Filter by author: Declan Fahy

This editorial introduces the JCOM special issue on “Transitions in Science Communication: Continuity and Change”. The issue positions continuity and change within four historical processes that have shaped the development of the field: institutionalisation, professionalisation, internationalisation, and diversification. Within these broad field-shaping processes, the issue seeks to capture moments of transition in science communication by featuring selected contributions to the 2025 conference of the Global Network for the Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST). The special issue combines three genres of contributions: research articles, practice insights, and an invited essay. Across these different contributions, the issue captures three types of transitions, focussed on agendas, approaches, and voices. It illustrates ongoing transitions within the institutions of science communication and transitions in professional roles and institutional responsibilities. It features contributions that show how the processes of internationalisation and diversification lead to new agendas, new approaches, and, crucially, new voices that can take science communication in new directions.

‘Don't look up’ represents the news media as harmful to the public understanding of science. The news media turns honest scientists into corrupted and compromised media personalities. Its dynamics and demands make it unable to inform the public that a planet-killing comet, the film's allegory for climate change, is an existential threat. This commentary argues that these representations devalue the power of celebrity scientists to communicate science, ignore how journalists have placed climate change and ideas of climate catastrophe on the public agenda, and imply there is an idealised type of science communication — the deficit model — that journalists have corroded.