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Mar 25, 2024 Article
Science Communication as a Human Right

by Gabriela Frías-Villegas, Kathia Elisa García-Gómez, Alejandro Guzmán-Vendrell, Irvin Alberto Mendoza-Hernández, Ricardo Tránsito-Santos and Fabiola Vázquez-Quiroz

This work discusses four practical science communication cases in which we worked with communities from different parts of Mexico in vulnerable situations. We analyze those cases from an interdisciplinary point of view, emphasizing the observation of human rights to propose a new inclusive definition of science communication and new strategies for engaging in horizontal dialogues with cultural groups. This perspective demands a change in methodological procedures, such as performing anthropological work and the co-creation of projects and materials together with all the members of the communities involved. We also propose using novel strategies to reach communities in vulnerable situations.

Volume 23 • Issue 02 • 2024 • Special Issue: Connecting science communication research and practice: challenges and ways forward

Feb 21, 2024 Book Review
Bridging the gap between science deniers and voice of reason

by Karolína Poliaková

In the 2021 book “How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations with Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason”, Lee McIntyre introduces different anti-science movements and their reasoning. Based on personal interactions with committed science deniers and literature from various disciplines including cognitive psychology, he argues that all these communities use the same playbook in terms of reasoning about evidence, argumentation, demands on scientific certainty and recruitment of new members. Such observations allow McIntyre to propose a universal strategy to combat these beliefs by using respectful in-person engagement and effective science communication tools. His argument is rooted in the idea that anti-science beliefs are built on identities, not on the content of specific beliefs.

Volume 23 • Issue 01 • 2024

Jun 20, 2023 Article
Reflecting on four Living Labs in the Netherlands and Indonesia: a perspective on performance, public engagement and participation

by Loes Witteveen, Jan Fliervoet, Dwina Roosmini, Paul van Eijk and Nurdahlia Lairing

Living Labs need to improve their performance to address urgent social and environmental sustainability challenges. A framework combining the dimensions of environment and focus, methods and collaborative action, and outcomes with a life cycle perspective allowed analysing four Living Labs in the Netherlands and Indonesia. These Living Labs present differences in environment but are similar for the focus on sustainability transition processes. The reflection reveals the importance of considering public engagement and participation needed to foster a responsible approach and a sustainable performance of Living Labs.

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

Jun 20, 2023 Practice Insight
Promoting sustainable mobility in communities with citizen participation: approaches, perspectives and results of a Living Lab in Germany

by Madlen Günther, Simone Martinetz, Josef F. Krems and Bernd Bienzeisler

The present contribution deals with a practical insight into the design, implementation, and evaluation of different participation formats (on-site, direct mail, online) to participate in a living lab. A total sample of 290 citizens was recruited to promote sustainable mobility (i.e. walking and cycling) and improve urban space quality. Results further address the influence of participation methodology on participants' evaluation, willingness to participate and reported satisfaction with the participation used as well as predictors for participation satisfaction. Although the sample was not representative, the results suggest that citizen participation contributed to a more sustainable mobility awareness and a higher acceptance of the urban transformation.

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

Jun 20, 2023 Practice Insight
Living labs as third places: low-threshold participation, empowering hospitality, and the social infrastructuring of continuous presence

by Christian Pentzold, Ingmar Rothe and Andreas Bischof

In this practice insight contribution, we reflect on our learnings from configuring and upholding a living lab as a third place in an urban and distinctively non-academic environment. Trying to make space for an empowering hospitality necessitated withholding our schemes and workshop plans so to facilitate grassroots endeavors on the side of the people dropping in and staying around though they might follow unexpected paths. This follows no blueprint but requires researchers and science communicators to be open to surprises, to be patient and persistent, and to be willing to swap positions and be the learners, not the instructors. While the physical and technical infrastructures were at one point installed, keeping the social infrastructuring of continuous presence running remains an open issue that requires us to rethink how to fund and support living labs and their mission in the long run.

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

Nov 07, 2022 Commentary
Advancing inclusion through culturally relevant science communication: a perspective from Puerto Rico

by Monica Feliu-Mojer

The past 20 years of science communication have seen important progress towards inclusion, equity, and justice. In this commentary, I review some of those changes and discuss how culturally relevant science communication activities are part of a broad movement seeking to change the culture, research, and practice of science communication. I draw on my experiences as a practitioner working with the nonprofit organization Ciencia Puerto Rico (CienciaPR) to offer lessons for the whole field to continue to address past and present exclusions and injustices and avoid future ones.

Volume 21 • Issue 07 • 2022

Sep 12, 2022 Conference Review
‘SciComPt 2022’: stop, listen and act — reflect on the past to build the future

by Cristina Luís

During the Covid-19 pandemic the world faced enormous challenges demanding immediate responses. As a result, public communication of science assumed unprecedented prominence. Now, we need to stop, listen and act. This was the motto of the 10th Annual Congress of Science Communication in Portugal — SciComPt 2022. The meeting provided participants with exactly that — an opportunity to reflect on the past and help build the future of science communication in Portugal.

Volume 21 • Issue 06 • 2022

Mar 28, 2022 Practice Insight
Look before you leap: assessing community readiness for action on science and health policy issues

by Christina Standerfer, Emily Loker and Jason Lochmann

This practice insight focuses on lessons learned while completing a research project designed to compare the relative effectiveness of three communication strategies in rural communities relative to motivating citizens to take action on a public health issue, specifically Type 2 diabetes. Our main arguments are: 1) Engaging citizens in any type of communication related to public health or science action requires first assessing a community's readiness for that action; and 2) Community readiness — rather than communication methodology — is the better predictor of citizens' participation in collective or individual actions on public health and science issues.

Volume 21 • Issue 02 • 2022 • Special Issue Participatory science communication for transformation (PCST2020+1)

Mar 28, 2022 Practice Insight
#finaltrashtination. An art-based intervention to collaboratively generate conversations about climate change

by Franzisca Weder

In this practice insight, an art-based, participatory intervention (#finaltrashtination) is presented as higher education assignment in environmental and climate change communication. The project #finaltrashtination made dominant environmentally destructive ways of wasting visible and stimulated students to take responsibility, advocacy and authorship for transformation. Beyond the one-day eco-culture jam, the project engaged the wider public through conversations about a specific environmental problem. Thus, the project shows how conversational problematization and sensemaking around scientific facts can be initiated by using eco-culture jams promoting very unsettling moments of reflection.

Volume 21 • Issue 02 • 2022 • Special Issue Participatory science communication for transformation (PCST2020+1)

Mar 28, 2022 Article
Emergence of perceptions of smart agriculture at a community/campus farm: a participatory experience

by Chi-I Lin

This study provides a practice insight into campus/community co-farming as a communication experience connecting civic participants and experts in exploring the potential applications of smart agriculture. The observation focuses on participants' perceptions of smart-agri practices. The objectives of smart-agri practices have been identified to reduce negative environmental impact and meet local challenges; their development corresponds to the civic value-driven experience of promoting sustainable agriculture with low-risk, trackable information. Relatively few studies on smart-agri communication have engaged with the non-expert level. The findings highlight a viable participatory communication form of problem-solving, the public's trust of expertise, and a vision for inclusive socio-economic applications of smart agriculture.

Volume 21 • Issue 02 • 2022 • Special Issue Participatory science communication for transformation (PCST2020+1)