Browse all Publications

Filter by author: Sarah Rachael Davies

All author's publications are listed below.

Jul 03, 2023 Conference Review
Fail better

by Sarah Rachael Davies

This short text discusses PCST2023, held in Rotterdam in April 2023, and reflects on the event's connections with science communication research and practice as a whole.

Volume 22 • Issue 04 • 2023

May 10, 2021 Article
The landscape of European science communication

by Sarah Rachael Davies, Suzanne Franks, Joseph Roche, Ana Lucia Schmidt, Rebecca Wells and Fabiana Zollo

European science communication project QUEST surveyed and reviewed different aspects of European science communication, including science journalism, teaching and training in science communication, social media activity, and science in museums. This article draws together themes that collectively emerge from this research to present an overview of key issues in science communication across Europe. We discuss four central dynamics — fragmentation within research and practice; a landscape in transition; the importance of format and context; and the dominance of critical and dialogic approaches as best practice — and illustrate these with empirical material from across our datasets. In closing we reflect upon the implications of this summary of European science communication.

Volume 20 • Issue 03 • 2021 • Special Issue: Re-examining Science Communication: models, perspectives, institutions, 2021

Oct 14, 2019 Article
Science stories as culture: experience, identity, narrative and emotion in public communication of science

by Sarah Rachael Davies, Megan Halpern, Maja Horst, David Kirby and Bruce Lewenstein

The last three decades have seen extensive reflection concerning how science communication should be modelled and understood. In this essay we propose the value of a cultural approach to science communication — one that frames it primarily as a process of meaning-making. We outline the conceptual basis for this view of culture, drawing on cultural theory to suggest that it is valuable to see science communication as one aspect of (popular) culture, as storytelling or narrative, as ritual, and as collective meaning-making. We then explore four possible ways that a cultural approach might proceed: by mobilising ideas about experience; by framing science communication through identity work; by focusing on fiction; and by paying attention to emotion. We therefore present a view of science communication as always entangled within, and itself shaping, cultural stories and meanings. We close by suggesting that one benefit of this approach is to move beyond debates concerning ‘deficit or dialogue’ as the key frame for public communication of science.

Volume 18 • Issue 05 • 2019 • Special Issue: Stories in Science Communication, 2019