As science communication develops as a field of both practice and research, it needs to address issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion across a wide range, including race, power, class, gender. Doing so will require deeper understanding of conceptual work and practical activities that address those issues. This brief comment introduces a series of commentaries that provide one approach: feminist approaches to science communication.

The challenge to the science communication field put forward by Bruce Lewenstein, of the sector becoming a ‘ghetto’ of women's over-representation (see the commentary by Lewenstein in this issue), is a very timely wake-up call. This Commentary however, elaborates and frames the pivotal and constructivist premises on which this phenomenon should be interrogated and understood on many levels. It is critical that we undertake a deeper introspection, beyond just simplistic head counts of the number of women and men in the field, if we are to make sense of the seeming paradoxes that pervade the field, across the intersectionalities of gender, race, social class and other paradigms of inequality. This Commentary also highlights with qualitative and quantitative data how the interrogation of these developments in the field should bring on board inclusive global and diverse regional perspectives, critiques, good practices and nuances, to fully inform our shared understandings, and engender transformation in the field.

There is a significant under-representation of women in STEM which is damaging societal progress for democratic, utilitarian, and equity reasons. However, changing stereotypes in STEM requires a solution denied by the problem — more visible female role models. Science communicators are critical to curate the conditions to bypass this Catch 22. We propose that enhancing self-efficacy for female scientists and engineers to mentor others will generate more supportive workplaces. Similarly, enhancing self-efficacy for public engagement improves the visibility of diverse female role models for young girls. These social connections will ultimately improve the science capital of girls and other minorities in STEM.

Feminist technoscience theory offers perspectives for science communication that both question common narratives and suggests new narratives. These perspectives emphasize issues of ethics and care often missing from science communication. They focus on questions of what is marginalized or left out of stories about science — and encourage us to make those absences visible.

This comment discusses feminization of science communication as a process that is related to the professionalization of the field, but also with the subordination of its practices to certain ideas of science that have described as androcentric. It argues that science communication can play an important role in questioning this subordination and contributing to democratizing science bringing gender diversity into it. For this, the comment presents the case of a Colombian transgender scientist whose public presence in media has being important to destabilize scientific subjectivities in the country and also has opened the possibility to think of science from a care-ful perspective.

This commentary introduces feminist standpoint theory and discusses its potential value in science communication. It offers two ways in which feminist standpoints can help in both research and practice. First, science communicators should aim to understand the perspective from which they understand and share scientific knowledge. Second, practitioners and researchers alike should seek insights from marginalized groups to help inform the ways the dominant view of science reflects hegemonic social and cultural norms.

Science and technology have become tools to legitimize messages that affect the world in terms of society, politics and economy. This paper presents part of the results of a study that analyzed the symbolic construction of the future in the scientific-technological discourse at EPCOT theme park in Orlando, Florida. The sociohistorical conditions and narrative strategies are analyzed based on the theoretical and methodological approach by John B. Thompson. The results highlighted that the construction of the notion of progress is strongly influenced by the commercial and political interests of the sponsors. In particular, the ‘Test Track’ ride totally lacks any discussion about the impact of cars on society and the environment. The future is presented as a utopian one without any possible disruption, a perception that permeated the development of the United States over the 20th century and is promoted even in the 21st century despite the evidence provided by multiple wars and crises.

In early August 2019, the U.S.A. saw 2 significant mass shootings in just 48 hours. On Twitter, Neil deGrasse Tyson responded with a tweet to his millions of followers. He outlined the number of deaths in 48 hours from other causes, and seemed to disparage the human tendency to respond emotionally “more to spectacle than to data”. The tweet resulted in an uproar. This “twitterstorm” might provide important lessons for practicing science communicators. The first lesson outlined in this letter is about the use of analogy in science communication, and the second is about how emotion is addressed in science communication.

Live science events engage publics with science in a social context. This article articulates the aims and ethos of this growing sector within a research context. Semi-structured interviews (N=13) and focus groups (N=77) were conducted with event practitioners (both professional and volunteers) in the U.S.A. and U.K.. Inductive thematic analysis indicated that event producers aim to raise awareness of and professionalism in the sector. In particular, they seek to develop research into long-term impacts of events for both audiences and practitioners.

Fiction is often credited with shaping public attitudes to science, but little science communication research has studied fans' deep engagement with a science-themed fiction text. This study used a survey to investigate the impacts of television series ‘Doctor Who’ (1963–89; 2005–present) on its viewers' attitudes to science, including their education and career choices and ideas about science ethics and the science-society relationship. The program's reported impacts ranged from causing participants to fact-check ‘Doctor Who’'s science to inspiring them to pursue a science career, or, more commonly, prompting viewers to think broadly and deeply about science's social position in diverse ways.