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• Date of publication Dec 21, 2010 Category: Commentary

  Climate change as a 'grand narrative'

  by Anabela Carvalho

  Climate change is a multi-faceted issue. It relies on deep scientific bases, but merges with politics, economics, ethics and culture in a complex and strongly nonlinear social debate. This interview focuses on the relationships between public communication on climate change (with emphasis on the so-called ‘new media’) and the decision making processes. It argues that more productive and sustainable forms of communication on climate change are needed due to problems related with validation of information in the Web.

  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: 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 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: Editorial

  Open science, a complex movement

  by Alessandro Delfanti

  Science must be open and accessible, and diffusion of knowledge should not be limited by patents and copyrights. After the Open Science Summit held in Berkeley, some notes about sharing scientific data and updating the social contract for science. Against the determinist view on technological and legal solutions, we need an explicit reflection on the relation between science and society. Both academic and industrial science seem unable to fulfill open science needs: new societal configurations are emerging and we should keep asking questions about appropriation, power, privatisation and freedom.

  Volume 9 • Issue 03 • 2010

• Date of publication Sep 21, 2010 Category: Article

  Pandemic on the air: a case study on the coverage of new influenza A/H1N1 by Brazilian prime time TV news

  by Flavia Natércia da Silva Medeiros , Luisa Massarani

  In this paper we analyze the coverage of the pandemic influenza caused by the A (H1N1) virus by the main Brazilian TV news. Jornal Nacional (JN) – which can be roughly translated with National News – reaches an average of 25 million people throughout the country daily. We have observed that the attention cycle given to the new flu by JN lasted approximately five months with significant space given to the disease. Most of the news highlighted the number of illness cases and the health measures to control the infection. Only a small amount of news dealt with issues related to research and scientific development, and included scientists as interviewees or as information sources. We believe that the coverage made by JN may have contributed to the dissemination of what some authors refer to as a "pandemic of panic".

  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