Communicating Science to the Public

Abstract

The projects share, with different degrees of emphasis, four main assumptions, supported by the literature. 1. There is no such thing as the communication of science. Neither science nor the media environment is a unified phenomenon. Scientists disagree; the media present different accounts; receivers of scientific communication interpret each set of them in different ways, which may result in distinct, even disjointed, understandings. 2. There is no such thing as the public. There are many publics for science: the specialist and the lay, the interested and the disinterested, the powerful and the powerless; young and old; male and female. While these publics will share much, they will also understand or misunderstand, remember or forget, in different ways. 3. In the modern communication environment, science cannot claim any privileged status. Science has to compete for attention, from the producers

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