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Sep 04, 2017 Article

Are audiences receptive to humour in popular science articles? An exploratory study using articles on environmental issues

This study aims to test the perceptions of audiences to positive and non-aggressive humour in two popular articles. The themes were the effects of climate change on biodiversity and the over-exploitation of species. Both articles were published on-line at a Portuguese environmental site, and readers were asked to answer to an on-line survey. A total of 159 participants submitted their answers concerning their receptiveness to the humour, demographic information and comments. Results showed that the use of humour in popular articles is considered valuable for the majority of these readers, but different degrees of receptiveness suggest caution in its use.

Volume 16Issue 042017

Aug 24, 2017 Conference Review

Citizen science: an emerging professional field united in truth-seeking

by Joseph Roche , Nicola Davis

CONFERENCE: Citizen Science Association Conference, Saint Paul, Minnesota, U.S.A., 17–20th May 2017

The second biennial Citizen Science Association Conference was held from the 17–20th of May 2017 in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The conference is the biggest of its kind in the world and brought together more than 1,000 delegates for hundreds of conference presentations as well as workshops, panels, screenings, a hackathon and a citizen science festival. In this paper we review the history of the conference and outline the key events leading up to the 2017 conference.

Volume 16Issue 042017

Jul 20, 2017 Article

Vaccination communication strategies: What have we learned, and lost, in 200 years?

by Merryn McKinnon , 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 16Issue 032017Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017 (History of Scicomm)

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 16Issue 032017Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017 (History of Scicomm)

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 16Issue 032017Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017 (History of Scicomm)

Jul 20, 2017 Article

The communication of psychiatry in Brazilian press (1930–1940)

by Carolina Carvalho , Cátia Mathias , 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 16Issue 032017Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017 (History of Scicomm)

Jul 20, 2017 Article

The emergence of modern science communication in Australia

by Toss Gascoigne , 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 16Issue 032017Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017 (History of Scicomm)

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 16Issue 032017Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017 (History of Scicomm)

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 , 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 16Issue 032017Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017 (History of Scicomm)

Jul 20, 2017 Article

Mobile science museums and centres and their history in the public communication of science

by Jessica Norberto Rocha , 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 16Issue 032017Special Issue: History of Science Communication, 2017 (History of Scicomm)

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