Chemistry in the mail: Stamps from around the globe and public science communication in the twentieth century

2021 ◽  
pp. 096366252110324
Author(s):  
Madison A. Krall ◽  
Melissa M. Parks ◽  
Emily Krebs ◽  
Benjamin W. Mann ◽  
Kourtney Maison ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Rhetorical Analysis ◽  
Science History ◽  
Public Science ◽  
The Public ◽  
Postage Stamps

Postage stamps are designed to convey messages that reverberate symbolically with broad swaths of the public, and their content has been employed as a window into how members of the public understand the ideas represented therein. In this rhetorical analysis, we analyze Philadelphia’s Science History Institute’s Witco Stamp Collection, which features 430 stamps from countries around the globe dating from 1910 to 1983, to identify how chemistry is portrayed in this ubiquitous medium. We find the vernacular of science reflected and supported by these images functions to (a) define chemistry in terms of its invisibility and abstraction; (b) uphold chemical operations as instrumental and daedal, or exceptional, in nature; and (c) delineate practitioners of chemistry as—on the whole—privileged and preternatural. Our findings reveal some of the overarching communicative tools made available to twentieth-century non-experts for articulating chemistry as an enterprise and reveal how those tools positioned chemistry in terms of values related to opacity and exclusivity.

Assessment by Audiences Shows Little Effect of Science Communication Training

2020 ◽  
pp. 107554702097163
Author(s):  
Margaret A. Rubega ◽  
Kevin R. Burgio ◽  
A. Andrew M. MacDonald ◽  
Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch ◽  
Robert S. Capers ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Science Communication ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Communication Training ◽  
Communication Course ◽  
Good Communication ◽  
Public Science ◽  
The Public ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Science Community

As the science community has recognized the vital role of communicating to the public, science communication training has proliferated. The development of rigorous, comparable approaches to assessment of training has not kept pace. We conducted a fully controlled experiment using a semester-long science communication course, and audience assessment of communicator performance. Evaluators scored the communication competence of trainees and their matched, untrained controls, before and after training. Bayesian analysis of the data showed very small gains in communication skills of trainees, and no difference from untrained controls. High variance in scores suggests little agreement on what constitutes “good” communication.

scholarly journals Public science communication in Africa: views and practices of academics at the National University of Science and Technology in Zimbabwe

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (06) ◽  
pp. A05 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Ndlovu ◽  
Marina Joubert ◽  
Nelius Boshoff
Keyword(s):  
Science Communication ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Peer Communication ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Public Science ◽  
The Public ◽  
Science Engagement ◽  
National University ◽  
Funding Environment

This study of the science communication views and practices of African researchers ― academics at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) in Zimbabwe ― reveals a bleak picture of the low status of public science engagement in the developing world. Researchers prioritise peer communication and pay little attention to the public, policy makers and popular media. Most scientists believe the public is largely not scientifically literate or interested in research. An unstable funding environment, a lack of communication incentives and censoring of politically sensitive findings further constrain researchers' interest in public engagement. Most NUST academics, however, are interested in science communication training. We suggest interventions that could revive and support public science engagement at African universities.

scholarly journals FROM LABORATORY RESEARCH TO THE PUBLIC: SCIENCE COMMUNICATION FOR POLICY, RESEARCH COMMUNITY AND PUBLIC

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (Suppl 2) ◽  
pp. A66.1-A66
Author(s):  
Emily Kabuye ◽  
Tom Lutalo ◽  
Pontiano Kaleebu ◽  
Edward Mbidde
Keyword(s):  
Science Communication ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
Research Community ◽  
Laboratory Research ◽  
Public Science ◽  
The Public

scholarly journals Performing Science in Public: Science Communication and Scientific Identity

2021 ◽  
pp. 207-223
Author(s):  
Sarah R. Davies
Keyword(s):  
Science Communication ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
The Self ◽  
Public Communication ◽  
Public Science ◽  
The Public ◽  
Communication Of Science ◽  
Scientific Identity ◽  
The City ◽  
Communication Supports

AbstractThis chapter examines the identity work that takes place within public communication of science. Using a conceptualisation of identity as performance – and thus as something that may be done differently within different contexts – it uses the case of a large science festival, Science in the City, which took place in Copenhagen in 2014, to examine how scientific identities can be enacted in science communication. The key argument is that such communication supports multiple and flexible identity performances. Scientific identities are intertwined with other ways of performing the self, and both audiences and communicators are heterogeneous communities, which do not neatly sit in categories of ‘scientists’ or ‘the public’. Ultimately, it appears that science communication is used by scientists (and others) for many different identity-building purposes, in many different ways.

scholarly journals The better you know, the better you make your choice. The need for a scientific citizenship in the era of knowledge

2008 ◽  
Vol 07 (03) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pietro Greco
Keyword(s):  
Science Communication ◽  
Public Understanding Of Science ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Evolutionary Processes ◽  
Public Science ◽  
The Public ◽  
Understanding Of Science

Martin W. Bauer is right, two evolutionary processes are under way. These are quite significant and, in some way, they converge into public science communication: a deep evolution of discourse is unfolding, along with an even deeper change of the public understanding of science.

scholarly journals The shift from public science communication to public relations. The Vaxxed case

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (02) ◽  
pp. C02 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davide Bennato
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Public Science ◽  
The Public ◽  
Communication Processes ◽  
Scientific World ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
Communication Dynamics ◽  
Dynamics Of Science

Social media is restructuring the dynamics of science communication processes inside and outside the scientific world. As concerns science communication addressed to the general public, we are witnessing the advent of communication practices that are more similar to public relations than to the traditional processes of the Public Understanding of Science. By analysing the digital communication strategies implemented for the anti-vaccination documentary Vaxxed, the paper illustrates these new communication dynamics, that are both social and computational.

scholarly journals Microblogging as an extension of science reporting

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (8) ◽  
pp. 953-968 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moritz Büchi
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Latent Dirichlet Allocation ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Public Science ◽  
The Public ◽  
Science Reporting ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Science News

Mass media have long provided general publics with science news. New media such as Twitter have entered this system and provide an additional platform for the dissemination of science information. Based on automated collection and analysis of >900 news articles and 70,000 tweets, this study explores the online communication of current science news. Topic modeling (latent Dirichlet allocation) was used to extract five broad themes of science reporting: space missions, the US government shutdown, cancer research, Nobel Prizes, and climate change. Using content and network analysis, Twitter was found to extend public science communication by providing additional voices and contextualizations of science issues. It serves a recommender role by linking to web resources, connecting users, and directing users’ attention. This article suggests that microblogging adds a new and relevant layer to the public communication of science.

The Samarin Family and the Parish Question in the Russian Empire. 1860s–1910s

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 235-246
Author(s):  
Alexey L. Beglov
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Public Discussion ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Church Life ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
The Church ◽  
Do So

The article examines the contribution of the representatives of the Samarin family to the development of the Parish issue in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The issue of expanding the rights of the laity in the sphere of parish self-government was one of the most debated problems of Church life in that period. The public discussion was initiated by D.F. Samarin (1827-1901). He formulated the “social concept” of the parish and parish reform, based on Slavophile views on society and the Church. In the beginning of the twentieth century his eldest son F.D. Samarin who was a member of the Special Council on the development the Orthodox parish project in 1907, and as such developed the Slavophile concept of the parish. In 1915, A.D. Samarin, who took up the position of the Chief Procurator of the Most Holy Synod, tried to make his contribution to the cause of the parish reforms, but he failed to do so due to his resignation.

State of Fashion: Searching for the New Luxury

APRIA Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-16
Author(s):  
José Teunissen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
The Other ◽  
Century Model ◽  
Cocktail Party ◽  
The Public ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

In the last few years, it has often been said that the current fashion system is outdated, still operating by a twentieth-century model that celebrates the individualism of the 'star designer'. In I- D, Sarah Mower recently stated that for the last twenty years, fashion has been at a cocktail party and has completely lost any connection with the public and daily life. On the one hand, designers and big brands experience the enormous pressure to produce new collections at an ever higher pace, leaving less room for reflection, contemplation, and innovation. On the other hand, there is the continuous race to produce at even lower costs and implement more rapid life cycles, resulting in disastrous consequences for society and the environment.

Epilogue

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
The Public ◽  
Antebellum Era ◽  
Narrative Device ◽  
The Future

This conclusion explains how American temporalities changed after the war and sketches how expectations and anticipations of the future have alternated as the dominant view in American culture through the twentieth century to today. This chapter also shows how the short war myth, the story that Civil War Americans expected a short, glorious war at the outset, gained currency with the public and consensus among scholars during the postwar period. It contrasts the wartime expectations of individuals with their postwar memories of the war’s beginning to show how the short war myth worked as a tool for sectional reconciliation and a narrative device that dramatized the war by creating an innocent antebellum era or golden age before the cataclysm. It considers why historians still accept the myth and showcases three postwar voices that challenged it.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document