Brian Trench

Towards an Analytical Framework of Science Communication Models

This chapter reviews the discussion in science communication circles of models for public communication of science and technology (PCST). It questions the claim that there has been a large-scale shift from a ‘deficit model’ of communication to a ‘dialogue model’, and it demonstrates the survival of the deficit model along with the ambiguities of that model. Similar discussions in related fields of communication, including the critique of dialogue, are briefly sketched. Outlining the complex circumstances governing approaches to PCST, the author argues that communications models often perceived to be opposed can, in fact, coexist when the choices are made explicit. To aid this process, the author proposes an analytical framework of communication models based on deficit, dialogue and participation, including variations on each.

Scientists’ Blogs: Glimpses Behind the Scenes

This chapter traces the short history of science blogs, with particular reference to blogs published by scientists. It situates the slow growth of scientists’ blogs in the contexts of the wider, emerging blogosphere and of the proliferation of science media published through the Internet. In published discussion of science blogs strong claims have been made about their potential to support broad social engagement with science. It has also been claimed that science blogging has had direct impacts on the conduct and governance of science. This chapter notes that much of this commentary has been written by advocates and, taking a more detached view, it focuses most on any evidence that scientists’ blogging opens the backstage processes of science (or science-in the-making) to wider view and public participation. A review of general characteristics of scientists’ blogs indicates they show low levels of interactivity and points to evidence of early disaffection with this medium of communication. It is shown that scientists’ blogs rarely facilitate access to science’s backstage processes. One exceptional case is climate science, as demonstrated in the “Climategate” affair. The chapter reviews the intense discussions of climate science in the blogosphere and the key role of blogs in “Climategate” and, drawing from the exceptional character of this case, discusses the factors constraining scientists’ adoption of blogs in their professional and public communication.

Scheduling science on television: A comparative analysis of the representations of science in 11 European countries

This article explores the factors that influence the volume and structure of science programming by European television broadcasters, focussing on differences among channel patterns. It proposes three factors as relevant to understanding differences in science programming: A) the segmentation/fragmentation of television markets; B) the presence of middle sized commercial channels; C) the dependency of public service TV channels on commercial income (trading/advertising). We identified countries whose channel patterns encourage a varied picture of science – namely Sweden, Finland and Germany. They are distinguished from those which show a less differentiated picture and present a smaller volume of science content on television – such as Great Britain and Ireland. Finally, we identified countries whose channel patterns don’t encourage a varied picture of science – namely Spain, Greece, Bulgaria and Estonia – and these countries present their small volume of science content at off-peak hours, in contrast to patterns in Great Britain and Ireland.

Online News and Changing Models of Journalism

The move to Internet news publishing is the latest in a series of technological shifts which have required journalists not merely to adapt their daily practice but which have also ‐ at least in the view of some ‐ recast their role in society. For over a decade, proponents of the networked society as a new way of life have argued that responsibility for news selection and production will shift from publishers, editors and reporters to individual consumers, as in the scenario offered by Nicholas Negroponte: Instead of reading what other people think is news and what other people justify as worthy of the space it takes, being digital will change the economic model of news selections, make your interests play a bigger role ... Imagine a future in which your interface agent can read every newswire and newspaper and catch every TV and radio broadcast on the planet, and then construct a personalized summary. This kind of newspaper is printed in an edition of one (Negroponte, 1995). New media commentator Jon Katz has been asking insistently if old media can, and deserve to, survive. In a deliberately provocative posting to the discussion-based ‘community’ Web site, slashdot.com, Katz asked, Would You Ever Read A Newspaper Again? and painted this picture of the obsolescence of old media: All over the information spectrum, media audiences are fragmented, drawn to the timeliness, convenience and immediacy of cable news, and the Net and the Web. As the Net and Web spawn ferocious and idiosyncratic commentary, democratizing opinion all over the country, newspapers cling to stuffy and elitist op-ed pages, where opinion is generally confined to a “left” and “right” and voice usually given to elite claques of pundits, academics, authors and CEO’s (Katz, 2000). Among established journalists, those who have crossed over into new media

Science communication, an emerging discipline

Several publications have sought to define the field of science communication and review current issues and recent research. But the status of science communication is uncertain in disciplinary terms. This commentary considers two dimensions of the status of discipline as they apply to science communication - the clarity with which the field is defined and the level of development of theories to guide formal studies. It argues that further theoretical development is needed to support science communications full emergence as a discipline.

Vital and Vulnerable: Science Communication as a University Subject

Over nearly three decades, science communication has become established as a subject of teaching and research in universities across the world. Its standing as an academic discipline continues to be debated, but graduate degree programs and doctoral research in the field are increasing. Partly reflecting its inherent multi- and interdisciplinary content, science communication is embedded in different institutions in different ways. These developments have been driven mainly by individual champions, but in some cases also by institutional and government policies. The diversity of science communication programs reflects in part the various histories and institutional affiliations of the programs. The diversity can be seen as a sign of the subject’s vitality but it is also a condition of its vulnerability. Many science communication teaching programs have given rise to consultancies, applied research, publishing and, perhaps most notably, doctoral research, but information from the promoters of science communication programs indicates that some programs are particularly exposed to the rationalization affecting higher education institutions in many countries. Science communication’s position between and across disciplines and departments may mean it is not always well equipped to defend itself just when this need is most apparent.

Communicating Contentious Health Policy: Lessons From Ireland's Workplace Smoking Ban

The Irish workplace smoking ban has been described as possibly a tipping point for public health worldwide. This article presents the first analysis of the newspaper coverage of the ban over the duration of the policy formation process. It adds to previous studies by analyzing how health communication strategists engaged, over time, with a newsworthy topic, viewed as being culturally controversial. It analyzes a sample of media content (n = 1,154) and firsthand accounts from pro-ban campaigners and journalists (n = 10). The analysis shows that the ban was covered not primarily as a health issue: Economic, political, social, democratic, and technical aspects also received significant attention. It shows how coverage followed controversy and examines how pro-ban campaigners countered effectively the anti-ban communication efforts of influential social actors in the economic and political spheres. The analysis demonstrates that medical–political sources successfully defined the ban’s issues as centrally concerned with public health.

Representations of the Knowledge Economy: Irish Newspapers’ Discourses on a Key Policy Idea

Over a decade, ‘knowledge economy’ and ‘knowledge society’ have become key phrases in Irish public policy. This paper explores the contestation and semantic uncertainty of ‘knowledge economy’ and ‘knowledge society’ in academic discourses, their emphatic usage in policy discourses and the ways in which media have responded to the increasing and pervasive use of these key phrases across several sectors of public life. In a detailed examination of a body of newspaper material containing references to the knowledge economy or knowledge society, it is observed that journalists are more likely to use such phrases in attribution to others than to appropriate them directly. Analysing the occurrence of selected phrases in Irish newspapers, the paper notes that media caution and (to a lesser degree) scepticism about the validity of the policy commitment to the knowledge economy grew as evidence became stronger of the emerging economic crisis. This analysis offers a view of the process of naturalisation of phrases and terms from academic and policy discourses into the media vernacular.

Introduction to Commentary on Universities and Science Communication

Accounts of the growth of science communication, both in individual countries [e.g. Fleming and Star, 2017] and across regions and continents [e.g. Trench et al., 2014] give a central place to universities as locales of practice, education and research in this field. The establishment of university centres and programmes in science communication has been widely seen as a marker of its stabilisation and institutionalisation.

New directions for JCOM

A new editorial board is guiding JCOM through a period of change and here opens out the discussion on what JCOM has become and what it could or should become in the future. The journals readers are invited to make their