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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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

While substantial research has focused on emotions within classroom activities such as class attendance, studying, and test-taking, less attention has been paid to emotional experience in informal science settings such as media, museums, and public science events. Despite their significant role, emotions are under-theorised and under-researched in science communication. However, there is a growing interest among researchers and practitioners in understanding their role in the public communication of science and leveraging these insights for more effective science communication. This context lead us to propose and organise this Special Issue on Emotions in Science Communication, comprising six manuscripts as detailed in this editorial.

Theatre is a privileged medium for expressing and conveying emotions. Emotions play a significant role in audience engagement when communicating to create awareness and knowledge about a given subject. The Marionet Theatre Company has created a series of theatre performances related to health sciences over the past few years, to expand knowledge and reduce the stigma frequently associated with certain diseases. In this report on practice, we present the process of developing the theatre performance Oxymoron, between solstices and equinoxes, exploring bipolar disorder and its consequences. The artistic team devised the performance after a series of interviews with both patients and mental health professionals. In this article, we discuss the process of its creation, identify dramaturgical connections between the performance and the interviews, and examine the emotional engagement it provoked in the audience. We conclude by assessing the effectiveness of theatre in communicating health-related subjects, most particularly by involving the audience emotionally.