This article examines communicative aspects of climate change, identifying and analysing metaphors used in specialized media reports on climate change, and discussing the aspects of climate change these metaphors emphasize and neglect. Through a critical discourse analysis of the two largest Swedish farm magazines over the 2000–2009 period, this study finds that greenhouse, war, and game metaphors were the most frequently used metaphors in the material. The analysis indicates that greenhouse metaphors are used to ascribe certain natural science characteristics to climate change, game metaphors to address positive impacts of climate change, and war metaphors to highlight negative impacts of climate change. The paper concludes by discussing the contrasting and complementary metaphorical representations farm magazines use to conventionalize climate change.

Since the early 2000s, anybody can buy genetic tests, directly sold on the Internet. These tests provide information about susceptibilities to some diseases and/or about ancestry. Thus, this article deals with a new e-market, whose scientific basis (validity of the tests) and status (as medical devices or consumer goods) are currently controversial. On one hand, we describe the tests and the advertisement and marketing strategies used by the companies (we made an inventory of about 40); on the other hand, we discuss several aspects on the basis of interviews conducted with users: first, the entanglement of these strategies with the global context of healthism and the emphasis put on individuals’ empowerment regarding health decisions — “individualized biopolitics”. In addition, this article broaches the new kind of biosocial networks appearing in these tests’ wake: some users indeed gather on the basis of a genetic proximity, as is it put forward by their results.

Easy, cheap, efficient as online service often are. Direct to Consumer Genetic Testing (DCGT) represents a big evolution towards personalised medicine. If the phenomenon seems to be unstoppable, the first aim of its present and future developments should be the customers’ benefits. A certified quality of the services provided, a clear communication and a well-structured support to customers should be the critical conditions that could transform those online services in something really important: for the individual’s health and the society as a whole.

Comprehension of the nature and practice of science and its social context are important aspects of communicating and learning science. However there is still very little understanding amongt the non-scientific community of the need for debate in driving scientific knowledge forward and the role of critical scrutiny in quality control. Peer review is an essential part of this process. We initiated and developed a pilot project to provide an opportunity for students to explore the idea that science is a dynamic process rather than a static body of facts. Students from two different schools experienced the process of peer-review by producing and reviewing comics related to the science done at Rothamsted Research. As authors, students showed a large degree of creativity and understanding of the science while as referees they showed good critical skills. Students had at first hand an insight into how science works.

The Encyclopedia of Science and Technology Communication has approximately 300 entries on science communication and is capable of meeting the needs of readers of differing profiles. The entries cover eighteen categories, including controversial science topics and tendencies of media coverage; panoramas of science communication in different regions or continents; legal and ethical aspects; important science players; history, philosophy and sociology of science; theories and research on science communication, and many other topics. By concentrating different information about a field of research and of practical multidisciplinary actions in only one source, the publication serves as a reference for beginners in the area as well as for those who are more experienced in the area. Although conceptualized to serve as quick introductions to the concepts and practices of science communication, the entries are contextualized and each item is explored from various angles in simple language.

Since opening their doors in late 2006, personal genomics (PG) companies have faced skepticism and criticism from influential academic and government circles. While this has posed a clear problem of communication for these companies — one of effective promotion — I argue that the communication problem these companies face runs much deeper. It is a problem that lies at the heart of any genomics: the very understanding of communication and information around which genomics is built. While the value of genomic information for persons has been widely questioned, questions about the very notion of information that undergirds the production of genomic information rarely, if ever, has been broached. I suggest that making significant inroads into the vexing debates about PG would be greatly aided by addressing these more fundamental questions about the nature of information, and its genomic qualities.

Genetic testing promises to put the ability to decide about our life choices in our hands, as well as help solve crucial health problems by preventing the insurgence of diseases. But what happens when these exams are managed by private companies in a free market? Public communication and marketing have proven to be crucial battlefields on which companies companies need to engage in order to emerge. This issue of JCOM tries to shed some light on the communication and marketing practices used by private companies that sell direct-to-consumer genetic testing, from single genetic mutations to whole genome sequencing.

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing has generated a great deal of social controversy. While the degree to which DTC testing actually causes harm remains uncertain, there is a consensus that the information provided by these companies should be accurate. Unfortunately, this is often not the case. Indeed, there are misrepresentations associated with all forms of testing, be it for superficial cosmetic services, athletic ability or disease predisposition. Countering this phenomenon will require a wide range of actions, including the use of formal regulatory mechanisms, the education of primary healthcare providers (in order to give them the tools necessary to advise patients and respond to questions) and more aggressive action by the genetic research community.

Personal Genomics Companies are an emerging form of biotechnology startup that bring rapidly advancing whole genome technologies to a variety of commercial venues. With a combination of direct-to-consumer marketing, social media, and Web 2.0 applications these companies seek to create novel uses, including entertainment, for what is described as predictive medicine – that is the use of genetic marketers to create health forecasts that would allow individual’s healthcare to be tailored to their individual genomic data. In this brief piece, the authors use a critical cultural approach to question how this combination of genomics research, marketing, and communications technologies may alter both patient experiences and research processes. In it we argue these companies radically expand the definition of a patient by claiming all consumers are simply pre-symptomatic patients. Moreover, by placing genomic data on both the marketplace and cyberspace, personal genomic companies seek to create new avenues of research that alter how we define (and access) research agendas and human subjects. Therefore, beyond commonly discussed issues of ethics and privacy rights, Personal Genomics has the potential to alter both healthcare priorities and distribution.

There exists a distinct disconnect between scientists’ perception of nature and people’s worldview. This ‘disconnect’ though has dialectical relationship with science communication processes which, causes impediments in the propagation of scientific ideas. Those ideas, which are placed at large cultural distance, do not easily become a part of cognitive structure of a common citizen or peoples thought complex. Low level of public understanding of bio-energy technologies is one such sphere of understanding. The present study is based on assumption that public debate on bio-energy is part of the larger human concern about climate change. In this paper we present meta-analyses from published literature and take a look at the surveys that have been carried out at national and international level. In the second section of the article we also present analysis of the survey study carried out in India and locate the shifts in public understanding of science.