Jul 09, 2025

Volume 1 • Issue 1 • 2025 • Living Labs Under Construction: Paradigms, Practices, and Perspectives of Public Science Communication and Participatory Science (Living Labs)

This upcoming special issue of JCOM will be devoted to ‘living Labs’ and its role in and relevance to public communication of science. Authors that have submitted abstract before and have been invited to send complete manuscripts, are now invited to submit them here as of August 30th. Invited papers are due November 30, 2022. All papers will undergo full peer review. We are working towards publishing this special issue around May 2023.

Editorials

Jun 20, 2023 Editorial
Introduction: Living Labs Under Construction

by Caroline Wehrmann, Christian Pentzold, Ingmar Rothe and Andreas Bischof

Living Labs galore. Involving citizens and other stakeholders in science endeavors and integrating them in the design of new technologies and scientific inquiry is a core aim of contemporary research and development. Living labs are prime places in the quest of science to be more inclusive and to open up to people from all walks of life, including politics, design, and culture. Promising to foster participation, collaboration and co-creation around science, living labs have been mushrooming across the academe, from STEM subjects to the humanities. In fact, they have become the token for an up-to-date science communication that is not satisfied with conveying expert information but seeks an exchange with people that are addressed as the participants of, not just the audience for research. That said, it is also in living labs where the tension between the normative axioms and the precarious implementation of participatory science become succinctly apparent.

Volume 22 • Issue 03 • 2023 • Special Issue: Living labs under construction: paradigms, practices, and perspectives of public science communication and participatory science

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Collection: Volume 1 • Issue 1 • 2025 • Living Labs Under Construction: Paradigms, Practices, and Perspectives of Public Science Communication and Participatory Science (Living Labs)

Articles

Jun 20, 2023 Article
The lab, the space and the meetup: locating technological experimentation in everyday life

by Andreas Hepp

This article analyzes the role digital pioneer communities play in the localization of everyday technological experimentation based on three sites of practice: the lab, the space, and the meetup. Taking a historical view, it begins with a reconstruction of Stewart Brand’s popularization of the lab discourse. On this basis, the space in the Maker movement as well as the meetup in the Quantified Self and Hacks/Hackers movements is investigated, finally arriving at a reflection on the dynamics that come and go between them. While the article is primarily a conceptual contribution, its arguments are grounded in an extensive media ethnography.

Volume 22 • Issue 03 • 2023 • Special Issue: Living labs under construction: paradigms, practices, and perspectives of public science communication and participatory science

Also a part of:

Collection: Volume 1 • Issue 1 • 2025 • Living Labs Under Construction: Paradigms, Practices, and Perspectives of Public Science Communication and Participatory Science (Living Labs)

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