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Activist organizations play an important role in shaping public perception of controversial topics such as appropriate drug use. In 2015, after the mobilization of activists, Brazil legalized one form of medical cannabis by prescription only. In 2016, the Medical Cannabis Research and Patient Support Association (APEPI) registered as a Brazilian non-governmental organization focusing on “awareness, demystification and democratization of the medical use of cannabis” (APEPI, n.d.). Oliveira (2017) analyzed similarities between APEPI members and the lay experts Epstein (1995) described in early AIDS activism. Using netnography, our case study explores APEPI’s cannabis activism such as news, websites, interviews, and documentaries as well as the organization’s recent email newsletters. We explore how this activist organization communicates science and impacts the science-society relationship. We analyze how APEPI builds their authority as experts, combining members’ lived experience with scientific knowledge shared in interviews with scientists and developed in partnership with universities. We attend particularly to the role of these activists as trusted intermediaries for parts of the Brazilian public; the role of the organization in producing grassroots knowledge, especially advice for medical marijuana users; and the types of people, such as celebrities, scientists, and prominent movement leaders, featured in APEPI’s Instagram posts.

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To address issues of inequity and exclusion in the science classroom, Louise Archer and her colleagues established the concept of science capital, a collection of resources and experiences which can inform an individual's ability to engage with science, and their aspirations to pursue post-compulsory science education and careers. Following the initial proposal of the concept in 2014, science capital has become popular in the fields of science education and science communication as a way to consider equity and social justice; many practitioners within these fields have created their own conceptualisations of it and incorporated these conceptualisations into their practice.

Building on Archer’s work, this paper explores the ways in which practitioners have conceptualised and operationalised the concept of science capital in their work planning, delivering and evaluating science-based learning activities. Using semi-structured qualitative interviews, my research shows how practitioners either view science capital as an ideology, meaning it aligns with their internal motivations for working in science education and forms the basis of their approach, or as a practicality, meaning science capital is drawn upon as a specific tool to address equity and social justice, challenging their approach to science education. In showing how a range of practitioners have both aligned with and diverged from Archer’s original conceptualisation of science capital, this paper argues that a nuanced view of science capital is required to develop its value for social justice, and demonstrates the need for sustained support to allow academic research to transform practice towards equity and social justice.

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With the growth of science communication initiatives there is an urgent need to systematically and rigorously reflect on practices, discuss and find new solutions to the challenges related with power and perpetuating inequalities. It is therefore necessary to identify what impacts on and serves equitable science communication, having in mind that disadvantaged communities are not fairly represented, nor is their knowledge fairly valued and taking into account a global perspective of different contexts, countries, cultural clusters. In the case of the Portuguese language, spoken by over 250 million people, science communication is considered an asset in the access to science and knowledge. It is important not to forget historical relations of colonialism that can reproduce structural inequalities and to combat neo-colonialist attitudes, biases and "saviour" complexes. This contribuiton aims to discuss the opportunities and challenges arising from the work of Cartas com Ciência (“Letters with Science”), a science communication non-profit working in 8 Portuguese-speaking countries in 4 continents to use science as a vehicle for reduction of inequalities, which aims to design and implement programmes according to equitable and socially just practices and based on scientific research. Since 2020, Cartas com Ciência has facilitated educational programmes of letter exchanges between over 500 pairs of pupil-scientists in Portuguese-speaking countries. By discussing critically within an equity and social justice lens what has and has not been accomplished regarding the processes and practices, this contribution’s tentative conclusions aim to foster more equitable and critically informed science communication.

MRPA supported by FCT UIDB/00194/2020, BIPD/UI57/10732/2023.

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Historically, the role of science communication for development has been supportive of the dominant regimes of power and knowledge known to have produced the most disruptive yet beneficial social and technological innovations. Consequently, it has also been complicit in the deepening of social inequalities and epistemic violence in many countries across the world, such as the Philippines. In this review and critical reflection, we argue that science communication must consciously enable societies and institutions to transition to sustainable futures and create new paradigms of change. Drawing on our shared yet diverse experiences and positionalities as scholars and practitioners from the Philippines, we propose five features of transformative science communication: critical understanding of science as situated knowledge, co-production of knowledge, politics of knowledge, embracing uncertainty as condition of reality, and the rethinking of the goals and outcomes of science communication. Through this contribution, we hope to broaden the emerging discourse on social inclusion and decolonization agenda in science communication with relevance to the Global South.

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This session will discuss the localisation of science communication resources through the establishment of a network of National and Regional (N&R) hubs.

Relationships between science, technology and society are no longer thought to solely depend on the breadth of information available, but are understood to be deep rooted in specific cultural, political, and socio-economic contexts. Without this consideration, efforts to strengthen these relationships can instead cause further damage.

Oftentimes, resources to support science communicators are funded and developed through projects on a larger (European) scale. While project partners bring unique perspectives from a variety of practices and countries, we must acknowledge the limits of these perspectives when designing activities aimed at audiences not part of the conversation. If the relationships we hope to foster between science and society are deep rooted in context and intersectionality, local expertise and experience must be valued and embedded into science communication endeavours through reciprocal interactions.

Coordinated Opportunities for Advanced Leadership and Engagement in Science Communication in Europe (COALESCE) is a Horizon Europe project tasked with establishing a European Competence Centre (CC) for Science Communication, with co-creation at its core. COALESCE will build a network of N&R hubs to act as a bridge between local science communicators, and the training and tools hosted by the CC, by positioning activities within specific contexts. We will highlight how this network is vital to ensure impact and sustainability of the centre itself, while working to foster positive, equitable relationships between science and diverse audiences across society.

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Contemporary popular culture is steeped in science in the UK. But what does this mean for how science and society relationships are constructed from a justice-oriented perspective? We already know, for instance, that the dominant institutions of public science are largely the preserve of the most privileged groups in our societies. Everyday, popular culture seems to offer something different, but does it really? That science and society are mutually constitutive is a central tenet of science and technology studies. While popular culture is a key part of this landscape, we know remarkably little about how they mediate relationships between science and society. Popular culture remains therefore a crucial political space for researchers. This study examined science in popular culture by looking at the experiences and practices of those who produce it (cultural producers) in three areas; the mass media, museums and science centres and activists/community organisers. These three groups were identified as representing quite differently organised industries and access to power in order to open up a new space to think about the co-construction of science and society relationships. The study found the work of popular culture producers to be riddled with tensions, many fought for workforce diversity while reproducing colonial tropes in their programmes or exhibitions. The study found that structural inequalities, power and science stories were intertwined in contemporary popular culture in ways that draw on, reproduce, mediate and, at times, transform science and society relationships about whose knowledges, practices or communities matter.

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The South African Research Chair in Science Communication is funded by the National Research Foundation and has a responsibility to undertake critical research in the public interest. Since 2022, the focus of the research has been "science communication for social justice". A number of action research projects in the field of creative communications have been imagined and implemented. Alongside these, a number of "issues-driven" research projects aiming to explore the role of communications in stitching together scientific evidence with social justice issues are underway. Current projects are in the realm of climate and environment, including work on waste, river rejuvenation, ocean pollution, and climate attitudes, as well as in the realm of health and happiness, including work on obesity, motherhood, malnutrition and food cultures. Our creative communications projects span audio, visual, and creating writing experiments. This presentation will share some notes of these various works in progress as a basis for considering what role science communication research could play in advancing social justice and equity in South Africa, and for thinking through how researchers can move to integrate radical, decolonial, and progressive politics into the heart of science communication. These notes might be of interest to colleagues working in countries with similar socio-economic, political and cultural features.

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Science education and communication practices aiming to engage people in science often echo institutionalised power structures and deficit-based approaches. There is a call for more inclusive practices and approaches to improve equity, democracy, trust in institutions, and the use of scientific knowledge in societies. Understanding how people engage with science in their everyday lives is a step towards dismantling existing hierarchies and fostering inclusivity. Current practice theory offers a novel approach and analytical lens for interpreting science-related practices as everyday performances and shared entities revealing science-related social norms.

This study explores how people engage in science in their everyday lives, how they define the concept of science and understand science-related practices. Empirical data is based on semi-structured interviews with science centre visitors and people not used to visiting such places. Results were compiled through theory-based and data-driven analysis. Regardless of participants' education or socio-economic status, people reported engagement in science-related practices primarily in the context of working life. Science-related practices were chiefly seen as positive and taken-for-granted everyday doings and sayings. However, most informants implied not being clever enough to engage in science, reflecting perceptions of the breadth of science as well as societal norms connected to institutionalised science.

Overall, this study sheds light on socially shared understandings and normativity of science, while uncovering the diversity of everyday science-related practices. It brings about a critical reflection on the academic approaches of science-promoting practitioners, directing us to develop new possibilities to advance accessibility and equity in the field of science engagement.

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Science communication beyond the scientifically interested and educated white middle classes is no easy matter but all the more important (Scheufele, 2018). The topic has received increasing attention (e.g. Dawson 2019; Judd & McKinnon 2021). However, there is still a lack of systematic overviews – many approaches focus on a limited set of aspects.

We propose a typology of exclusion factors. It builds on an updated research review from Schrögel et al. (2018) and Humm et al. (2020) that attempts to systematize marginalized audiences in science communication and identify the underlying barriers.

A more comprehensive overview with specific starting points for the various identified exclusion factors can provide a basis for a critical reflection and development of a justice-oriented science communication. This input aims to open up a space for discussing intersectional perspectives on science communication practice and research.

Literature

Dawson, E. (2019). Equity, Exclusion & Everyday Science Learning. The experiences of minoritised groups. Routledge.

Humm, C., Schrögel, P., & Leßmöllmann. (2020). Feeling left out: Underserved audiences in science communication. Media and Communication, 8(1), 164–176.

Judd, K., & McKinnon, M. (2021). A systematic map of inclusion, equity and diversity in science communication research: Do we practice what we preach?. Frontiers in Communication.

Scheufele, D. A. (2018). Beyond the Choir? The Need to Understand Multiple Publics for Science. Environmental Communication, 12(8), 1–4.

Schrögel, P., Humm, C., Leßmöllmann, A., Kremer, B., Adler, J., & Weißkopf, M. (2018). Nicht erreichte Zielgruppen in der Wissenschaftskommunikation: Literatur-Review zu Exklusionsfaktoren und Analyse von Fallbeispielen. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-66846-1

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With the Covid-19 pandemic, scientific authority began to be routinely consulted by mainstream media. In this framework, our goal was to analyze, under the lens of epistemic injustice, the media representation of scientists in Brazil during the first year of the public health crisis. We start from the hypothesis that, with the pandemic, the plurality of scientific voices explored by Brazilian journalism was accompanied by a diversity of gender, race and age. To this end, we applied a research protocol and quantitatively analyzed newscasts on the country’s main TV news program, Jornal Nacional, where scientists were interviewed on the subject of “vaccination”, a topic of broad interest given that the vaccine had been presented since the beginning of the pandemic as a response to cope with the public health crisis. We discuss information about gender, race and age, the speaking and screen times of the scientists, and the format in which they are inserted into the news report. The data reveal that the predominant image of the scientist broadcast to the audience – a mature white man – reinforces stereotypes that persist in the media and in the public understanding of science. These stereotypes feed the logic of epistemic injustice that historically has kept minority groups (such as women and black people) away from spaces for the production of science. The results, therefore, contradict our initial hypothesis indicating that we cannot talk about changes in the standard of representation of scientists in the context of the public health crisis.

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At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, a video was aired across all major UK broadcasters in an unprecedented TV moment. The video featured public figures who were appealing to racially minoritized (e.g., Black and Asian) people to take the COVID-19 vaccine. This video, and a number of others like it, were justice-oriented; they reflected a ‘community’ response to racially minoritized people’s greater risk of contracting COVID-19, and concern about under-engagement with vaccination programmes. This paper aims to explore what these videos revealed about racialized mistrust in science and how it was addressed. Our content analysis of 10 videos suggests that mistrust was confronted in a largely superficial manner, with little attention given to the underlying issues or reasonings. We argue that mistrust in this context became a signifier for shared concerns and experiences, which was used to establish a ‘mutuality’ between the public figures that appeared in the videos and the supposed audience. We discuss how this approach may be understandable, given the nature and context of these science communications, but it is nevertheless limited for dealing with the complex and differentiated nature of racialized mistrust

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Storytelling is often delegated to the borders of scientific discourse. Yet, stories and storytelling practices are both distinct tools of communication and methods of knowledge production to foster pluralistic and reflective engagement in STS. In this paper, I discuss how storytelling, specifically STEMtelling, can become more central to scientific discourse in epistemic cultures and building interdisciplinary scientific inquiry. This paper presents the theoretical basis for STEMtelling, an STS storytelling tool that I developed, as a method of social inquiry. Guided by Helen Longino’s requirements for social inquiry, I argue that STEMtelling establishes an inclusive and collaborative approach to building epistemic cultures that work towards epistemic justice. Through experiences, values, and scientific practices, STEMtelling acts as an entry point for critical discourse in scientific knowledge making. STEMtelling demonstrates how narratives can promote a more robust public and shared standards in understanding multiple epistemologies and disciplinary languages. Additionally, through analysis of historical and contemporary practices of how scientists have engaged with the narrative form, this paper demonstrates how storytelling is essential to scientific knowledge production. Findings from this paper will support the theoretical development of STEMtelling, as a storytelling tool. This research contributes to critical STS debates, offering a novel approach of how STEMtelling can be used to engage in new approaches to epistemic cultures and the structures of scientific knowledge making towards practices of epistemic justice.