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• Date of publication May 02, 2023 Category: Essay

  The Notorious GPT: science communication in the age of artificial intelligence

  by Mike S. Schäfer

  ChatGPT provides original, human-like responses to user prompts based on supervised and reinforcement machine learning techniques. It has become the poster child of generative AI, which is widely diagnosed to disrupt many realms of life — including science communication. This essay reflects on this development. It discusses opportunities for the practice of science communication, such as generative AI’s translational and multimodal capacities and its capacity to provide dialogical science communication at scale, but also challenges in terms of accuracy, ‘wrongness at scale’ or job market implications. It also ponders implications for research on science communication, which has largely neglected (generative) AI so far. It argues that scholars should analyze public communication “about” AI as well as communication “with” AI, given its ‘increased agency’. Furthermore, scholars should analyze the impact of AI on science communication itself and the larger science communication ecosystem.

  Volume 22 • Issue 02 • 2023

• Date of publication Apr 24, 2023 Category: Article

  Exploring the brand of science: implications for science communication research and practice

  by Todd P. Newman , Becca Beets

  Research on branding seeks to uncover the emotional, sensory, and cognitive meanings when a person first encounters an object, person, or idea. This exploratory study uncovers how these meanings apply in the context of science, and why a branding framework is important for science communication theory and practice. Reporting on survey data collected in April and June 2021, our results suggest a consistent functional brand image for science, yet a more nuanced context for how different branding constructs relate to science.

  Volume 22 • Issue 02 • 2023

• Date of publication Feb 27, 2023 Category: Book Review

  A Challenge for Media and Communication Studies: the Covid-19 Pandemic

  by Rod Lamberts

  Katarzyna Kopecka-Piech and Bartłomiej Łódzki’s edited volume, The Covid-19 Pandemic as a Challenge for Media and Communication Studies, could be of great utility to science communication scholars and teachers. The studies with contained within it address two overarching research questions. First, how have media and communication reality changed during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in Europe? Second, how were media and communication studied effectively through that period? The volume features 17 individual studies calling on myriad methods and case examples. This diversity of approaches allows the editors to also address an important, implicit third question. In essence: what has it been like to conduct worthwhile, meaningful, and robust research under such unusual and extreme global circumstances? Each chapter is thorough, detailed and of a high technical standard. This is a book that would likely best serve experienced readers more than novices. The entire compendium bears clear witness to the dynamic nature of social research playing out against a context of enormous global instability.

  Volume 22 • Issue 01 • 2023

• Date of publication Feb 20, 2023 Category: Article

  “There really is a lot of shared understanding, but there are also differences”: identity configurations in science communicators' professional identity

  by Liliann Fischer , Hannah Schmid-Petri

  Science communication is a relatively new field of practice, shaped by a diverse group of professional science communicators and the way they make sense of their work. A distinguishing feature of these professional science communicators is the organisational context they work in. Based on a typology from an organisational theory framework, this study explores the perspectives of 15 German science communicators through qualitative interviews. It seems that while they tend to draw on a common set of building blocks, they use them to construct individual professional identity configurations partly influenced by their organisational context.

  Volume 22 • Issue 01 • 2023

• Date of publication Dec 14, 2022 Category: Book Review

  Put to the test: science communication in crisis situations

  by Lars Guenther

  Risk and crisis situations can put science communication to the test, but systematic approaches to science communication in relation to crisis communication are still missing. “Science communication in times of crisis”, edited by Pascal Hohaus and published in 2022, is about this relationship. The book review provides an overview, a summary, and a short criticism of this edited volume. As will be outlined, while the book is a valuable contribution to the field, its overall aims could have been more strongly tied together.

  Volume 21 • Issue 07 • 2022

• Date of publication Nov 30, 2022 Category: Article

  Visualizing the structure and development of climate change communication research

  by Chelsea R. Canon , Douglas P. Boyle , Stephanie A. McAfee

  To better understand the structure, development, and function of the climate change communication knowledge domain, we performed time-evolving bibliometric mapping and topic modeling on 2,995 climate change communication publications from Web of Science. Structural and visual representations of scholarship are useful for identifying areas of opportunity and coordinating effort in interdisciplinary and action-oriented knowledge domains. Our analysis reveals a cohesive and dense yet ossified knowledge structure which suggests that while a systems approach is being applied in climate communication, there is a need to explore more constitutive strategies for the communication of climate change.

  Volume 21 • Issue 07 • 2022

• Date of publication Nov 28, 2022 Category: Essay

  Communicating science through competing logics and a science-art lens

  by Anna Jonsson , Axel Brechensbauer , Maria Grafström

  This essay takes a starting point in the well-known tension between the media logic and the scientific logic and the challenges when communicating science in a mediatized society. Building on the experience of engaging in research comics, both as a method for communicating science and a creative example of a meeting between science and art, we introduce a framework — a pedagogical tool — for how science communication can be understood through the two competing logics. We contribute to literature about the balancing act of being a ‘legitimate expert’ and a ‘visible scientist’, and suggest that the meeting between science and art can be understood as a lens for how to communicate science that goes beyond the deficit model.

  Volume 21 • Issue 07 • 2022

• Date of publication Nov 23, 2022 Category: Conference Review

  Challenges and opportunities for science communication in a post-COVID world: the IAMCR 2022 Suzhou Pre-conference

  by Ruifen Zhang

  Aiming to address various fundamental questions regarding science communication solutions to a polarized post-COVID-19 world, the IAMCR 2022 Suzhou Pre-conference was held from 8 to 10 July 2022. More than 300 delegates gathered online to discuss a variety of topics related to science communication and public engagement with science in a post-COVID-19 world. With its focus on China, alongside the involvement of leading scholars from around the world, the conference provided an opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of the factors that shape science communication, and societal responses to science, in different country contexts.

  Volume 21 • Issue 07 • 2022

• Date of publication Nov 21, 2022 Category: Article

  I Am a Scientist... Ask Me Anything: explicating the role of past behavioral attitudes on scientists' future public engagement intentions

  by Austin Y. Hubner , Robert Bond

  There is growing pressure within the scientific community for scientists to participate in public engagement of science (PES) activities. As such, science communication scholars have worked to identify factors that predict a scientist's intention to participate in PES activities. One factor that has not been explicated is the role of experience performing PES activities in the past on one's future behavioral intentions. Using an augmented theory of planned behavior, we examine how one's experience participating in a question-and-answer forum on the popular website Reddit affected scientists' willingness to participate in a future PES activity.

  Volume 21 • Issue 07 • 2022

• Date of publication Nov 07, 2022 Category: Commentary

  Citizen science communication and engagement: a growing concern for researchers and practitioners

  by Susanne Hecker

  Anniversaries provide great opportunities to celebrate achievements, to look into the future, and to do some self-reflection. I have the honour of doing so in a specific field of science communication that I’m familiar with: the field of citizen science communication, especially with a European focus. I hope this commentary prompts others who are experts in their regions of the world to also reflect on the past and the future for this growing field.

  Volume 21 • Issue 07 • 2022