Volume 24 • Issue 07 • 2025

This study explores how organizations that conduct scientific research support communication activities, including activities aimed at fostering public engagement. It uses qualitative, thematic analyses of semi-structured interviews to propose an initial partnership categorization based on the degree to which communication support is embedded within or external to the organization, as well as the degree to which engagement resources are pooled across funding sources. It then discusses how different categorizations might be associated with several different metrics of public engagement quality. Findings suggest that partnerships with external groups that have shared goals can enhance engagement efforts in situations where the organization lacks the resources to build internal engagement teams and programs. These findings challenge past work focused on the value of internal communication infrastructure. However, the potential benefits and limitations of different approaches to within-organization versus external-to-organization communication support need further research.

This study examines the relationship between disgust sensitivity and climate change risk perceptions, using both self-reported and psychophysiological measures of disgust sensitivity. We find that disgust sensitivity is connected to climate change risk perception, although results are far weaker with physiological measures than with self-reports. Results consequently suggest that the connection may stem more from cognitive and expressive factors than implicit biological impulses. Given theoretical functions of disgust, these findings offer valuable insights regarding the structure of environmental attitudes and heterogeneity in the effects of science and environmental communication.

Starting from the premise that public science communication practices have changed in recent years, this paper asks where these changes are heading and what factors can explain them. We conducted a survey among researchers at CONICET[CONICET (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas) is the National Council of Science and Technology.] in Argentina, asking them about these changing practices. Considering the major technological changes that have taken place in recent years, we find that science popularisation activities have intensified, but with significant differences in the means used to communicate informed by the career stage of the researcher. We also consider the different motivations of scientists to engage in science communication activities.

Scientists and experts using social media platforms to engage with the public risk negative public feedback, potentially harming their efforts. This paper addresses how negative user comments affect experts’ trustworthiness and the messages’ credibility depending on whether they frame their message as scientific versus anecdotal using an online study with a 2 (evidence type: scientific vs. anecdotal) x 3 (comments: neutral, negative-factual, negative-emotional) between-subjects design. The results suggest that relying on scientific evidence when engaging in emotionally charged discourses is beneficial. Negative-emotional comments have a significant negative impact on trustworthiness, which is especially pronounced when using anecdotal evidence.

This practice insight examines how science mediators facilitate students' appropriation of scientific knowledge. It focuses on the Science of Superheroes initiative, which is an informal education curriculum activity designed to engage middle school students in exploring environmental challenges through the creation of a superhero. Using Bruner's scaffolding framework, we analyze how mediators' interventions shift between scaffolding functions, depending on the task. While the appropriation of scientific knowledge is supported by questioning and information-sharing strategies, the creative phase sees an increase in proposal-based scaffolding, which struggles to counterbalance students' reliance on magical thinking. This cognitive tension highlights the challenges of integrating scientific knowledge into a fictional narrative. Our findings highlight the need for science mediators to refine their questioning techniques, foster greater self-regulation among students, and enhance their ability to meaningfully incorporate scientific concepts into their superhero designs. Our study contributes to ongoing discussions on the professionalization of science mediation and offers new insights for mediator training.

Researchers and practitioners have emphasised the importance of evaluating science communication, but agree that, on the one hand, much research on evaluation does not find its way into practice, and on the other, researchers do not fully benefit from the wealth of data that practitioners produce. Using semi-structured interviews with heads of communications at different research organisations in four countries we show that practitioners agree on the importance of evaluation, but that obstacles to evaluation cut across organisational characteristics and countries. Our interviews suggest that communications leaders have a strong interest in working with researchers, and we discuss their proposals for practice-research interfaces that could improve evaluation practice.

This essay proposes terroir as a metaphor for rethinking science communication. In contrast to dominant calls for a science of science communication, grounded in broadly replicable and generalisable methods, we suggest that communication practices are fundamentally shaped by the particularities of place, people, histories, and more-than-human relations. Drawing on the agricultural origins of terroir, we argue that good science communication is not about imposing control but about cultivating resonance within specific ecosystems of meaning. This perspective also invites us to recognise the value of intuitive knowledge, local practice, and arts-based methods, which are often excluded from dominant frameworks. As part of the research programme Addressing Sustainability with Arts-Based Science Communication, we explore co-creative, arts-based approaches that surface emotional, sensory, and contextual dimensions of sustainability science communication. Ultimately, we call for a shift: from the search for universal best practices to the careful, situated crafting of an arts of science communication.

In her book Anjana Khatwa combines geological and Indigenous ways of knowing from across the globe, offering a wide-ranging guide to an area of science communication that can be overlooked, the Earth sciences. This would be sufficient to recommend it to science communicators. The book goes further, however, offering a deeply personal perspective on exclusion and inclusion in academia, and multicultural society. For anyone interested in equitable approaches to science communication, this is an essential read.