Posts

Showing posts from January, 2018

From Madman to Crime Fighter – the scientist in western culture. Book Review

Review by Peter Broks This is a wonderful book, both in the sense of being a pleasure to read and being full of wonders. Its overall aim is to examine the myths about science and its practitioners that have been deeply embedded in western culture over the past seven centuries. It does so by “tracing the representation of the scientists as a character in Western literature and film from the

Science engagement, education and democracy

By Kirils Makarovs & Peter Achterberg Bringing lay agency into decision-making and demonopolizing scientific expertise seems to have become an urgent matter for Europeans. In this article, we focus on the question in which countries and among whom, such democratization of science is found. If new terms such as ‘post-fact’, ‘post-truth’, ‘alternative facts’, ‘anti-science’, and ‘fake science

Do You Know Your Audience? The Four Audiences of Science Communication in Switzerland

We found four groups regarding people’s attitudes towards science in Switzerland. The groups also substantially differ in their media use. By Tobias Füchslin As in many other countries, science enjoys a large amount of interest and public acceptance in Switzerland. While interesting, such overall findings for a population of more than eight million citizens are hardly useful for any science

Challenging social exclusion in science communication

By Emily Dawson A fundamental problem lies at the heart of science communication. For a project that claims to have roots in participatory democracy surprisingly little attention has been paid to issues of power and structural inequality. This omission is particularly awful given we have long known that those science communication activities high profile enough to count audiences, visitors or

Science and Technology at the Sundance Film Festival 2018

By JoAnn M. Valenti, Ph.D. One hundred and ten feature-length films from 29 countries selected from 13,468 submissions were showcased late in January’s snow covered Park City, Utah mountains for the annual Sundance Film Festival. The international festival also includes documentaries, shorts, work in a new Indie Episodic category, panels, music and New Frontier’s ever-growing array of AI and