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• Date of publication Dec 21, 2010 Category: Book Review

  When boffins go POP: Eduard Kaeser expects that the bubble of spectacular science may burst

  by Joachim Allgaier

  Eduard Kaeser has written an interesting and critical book that is concerned with the connections between science and everyday life. The conception of ‘pop science’ is introduced to characterize developments in science popularisation that are spectacular, superficial and potentially harmful to science-society relationships. The book is of special interest to the science communication community, since it may initiate discussion about the purposes of communicating science, and also about legitimate and illegitimate strategies and means of doing so.

  Volume 9 • Issue 04 • 2010

• Date of publication Dec 21, 2010 Category: Editorial

  Science journalism to face a demand for renewal

  by Nico Pitrelli

  A workshop on science journalism organised at SISSA of Trieste, Italy a few weeks ago outlined scenarios that should serve as a source for debate among professionals and scholars to grasp how information activities regarding science, medicine and technology will evolve in the next few years. It is a time of great uncertainty, yet a common path to venture through can be made out: the new science journalism should meditate on a different concept of science, an in-depth conceptualisation of different audiences, alternative narrations and its role in the democratisation of knowledge within a knowledge-based society.

  Volume 9 • Issue 04 • 2010

• Date of publication Dec 21, 2010 Category: Article

  From dissemination to response: in search of new strategies for broadcast media in terms of cyclone warnings for Bangladesh

  by Sony Jalarajan Raj , Mohammad Sahid Ullah , Rawshon Akhter

  Media and communications technologies play a significant role in disaster management procedures in regards to the mobilization of resources in emergency situations. While the dissemination of warning messages relayed via broadcast technologies have had some positive outcomes in terms of reducing casualties in emergency situations in Bangladesh, there remain some specific problems in regards to the manner in which these messages are distributed within this developing nation. These problems are addressed within this paper. Examining the existing cyclonic warning dissemination system and the manner in which warning information is distributed and received, this study addresses citizen responses to mediated warning messages in the vulnerable coastal regions of Bangladesh. The results indicate that attitudes towards mediated warnings held by Bangladeshi citizens in these environs differ depending upon their access to media, type of dwelling and differing levels of literacy. This study also provides recommendations for media professionals and policymakers in regards to disseminating more effective warnings to the inhabitants of Bangladesh's cyclone-prone coastal belt.

  Volume 9 • Issue 04 • 2010

• Date of publication Dec 21, 2010 Category: Commentary

  Participatory medicine as a new way to produce medical knowledge

  by Denise Silber

  Public communication on health issues on the Internet is not only a matter of popularization of medical information. It deeply deals with narration, conversation and dialogue, which are typical values in the Web 2.0. This interview will emphasize that blogs, forums, wiki are new ways in which population has been reconstructing and integrating medical knowledge. These ways are re-defining medical knowledge by means of unhinging the standard medical communication practices, based on a linear diffusion of knowledge form experts to laypeople.

  Volume 9 • Issue 04 • 2010

• Date of publication Dec 21, 2010 Category: Commentary

  Science journalism and social debate on modernization risks

  by Pieter A. Maeseele

  Technoscientific risks have been creating a growing social demand for participation in the scientific citizenship. This interview will emphasize that decision making (and so, in a more general sense, democracy) in the knowledge society requires new mediatic forums and new communication processes suitable to the highly multi- and inter-disciplinary nature of modern social debates. It argues that a new research agenda for risk conflicts, and a more neutral role for science journalism, are needed.

  Volume 9 • Issue 04 • 2010

• Date of publication Dec 14, 2010 Category: Article

  Let's follow the actors! Does Actor-Network Theory have anything to contribute to science journalism?

  by Carlos Henrique Fioravanti , Lea Velho

  Science journalism usually focuses on achievements presented in scientific papers previously published in specialized journals. In this paper we argue that the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) can help to widen this approach and reduce the dependency on scientific papers, by valuing not only scientists, but also other actors, theirs motivations, interests and conflicts. ANT could also help to reduce the distance between scientists and the audience by exposing uncertainties about the production of science.

  Volume 9 • Issue 04 • 2010

• Date of publication Oct 27, 2010 Category: Article

  Fractal art

  by Giudi Scotto Rosato

  Assuming that scientific development and artistic research are genetically similar, this article shows the common need of knowledge of art and science, their dialectical and multidirectional relations and the unstable boundaries between them. The fractal art has assimilated the cognitive and perceptive changes in the realm of non-euclidean geometries and has become a precise instrument of "epistemological observation". Artistic practices materialize and communicate the laws of science, while scientific revolutions are in actual facts metaphorical revolutions.

  Volume 9 • Issue 04 • 2010

• Date of publication Sep 21, 2010 Category: Commentary

  Is science communication its own field?

  by Toss Gascoigne , Donghong Cheng , Michel Claessens , Jenni Metcalfe , Bernard Schiele , Shunke Shi

  The present comment examines to what extent science communication has attained the status of an academic discipline and a distinct research field, as opposed to the common view that science communication is merely a sub-discipline of media studies, sociology of science or history of science. Against this background, the authors of this comment chart the progress science communication has made as an emerging subject over the last 50 years in terms of a number of measures. Although discussions are still ongoing about the elements that must be present to constitute a legitimate disciplinary field, we show here that science communication meets four key elements that constitute an analytical framework to classify academic disciplines: the presence of a community; a history of inquiry; a mode of inquiry that defines how data is collected; and the existence of a communications network.

  Volume 9 • Issue 03 • 2010

• Date of publication Sep 21, 2010 Category: Commentary

  Notes from some spaces in-between

  by Alice R. Bell

  Science communication is less a community of researchers, but more a space where communities of research coexist to study and deal with communities of researchers. It is, as a field, a consequence of the spaces left between areas of expertise in (late) modern society. It exists to deal with the fragmentations of expertise in today’s society. In between those fragments is where it lives. It’s not an easy position, but an awareness of this unease is part of how science communication scholars can be most effective; as we examine, reflect, debate and help others manage the inescapable cultural gaps of post/late modern knowledge communities.

  Volume 9 • Issue 03 • 2010

• Date of publication Sep 21, 2010 Category: Commentary

  Road maps for the 21st-century research in Science Communication

  by Nico Pitrelli

  This is an introduction to the essays from the Jcom commentary devoted to the statute and the future of research in science communication. The authors have a long experience in international research in this domain. In the past few years, they have all been committed to the production of collective works which are now the most important references for science communication research programmes in the next few years. What topics should science communication research focus on and why? What is its general purpose? What is its real degree of autonomy from other similar fields of study? In other words, is science communication its 'own' field? These are some of the questions addressed by the in-depth discussion in this Jcom issue, with the awareness that science communication is a young, brittle research field, looking for a shared map, but also one of the most stimulating places of the contemporary academic panorama.

  Notes from some spaces in-between

  by Alice R. Bell

  Science communication, an emerging discipline

  by Brian Trench and Massimiano Bucchi

  Is science communication its own field?

  by Toss Gascoigne, Donghong Cheng, Michel Claessens, Jenni Metcalfe, Bernard Schiele and Shunke Shi

  From analogue to digital scholarship: implications for science communication researchers

  by Richard Holliman

  Coming of age in the academy? The status of our emerging field

  by Susanna Hornig Priest

  Volume 9 • Issue 03 • 2010