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• Date of publication Sep 30, 2020 Category: Article

  COVID-19 in the South Pacific: science communication, Facebook and ‘coconut wireless’

  by Vipul Khosla , Prashanth Pillay

  The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the criticality of science communication. Utilising a mixed-methods approach, this article takes an audience-focused perspective to analysing COVID-19 related social media posts on 23 popular South Pacific community Facebook pages over a four-month period across eight South Pacific countries. We analyse how audiences co-opt scientific terms, address information gaps and embed it in their lived experience. It is ascertained that online conversations around COVID-19 in the Pacific are intermeshed with both scientific fact and, personal accounts and rumours, referred to locally as ‘coconut wireless’, problematising established modes of empirical enquiry.

  Volume 19 • Issue 05 • 2020 • Special Issue: COVID-19 and science communication, Part I, 2020 (COVID-19 and Scicomm / 1)

• Date of publication Sep 30, 2020 Category: Article

  COVID-19 infections on international celebrities: self presentation and tweeting down pandemic awareness

  by Wishes Mututwa , Trust Matsilele

  The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) which was first reported in China's Wuhan province in December 2019 became a global pandemic within a few months. The exponential rise in COVID-19 cases globally was accompanied by a spike in misinformation about the pandemic, particularly on social media. Employing Social Network Theory as a lens, this qualitative study explores how selected international celebrities appropriated their Twitter micro-blogging pages to announce their COVID-19 infection to the world. The study finds that these celebrities can take advantage of their huge social media following to counter disinfodemic and promote awareness about health pandemics.

  Volume 19 • Issue 05 • 2020 • Special Issue: COVID-19 and science communication, Part I, 2020 (COVID-19 and Scicomm / 1)

• Date of publication Sep 30, 2020 Category: Article

  Pharmaceutical influencers on Instagram and their communication during the Covid-19 pandemic crisis

  by Zahaira Fabiola González Romo , Sofia Iriarte Aguirre , Irene Garcia Medina

  Today, thanks to the consolidation of Internet, users have access to many sources of information on health issues. On social networks, there are profiles of health professionals who share content that generates credibility when published by specialists who are knowledgeable in the sector. These profiles include pharmaceutical professionals who disseminate and create content based on scientific knowledge. Pharmaceutical influencers on Instagram have an informative role on health, nutrition and cosmetic dermatology issues. This research aims to learn about the communication management of these influencers during the Coronavirus crisis in Spain and how they have modified their habitual discourse, as well as seeking to identify the formats of their publications that generate greater engagement and conversions among their followers.

  Volume 19 • Issue 05 • 2020 • Special Issue: COVID-19 and science communication, Part I, 2020 (COVID-19 and Scicomm / 1)

• Date of publication Sep 30, 2020 Category: Article

  China and the battle to win the scientific narrative about the origin of COVID-19

  by Daniel Lemus-Delgado

  The emergence of COVID-19 represented a critical problem for the legitimacy and prestige of the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese authorities had to fight not only to contain the spread of the virus but also to create a favorable public opinion about how they managed the crisis. Based on Foucault's approach to the “Regime of Truth”, this article analyzes the narrative surrounding the origin of the virus and how science was employed to lend it legitimacy. The article concludes by reviewing how the idea of science as a truth knowledge is used to construct a particular viewpoint, one focused on legitimizing the outbreak containment measures taken by the Chinese government.

  Volume 19 • Issue 05 • 2020 • Special Issue: COVID-19 and science communication, Part I, 2020 (COVID-19 and Scicomm / 1)

• Date of publication Sep 30, 2020 Category: Article

  Exit only: harms from silencing employee voice

  by Karen Adkins

  The nationwide shortage of PPE for health care workers has been well documented. Reporting on this issue has been complicated by hospitals' imposition of gag orders on physicians and health care workers. There are harms that result from imposing these gag orders that go beyond the obvious harms to public and employee health and safety. Using Hirschman's ‘Exit, Voice, and Loyalty’ (1970) as a framework demonstrates that these orders represent a dangerous concentration of power in employer hands — health care workers are reduced to functionaries. Hirschman's argument, in part, is that organisations should seek to balance the availability of exit, voice, and loyalty for employees. Restricting employee options in morally untenable situations to exit only leads to direct and indirect harms. These gag orders are a pernicious practice, and bring with them long-term negative implications for employee morale, employee effectiveness, and public service.

  Volume 19 • Issue 05 • 2020 • Special Issue: COVID-19 and science communication, Part I, 2020 (COVID-19 and Scicomm / 1)

• Date of publication Sep 30, 2020 Category: Article

  The landscape of disinformation on health crisis communication during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ukraine: hybrid warfare tactics, fake media news and review of evidence

  by Sonny Patel , Omar Moncayo , Kristina Conroy , Doug Jordan , Timothy Erickson

  The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the world in ways not seen since the 1918–1920 Spanish Flu. Disinformation campaigns targeting health crisis communication during this pandemic seek to cripple the medical response to the novel coronavirus and instrumentalize the pandemic for political purposes. Propaganda from Russia and other factions is increasingly infiltrating public and social media in Ukraine. Still, scientific literature has only a limited amount of evidence of hybrid attacks and disinformation campaigns focusing on COVID-19 in Ukraine. We conducted a review to retrospectively examine reports of disinformation surrounding health crisis communication in Ukraine during the COVID-19 response. Based on the themes that emerged in the literature, our recommendations are twofold: 1) increase transparency with verified health crisis messaging and, 2) address the leadership gap in reliable regional information about COVID-19 resources and support in Ukraine.

  Volume 19 • Issue 05 • 2020 • Special Issue: COVID-19 and science communication, Part I, 2020 (COVID-19 and Scicomm / 1)

• Date of publication Sep 30, 2020 Category: Editorial

  COVID-19 and science communication: a JCOM special issue

  by Luisa Massarani , Padraig Murphy , Rod Lamberts

  The devastating effects of COVID-19 and the speed of both the scientific and medical response and the public information requirements about frontline healthcare work, medical advances and policy and compliance measures has necessitated an intensity of science communication never seen before. This JCOM special issue — the first of two parts — looks at the challenges of communicating COVID-19 and coronavirus in the early spread of the disease in 2020. Here we present papers from across the world that demonstrate the scale of this challenge.

  Volume 19 • Issue 05 • 2020 • Special Issue: COVID-19 and science communication, Part I, 2020 (COVID-19 and Scicomm / 1)

• Date of publication Sep 21, 2020 Category: Article

  Addressing diversity in science communication through citizen social science

  by Lissette Lorenz

  This article seeks to address the lack of sociocultural diversity in the field of science communication by broadening conceptions of citizen science to include citizen social science. Developing citizen social science as a concept and set of practices can increase the diversity of publics who engage in science communication endeavors if citizen social science explicitly aims at addressing social justice issues. First, I situate citizen social science within the histories of citizen science and participatory action research to demonstrate how the three approaches are compatible. Next, I outline the tenets of citizen social science as they are informed by citizen science and participatory action research goals. I then use these tenets as criteria to evaluate the extent to which my case study, a community-based research project called ‘Rustbelt Theater’, counts as a citizen social science project.

  Volume 19 • Issue 04 • 2020

• Date of publication Sep 07, 2020 Category: Article

  Operationalizing science literacy: an experimental analysis of measurement

  by Meaghan McKasy , Michael Cacciatore , Leona Yi-Fan Su , Sara K. Yeo , Liane Oneill

  Inequalities in scientific knowledge are the subject of increasing attention, so how factual science knowledge is measured, and any inconsistencies in said measurement, is extremely relevant to the field of science communication. Different operationalizations of factual science knowledge are used interchangeably in research, potentially resulting in artificially comparable knowledge levels among respondents. Here, we present data from an experiment embedded in an online survey conducted in the United States (N = 1,530) that examined the distribution of factual science knowledge responses on a 3- vs. 5-point response scale. Though the scale did not impact a summative knowledge index, significant differences emerged when knowledge items were analyzed individually or grouped based on whether the correct response was “true” or “false.” Our findings emphasize the necessity for communicators to consider the goals of knowledge assessment when making operationalization decisions.

  Volume 19 • Issue 04 • 2020

• Date of publication Sep 01, 2020 Category: Commentary

  Science Communication as a design challenge in transdisciplinary collaborations

  by Éva Kalmár , Hanneke Stenfert

  In this series of comments, we argue for Science Communication as an enabler of transdisciplinary, integrative collaboration in the context of today’s complex, multi-stakeholder issues. Participatory design, as a collaborative method, is effective in achieving mutual learning, shared understandings, integrating disciplines and creating solutions that make sense in the multi-layered reality of today’s challenges. Science Communication, therefore, is communication design in transdisciplinary collaborations.

  Power in science communication collaborations

  by Megan Halpern and Michael O'Rourke

  Disentangling the different layers of interdisciplinarity

  by Renate Klaassen

  Should science communication become part of a discipline of integration and implementation sciences (i2S)?

  by Gabriele Bammer

  Collective creativity: strategies for catalyzing interdisciplinary research

  by Elizabeth LaPensee and Aalap Doshi

  From actors to space, through processes: reflections from co-production and commoning

  by Paola Alfaro - d'Alençon and Horacio Torrent

  Volume 19 • Issue 04 • 2020