Volume 16 • Issue 03 • 2017 • Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017
Jul 20, 2017

Volume 16 • Issue 03 • 2017 • Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017

Science communication is today a well-established ―although young― area of research. However, there are only a few books and papers analyzing how science communication has developed historically. Aiming to, in some way, contribute to filling this gap, JCOM organized this special issue on the History of Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST), joining 15 contributions, from different parts of the globe. The papers published in this issue are organized in three groups, though with diffuse boundaries: geography, media, and discipline. The first group contains works that deal descriptively and critically with the development of PCST actions and either general or specific public policies for this area in specific countries. A second set of papers examines aspects of building science communication on TV or in print media. The third group of papers presents and discusses important PCST cases in specific areas of science or technology at various historical moments.

Editorials

Jul 20, 2017 Editorial
A historical kaleidoscope of public communication of science and technology

by Luisa Massarani, Ildeu Moreira and Bruce Lewenstein

Science communication is today a well-established ―although young― area of research. However, there are only a few books and papers analyzing how science communication has developed historically. Aiming to, in some way, contribute to filling this gap, JCOM organized this special issue on the History of Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST), joining 15 contributions, from different parts of the globe. The papers published in this issue are organized in three groups, though with diffuse boundaries: geography, media, and discipline. The first group contains works that deal descriptively and critically with the development of PCST actions and either general or specific public policies for this area in specific countries. A second set of papers examines aspects of building science communication on TV or in print media. The third group of papers presents and discusses important PCST cases in specific areas of science or technology at various historical moments.

Volume 16 • Issue 03 • 2017 • Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017

Articles

Jul 20, 2017 Article
The emergence of modern science communication in Australia

by Toss Gascoigne and Jenni Metcalfe

Modern science communication has emerged over the last 60 years as a field of study, a body of practice and a profession. This period has seen the birth of interactive science centres, the first university courses to teach the theory and practice of science communication, the first university departments conducting research into science communication, and a sharp growth in employment of science communicators by research institutions, universities, museums, science centres and industry. This chapter charts the emergence of modern science communication in Australia, against an international background.

Volume 16 • Issue 03 • 2017 • Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017

Jul 20, 2017 Article
The emergence of science communication in Aotearoa New Zealand

by Jean Fleming and Jeremy Star

The history of science communication in Aotearoa New Zealand starts with the stories told by the indigenous Māori people and has often been rooted in large, controversial environmental or technological issues. Although science communication in New Zealand began with a culture of wise men informing an uneducated public, by the 1990s it had begun to explore ideas of public outreach and engagement. Driven in part by the country's landscape and unique wildlife, media such as film documentary have risen to take centre stage in public engagement with science. Public radio also features in discussion of scientific issues. New centres for the training of science communicators have emerged and there is governmental and public support for science communication in New Zealand, as demonstrated by the number of awards and funding opportunities offered annually, for those who achieve. However a more critical and strategic approach to science communication in the future is needed if New Zealand wants a more science-literate public, and a more public-literate science community.

Volume 16 • Issue 03 • 2017 • Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017

Jul 20, 2017 Article
Politics of science communication in South Africa

by Hester du Plessis

The research field of science communication is fairly neglected in South Africa. The university system in South Africa, with a few exceptions, pays scant attention to the teaching of science communication, leading to limited academic knowledge of this research field with its rich history and philosophical relations. This paper explores some of the reasons behind this neglect of science communication in South Africa and will argue and demonstrate that, primarily, two political systems can be identified as having had a profound impact on the lesser attention given to this research field; the ‘divide and rule’ system of British colonialism and the Afrikaner National Party ‘apartheid’ system of racial segregation.

Volume 16 • Issue 03 • 2017 • Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017

Jul 20, 2017 Article
Mobile science museums and centres and their history in the public communication of science

by Jessica Norberto Rocha and Martha Marandino

In this paper, we identify some milestones in the construction process for mobile science museums and centres in Brazil. As background for presenting the Brazilian context, we initially address the records found on the earliest travelling museum exhibitions and mobile museums in Europe and North America. We then introduce the role of UNESCO in the promotion and implementation of travelling science exhibitions and museums in several countries. Finally, we document important events in the history of mobile science museum and centres in Brazil and outline three general and inter-related challenges currently faced by them.

Volume 16 • Issue 03 • 2017 • Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017

Jul 20, 2017 Article
Exceptionalism and the broadcasting of science

by Allan Jones

During the course of several decades, several scientists and groups of scientists lobbied the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) about science broadcasting. A consistent theme of the interventions was that science broadcasting should be given exceptional treatment both in its content, which was to have a strongly didactic element, and in its managerial arrangements within the BBC. This privileging of science would have amounted to ‘scientific exceptionalism’. The article looks at the nature of this exceptionalism and broadcasters' responses to it.

Volume 16 • Issue 03 • 2017 • Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017

Jul 20, 2017 Article
Beyond propaganda: science coverage in Soviet Estonian media

by Arko Olesk

Previous studies have concluded that science coverage in Soviet countries was determined by the ideological function of the media. This paper analyses the science coverage in Soviet Estonian publications Rahva Hääl and Horisont in 1960/1967 and 1980 and demonstrates that the popularization of science existed as an independent function of articles. This suggests that the parallel developments in science communication on both sides of the Iron Curtain deserve further study.

Volume 16 • Issue 03 • 2017 • Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017

Jul 20, 2017 Article
La Ciencia Recreativa and the popularisation of science in Mexico in the 19th century

by Maria Rachel Fróes da Fonseca

In the last decades of the 19th century education played a major role in Mexican society, when efforts were being made to restructure it based on the objective teaching of sciences, which was regarded as the driving force behind the change needed in various sectors such as industry and public health. In this context, the so-called science disseminators aimed to communicate their knowledge to the general public, mainly to the working classes and the children. Journalism grew and reached a wide range of themes and audiences. They believed in the idea of a science for all and that sciences were an instrument to know the new nations and educate the population. It is worth mentioning La ciencia recreativa, a publication dedicated to children and working classes. Between 1871 and 1879 it was edited by the topographical engineer and surveyor José Joaquín Arriaga (1831–1896), who aimed to generalise the scientific knowledge of cosmography, mineralogy, meteorology, physics, botany, zoology, descriptive geography and industrial agriculture.

Volume 16 • Issue 03 • 2017 • Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017

Jul 20, 2017 Article
Vaccination communication strategies: What have we learned, and lost, in 200 years?

by Merryn McKinnon and Lindy A. Orthia

This study compares Australian government vaccination campaigns from two very different time periods, the early nineteenth century (1803–24) and the early twenty-first (2016). It explores the modes of rhetoric and frames that government officials used in each period to encourage parents to vaccinate their children. The analysis shows that modern campaigns rely primarily on scientific fact, whereas 200 years ago personal stories and emotional appeals were more common. We argue that a return to the old ways may be needed to address vaccine hesitancy around the world.

Volume 16 • Issue 03 • 2017 • Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017

Jul 20, 2017 Article
Good Nuclear Neighbours: the British electricity industry and the communication of nuclear power to the public, 1950s–1980s

by Thomas Lean and Sally Horrocks

Between the 1950s and the 1980s the British nuclear industry engaged with ordinary people in a wide range of ways. These included articles in the print media, exhibitions and educational resources as well as through open days, developing nature reserves and building relations with the local communities around nuclear sites. This paper draws on recently collected oral history interviews and archival material to consider what was one of the largest and best resourced efforts to communicate science to the British public between the 1950s and the 1980s.

Volume 16 • Issue 03 • 2017 • Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017

Jul 20, 2017 Article
Toward a history of explanation in science communication: the case of Madame Wu experiment on parity violation

by Eugenio Bertozzi

By focusing on a specific episode of 20th Century physics — the discovery of parity violation in 1957 — the paper presents a study of the types of explanations of the crucial experiment as they are found in different editorial categories: a peer-review journal, a popular science book, an encyclopedia and a newspaper articles. The study provides a fine-grained description of the mechanism of the explanation as elaborated in non-specialist accounts of the experiment and identifies original, key-explanatory elements which characterize them. In so doing, the paper presents a reflection on the processes of transformation and adaptation implied by the circulation of knowledge — which features as a productive process in its own right — and shows which further insights a focus on explanation can offer to the current historical researches on science communication.

Volume 16 • Issue 03 • 2017 • Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017

Jul 20, 2017 Article
Popularization through press advertisements: mobile telephony in Spain (1994–1999)

by Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol and Jordi Ferran Boleda

This paper explores the combined effects of everyday life technological devices and advertisements in constituting an efficient way to scientific popularization. We, therefore, analyze mobile telephony advertisements published in a high-circulation Spanish newspaper — La Vanguardia — between 1994 and 1999. We identify content that promoted knowledge about the devices, the service, or the uses of this groundbreaking technology. Advertisements also attach attributes to technology — modernity, freedom, or efficiency. We suggest that the analysis of advertisements that promote everyday life digital devices allows a better understanding of what (digital) technology means to publics.

Volume 16 • Issue 03 • 2017 • Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017

Jul 20, 2017 Article
Reading dermatology in the Victorian newspaper. The performance of medical vocabulary in The Times correspondence column

by Diana Garrisi

This contribution concerns the role of the Victorian newspaper correspondence column in advancing knowledge of dermatology in relation to corporal punishment. It explores The Times' coverage of an inquest into the death by flogging of a British soldier. I argue that on the one hand, The Times participated in the debate about flogging in the army by bringing forward skin anatomy as an argument against corporal punishment. On the other hand, the paper might have used the publication of letters with medical content as a marketing strategy to maintain its authority and credibility against accusations of sensationalism.

Volume 16 • Issue 03 • 2017 • Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017

Jul 20, 2017 Article
The communication of psychiatry in Brazilian press (1930–1940)

by Carolina Carvalho, Cátia Mathias and Sérgio Marcondes

As a case study, we analyze an article of the psychiatrist Henrique Roxo published in 1942 in two publications directed to different publics. The communication of science was intended as part of Brazil's modernizing project of the epoch. Roxo's case reveals that the language used by science communicators, although sometimes of difficult apprehension, was part of an strategy of acknowledgment of the medical authority for the diagnosis and treatment of the mental illnesses.

Volume 16 • Issue 03 • 2017 • Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017

Essays

Jul 20, 2017 Essay
From top-down to bottom-up: a short history of science communication policy in Japan

by Masataka Watanabe

Japan's policy of “public understanding of science” (PUS) has shifted to “science communication” since 2003. That year, there were a number of simultaneous developments with regard to science communication. The key report that advocated for the promotion of science communication and a textbook on science communication were published then. The most important consequence was that the report triggered a policy change at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). The following year, MEXT published the White Paper on Science and Technology 2004, the main theme of which was concerned with science communication. Although the shift may have begun as a somewhat top-down contrivance, it has subsequently sunk down firm roots throughout Japan. In 2011 the Japanese Association for Science Communication was founded. People's awareness of science communication was significantly changed by the Great East Japan Earthquake that occurred on March 11, 2011. Why was such a policy shift possible? How did such a cascade effect occur? This paper will discuss the reasons behind these phenomena.

Volume 16 • Issue 03 • 2017 • Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017

Jul 20, 2017 Essay
Public communication of science in Spain: a history yet to be written

by Lourdes Lopez and María Dolores Olvera-Lobo

The history of public communication of science in Spain is yet to be written. Few academic studies exist that have tackled this subject. The political and economic history of the country have marked out the evolution of this discipline, which burst into the country at the end of the 20th century with the proliferation of initiatives such as the creation of science museums, the building of the Spanish Science Foundation and the development of a public Scientific Information service. Despite these efforts, the level of scientific culture for Spanish people is one of the lowest in Europe [OECD, 2016].

Volume 16 • Issue 03 • 2017 • Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017

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