Send message to Authors

Short abstract:

This paper explores how perceptions of AI’s nature and value, along with specific democratic ideals, shape the normative visions of citizens in current discussions on public participation in AI from perspectives in Public Understanding of Science, Public Engagement in Science, and Citizen Science.

Long abstract:

The recent proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has ignited numerous discussions about the role of citizens and the public amid the rapid development and implementation of AI. These discussions, centered around citizens and the public, are often seen as expressions of democratic values and practices. However, despite the trope of democratic engagement with AI, the portrayal of citizens in these conversations is often vague, implicit, and multifaceted. While frequently aimed at and dominated by AI designers, tech companies, and regulators, they have simultaneously projected normative imaginaries of ideal citizens. What constitutes “good citizens” within these conversations? And how do these characterizations relate to assumptions about the nature of AI technologies and the role of democracy in their development?

This paper offers a set of heuristics for interpreting the current discussions and practices surrounding public participation in AI. We draw on insights from over three decades of work in Public Understanding of Science (PUS), Public Engagement in/with Science (PES), and Citizen Science (CS) to analyze current debates about AI and public participation. It builds on how model citizens are envisioned in the scholarly traditions of PUS, PES, and CS, exploring how the imagined archetypes of literate (PUS), responsible (PES), and contributive citizens (CS) permeate contemporary debates about the public’s role in AI. Instead of presenting a systematic, comprehensive review, we will highlight typical examples that illustrate how perceptions of AI’s nature and value, combined with specific democratic ideals, shape corresponding normative visions of citizens.

Send message to Authors

Long abstract:

The intervention focuses on scientific information circulation and reception by high school classrooms in northern Italy. It is based on a two-year-long mixed-method research on twelve classrooms. We conducted qualitative interviews with students, teachers and parents; focus groups with students and parents; qualitative media diaries; commented social media video-content scrolling sessions; data donation.

We reconstructed the sources, online and offline, from which students draw scientific information. These are mostly from online media offerings – school and family (though not absent) have a minority role. Then, we observed the body of texts that these adolescents encountered. This is to understand how science reaches them: which channels, mediating figures; which contents arouse the most interest; what rhetoric is employed; how science is portrayed. Secondly, we examined their reception practices: consumption patterns, meaning attribution, sharing (mainly offline, within scholastic and domestic territories), and negotiation of these resources in daily lives.

Our observations suggest that scientific information does not have significant weight in adolescents' media consumption. What triggers their interest are outlandish news stories or topics that tie in with personal experiences (e.g. health). Critical to hooking their interest is the resource's ability to be entertaining: aesthetic and performative skills are essential for information transmission.

Furthermore, we noticed a tendency to idealize science, conceiving it as a truths-producing machine. This is reinforced by the generally apodictic approach to how scientific information is conveyed. Probed by personal or social crises (like a disease or the pandemic), this ingenuous trust in science can represent a vulnerability.

Send message to Authors

Long abstract:

Effective science communication inspires the public’s interest in science, creates appreciation for scientists’ contributions, and builds support for the funding of scientific research. While scientists had been using online tools to communicate with the public, the number of scientists who began using social media to engage with the public significantly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. In turn, now, more people are finding scientific information online, especially through social media, than ever before. We will discuss a synthesis of three studies that focus on the interactive nature of social media as artifacts and investigate how we can assist dialogues between scientists and the public on different social media platforms using Lievrouw’s mediation framework. Social media platforms’ variation as artifacts can lead to a significant change in the way we communicate. In the first study that analyzed tweets on X/Twitter, we compared popular scientists who had more than 10,000 followers and ordinary scientists. The second study examined medical professionals’ YouTube videos and comments from the public. The third study sampled Reddit’s Ask Me Anything (AMA) discussions that addressed topics related to COVID-19. By comparing these three social media platforms, we identified strategies for social media use by scientists. In addition, interview data with 11 COVID-19 scientists are used to inform and triangulate the findings. These findings will contribute to the literature of public engagement with science in online environments using the mediation framework.

Send message to Authors

Long abstract:

This presentation explores creative agency Kurzgesagt’s “We Lied To You… and We’ll Do it Again” video (created for the EU-funded TRESCA project in 2021) and NASA's Instagram account. Both make use of popular culture to enhance public understanding of complex scientific topics. We investigate how NASA and Kurzgesagt leverage a comic visual style, memes and popular visual formats to mobilise a heterogeneous cultural network in communicating scientific concepts.

Our study shows NASA's strategic use of pop culture references, such as memes, songs, and films, to make science accessible and engaging. Through visual comparisons, astronomical images are re-imagined, bridging the gap between abstract concepts and everyday experiences. Kurzgesagt’s confessional style, exemplified in the “We Lied To You” video, allows unique insight into how they create their work, focusing on simplifying and translating scientific complexities into unique vector-style cartoon videos. This approachable strategy to science communication allows ‘fans’ to respond positively to their creations and content.

Both approaches not only address the communicative challenge of abstract knowledge transfer but promote science literacy by tapping into shared (pop-)cultural knowledge. They simultaneously reinforce forms of cultural knowledge, and in their respective media create new forms of cultural knowledge. Framing science communication and popular culture together here highlights the symbiotic relationship between new practices in science communication and culturally aware use of social media platforms to engage diverse audiences. This study contributes to understanding the transformative potential of leveraging popular culture in science communication, connecting science with everyday life experiences and evolving cultural trends.

Send message to Author

Long abstract:

In the fields of Public Understanding of Science (PUS) and science sociology, there have been reports on the political polarization of attitudes toward science in general or the natural sciences, but the political polarization of attitudes toward the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) has not been examined. Therefore, this paper analyzes (1) the relationship between attitudes toward the SSH and political attitudes, and (2) how this relationship differs from attitudes toward the natural sciences, using data from Japan, one of the countries where the confrontation between conservative politicians and SSH is prominent. The survey was conducted online in 2018, and it measured perceptions of the “social utility” of ten fields in total, covering both the natural sciences and the SSH. The analysis revealed that the stronger the racism and the greater the desire to reduce the social role of the government, the more likely individuals are to deny the usefulness of the SSH. For the natural sciences, the tendency to deny their usefulness increased with authoritarianism and the desire to reduce the government's social role. These results suggest that while attitudes toward the SSH share a structure of political polarization common to the natural sciences, there is also a possibility of a unique political polarization specific to attitudes toward the SSH.

Send message to Author

Short abstract:

This paper contributes to knowledge on how a project juxtaposes fiction and non-fiction, frivolity and seriousness, to communicate science for transformation – as the exhibition of a giant robot, called the Gundam, constitute technoscientific futures to transcend the limits of 20th-century thinking.

Long abstract:

In this paper, I study how frivolity and seriousness conflate in public engagement in and for transformation. The empirical focus of this study is an exhibition of a thoroughly impractical 18-metre tall humanoid robot, called RX-78F00 or the Gundam. The Gundam stands overlooking Yokohama Yamashita Pier at an exhibition called Gundam Factory Yokohama for the 40th year celebration of the anime Mobile Suit Gundam. The robot, as a material representation of popular culture, engages the public with familiarity and an impression of playfulness. The Gundam evokes emotion and awe, with the anime serving as a powerful cultural frame of reference and a common language – not only for the stakeholders responsible for the exhibition, but also for their public engagements. Yet behind its frivolous façade, it is a site for collaboration, innovation and science communication – represented through the earnest attempt to materialise the fictional into the real. Through a fieldwork of the exhibition, complemented with the official book and documentary of the robot’s construction, I critically analyse how the exhibition enacts an exuberant representation of technoscientific knowledge. I investigate how their material-discursive enactment is said to be able to constitute a technoscientific future beyond the limits of 20th-century thinking, supposedly eliciting imaginative yearnings of what more could be made possible. This paper then contributes to further our knowledge on science communication practices that juxtaposes fiction and non-fiction, frivolity and seriousness, in the exhibition's attempts to engage the public for the constitution of new technoscientific futures.

Send message to Author

Short abstract:

The paper examines how AI is presented and negotiated in museums, analyzing 9 recent exhibitions in Germany. I describe curatorial efforts to counter prevailing AI narratives and reveal how these persist due to specific museum affordances and ecologies of visitor attention and participation.

Long abstract:

Until recently, artificial intelligence (AI) was primarily viewed as a tool for museums, and not as a subject of their work. In this paper I examine how AI is presented in museum exhibitions. Museums offer a set of affordances different from other media and actors involved in discussing AI (such as news media, policy documents, etc.). I studied nine cases of exhibitions on AI which were open in 2022-2023 in German museums. Several cases were a part of a permanent exhibition, other cases were developed as a temporary exhibition in a science and technology museum, history or art museum. For the analysis, I documented the exhibitions' design and content and conducted interviews with curatorial teams to elucidate the approaches museums employ and to reveal which objects and media are used to demonstrate and explain AI to the public. The analysis showed that curators are aware of existing perceptions of AI and largely critical of dominant narratives of AI technology. They seek to contest AI myths and present a nuanced and realistic picture. Despite this, mainstream images of AI and elements of dominant narratives are still being reproduced. In the paper, I explain how this is contingent on the specific materialities of museum exhibition, the need to introduce interactive and recognizable objects, and overall ecology of visitor attention and participation. In conclusion, I comment on the ways in which bringing the topic of AI into the museum transforms and destabilizes the practices of museum work.

Send message to Author

Short abstract:

Technological development initiates uncertainty, and it becomes essential to engage the public at an early stage of this development. The ongoing development of ELMs seeks to map the public’s sensibilities through an approach of phenomenology and futurism to inform this development.

Long abstract:

There has been a growing interest in the field of mycelium-based materials and recent advances in this field seek to develop programmable living material exhibiting intrinsic properties of living systems such as self-repair, growth, and environmental sensing. This new class of advanced material is known as Engineered Living Materials (ELMs). Scientific and technological developments as such actuates greater uncertainty and it becomes essential to understand the public and their issues from an early stage, which otherwise can lead into a controversy. There have been assumptions that technology is accepted unquestionably unless they pose any appreciable risk to health and safety. As seen in the case of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), the public brought forward strong and justifiable options about what they consumed and how it was grown. Controversy mapping is therefore seen as an appropriate tool for technologies which is not black boxed yet and has to go through social pressures and demand to accommodate itself to the social environment, but it also becomes challenging for a technology that is still at a very early phase of development and the public unaware of it. We therefore formulate a method ‘Mapping Sensibilities’ informed by the approach of ‘phenomenology’ and ‘futurism’. Through a participatory workshop we engage the public on ‘making sense on living with a material that is alive’. We conceptualize this workshop based on Simondon’s ‘mode of existence of technical objects’ where technical objects seems to adjust to its particular milieu (set of relations) in the course of its individuation.

Send message to Authors

Short abstract:

It is generally assumed that citizens would like to be more involved in the scientific process and that this would generate more trust in science. But is this really always the case? The paper sheds light on this question based on data from seven participatory events with citizens across Europe.

Long abstract:

It is generally assumed that citizens would like to be more involved in the scientific process and that this would generate more trust in science. But is this really the case? Do people want to participate in discussions about science that affect their lives? And if so, in which topical areas do citizens feel that public participation makes sense? When might public participation even have a negative effect on citizens' trust in the scientific process and its results?

This paper presents answers to these questions based on empirical data collected in seven citizen participatory events in Germany, Portugal, France, UK, Greece, Spain and Denmark in 2023. Citizens in each country spent an afternoon discussing cases of scientific discoveries and the public role on it, aimed at investigating trust in science and the influence they believe public participation might have on it.

The results show the wide range of public perceptions of participation and that the call for ever stronger participation of citizens in the scientific process is not always desired by them in practice. The analysis identifies topical areas and formats of public participation in the scientific process that citizens perceive as particularly suitable or particularly unsuitable.

The citizen participatory events were organised as part of the POIESIS project (https://poiesis-project.eu/). POIESIS is a European collaborative project funded by Horizon Europe asking how trust in science is influenced by issues of research integrity and public participation in the scientific process. The project’s topical foci are climate change and the coronavirus pandemic.

Send message to Authors

Short abstract:

The paper investigates the development of a functioning particle accelerator for CERN’s science center. Looking at science communication and instrumentation practices in the making of this instrument, it discusses material transformations, interdisciplinary collaboration, and imaginaries of publics.

Long abstract:

Science museums in Europe experiment with putting research laboratories on display to increase public understanding of science (Meyer, 2011). A similar attempt is being carried out in a physics laboratory’s science center, CERN Science Gateway. A small yet functional particle accelerator will be on display for visitors and a tool to perform demonstrations and conduct research for scientists.

The paper investigates how the interplay between science communication and instrumentation practices is shaping this scientific instrument for such a public venue. It draws on ethnographic research at CERN encompassing participant observations, interviews, and analysis of documentation. It describes how representations of science and technology are carried, negotiated, and materialized into both the exhibition space and the instrument.

It discusses the influences of organizational structures and interdisciplinary collaboration gathering members specialized in physics, engineering, and science communication. It documents how publics are imagined and how various uses of the device are temporarily configured based on these constructs. It finally reflects on our role as researchers contributing to this project.

Shifting the focus away from the gigantic instruments of Big science, this research shed light on a growing emerging technology, compact particle accelerators designed for applied uses. It also documents the process, challenges, and provisional outcomes faced by a globally renowned research laboratory aiming to make science in public.

Reference

Meyer, M. (2011). Researchers on display : Moving the laboratory into the museum. Museum Management and Curatorship, 26(3), 261 272.

Send message to Author

Long abstract:

Recent years have witnessed the publication of several books, which focus on the relationship between art and STS. Taken together, these books provide a rich variety of interesting perspectives. However, my particular focus in this paper is on how they reinvigorate STS’s engagement in science-society relations and how they support renewed interest in public communication about science and technology. To situate this focus, I start with a short introduction to my own personal history of working with science communication and the questions which the books have helped me illuminate and reflect upon. Subsequently, I have divided my discussion into five major parts. The first will engage with the various relationships between art, science, technology and STS that the books identify. The second part focuses particularly on the relationship between art and science and will discuss the consequences of considering art as a form of knowledge production. A third part zooms in on what the books tell us about collaborations across art, science and technology. Subsequently, the fourth part discusses how the books portray the specific relationship between art, STS and science communication. The last section before a final concluding comment on ethics focuses on how these different fields relate to their audiences.

Send message to Author

Long abstract:

This article explores how algorithmic imaginaries as ‘‘ways of thinking about what algorithms are, what they should be and how they function’’ (Bucher, 2017, p. 30) transform the production of science communication content distributed on social media. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on the development and production of a social science format on YouTube – a collaborative project between a German public broadcast service and social science academics – I explore how “digital experts” who act as strategic consultants in the project, interpret recommendation algorithms. More particular, I examine how they translate algorithmic imaginaries into requirements that impact content creation in social science communication. Drawing on the analysis of “actual practices surrounding algorithmic technologies” (Christin, 2017, p. 1), I argue that it is precisely the “sense-making” surrounding recommendation algorithms that transforms content creation in science communication. In more detail, I examine the consulting practices of "digital experts" and delineate three requirements that they derived from algorithmic imaginaries: (1) Include diverse audiences, exclude complexity (2) Address everyday needs of users, (3) Persuade first, explain later. While acknowledging the significant role of science within the YouTube platform, they advised to restructure the content according to their understanding of the recommendation algorithms (e.g., prioritising persuasion practices over scientific rigour) making themselves complicit with the platform’s interests. By focusing on algorithmic imaginaries, the paper proposes that it is not the algorithms alone that transform science communication content on social media but rather the context-specific interpretations of algorithms and the adjustment of practices towards this interpretation.

Send message to Author

Long abstract:

Within the United States, the use of hormone blockers for trans youth has transformed from a niche medical protocol into a site of political and medical contestation within public debate. In doing so, discourse advocates, calling either for the allowance or ban of hormone blockers for trans youth. have revealed ways in which scientific information is generated, communicated, and interpreted both by stakeholders--such as parents of trans youth, politicians, and anti-trans activists--as well as the lay public. Using interview data in tandem with digital archival research of legal proceedings, media reporting, published opinion pieces, and public blog posts on sites publishing on anti-trans arguments, this paper highlights how the generation and presentation of scientific information is used in order to garner social and political support on both sides of the hormone blocker debate.

This paper highlights and explores three mechanisms through which scientific information is deployed in public discourse: (1) selective engagement with scientific information, in which discourse advocates strategically select what scientific dialogues they publicly engage in; (2) parallel use of factual and emotional rhetoric, in which discourse advocates will publicly engage with technoscientific and medical artifacts (such as academic articles and conference presentations), making them more intellectually legible to a lay public while also imbuing their analysis with emotional arguments; and (3) scientific equivocation, in which discourse advocates give equal credence to different forms of knowledge productions, platforming artifacts such as peer reviewed articles and personal blog posts in tandem with one another.

Send message to Author

Long abstract:

When aducanumab (Aduhelm​​®) was approved by the FDA to slow cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease in June 2021, there was an immediate public uproar. Researchers publicly decried it as the "worst approval decision in recent history" while, simultaneously, patients activists and advocacy organizations celebrated. This controversy is usually cast as either a victory over bureaucratic indifference to suffering or as evidence of government/pharma corruption in which an ineffective drug was approved to bolster profit. However, based on archival research with public-facing documents produced by both the pro- and anti-approval sides (op-eds, open letters, etc), I argue that the core of this conflict is a collision of two forms of time – and the relations and imaginaries they constitute. The pro-approval side’s logic is driven by "degeneration time" – a term I offer to describe a crisis temporality, structured by urgency, action and individuality, that comes to dominate lives lived around degenerative illness. In contrast, the anti-approval arguments are structured by the grid of intelligibility that follows from "data time" – a distributed, slow form of time that works in an expanded historical moment and prioritizes collective scientific knowledge. By reframing this conflict, I situate it within a long history of drug approval controversies and attempt to think the logics of patients, researchers and regulators together. In doing so, I move beyond the traditional, intractable narrative and ask how we might reconcile these two forms of, seemingly incommensurable, time that continuously collide across and within biomedical publics.

Send message to Authors

Long abstract:

During the Covid-19 pandemic, public conversations regarding science were notably polarised, fragmented, and fast-paced – with little space for exploring diverse perspectives. Conversations were flooded with (scientific) information, conspiracies, and – oftentimes contradicting – expert statements. It placed a spotlight on individual citizens and their communities to make sense of scientific information, and decide how to act. In our paper, we take the Covid-19 pandemic as a case study to explore how citizens make sense of science during times of crisis and focus on the implications for the practice of science communication. We formed Communities of Practice (so-called 'Rethinkerspaces') in universities, science centers and science museums across Europe. Together, we studied sensemaking practices of citizens during the first wave of the pandemic and experimented with new science communication practices. Our study into 'sensemaking practices' show that citizens rarely navigated the encountered knowledge uncertainties and moral ambiguities on basis of science communication outputs. Many participants felt that science communication outputs present science as a univocal answer to questions that are way more complex and ambiguous. In stead, citizens made sense of science with help of personal experiences and their social context, and valued moments that helped them weigh or interpret emotions, values and experiences. This is a sobering but valuable insight for the field of science communication. In the proposed contribution, I would like to present this study's findings and show how reflective practices for practitioners help to reconnect to citizens' sensemaking practices.