intersection of research and policymaking. In their edited volume, Epstein and Kaplan feature case studies grounded in research experience to identify, describe, and offer guidance on how researchers and policymakers can bridge the science-policy gap in an effective and ethical way.