What Does an STS Approach to Science Communication Look Like?

3.1 Introduction

The previous chapter was centrally concerned with unfolding how STS could contribute to the analysis of science communication, as well as how it is carried out. It highlighted the importance of thinking of science communication in co-productive terms, that is, looking at how knowledge, people, and society are made in one and the same move. This approach invites a move away from a purely representational perspective to being attentive to the performative character of any science communication effort. We have stressed the importance of considering the multiplicity of knowing spaces (Law 2017), which leads to heightened attention not only to the places where knowledge is produced, but also to the ways in which science communication itself is a space where knowledge gets (re)shaped. And we underlined the fluid character of science communication, a fluidity that means that we see science communication as a practice of creating situated heterogeneous assemblages of human and non-human actors, creating and distributing a broad range of narratives. These narratives in turn feed imaginaries about science, technology, and how societal pasts, presents, and futures co-evolve. In this view, science communication constantly allows new ways of knowing the world in which we live as well as of imagining the future worlds we want to live in.

This in turn has led us to stress three major sensibilities. First, practices of communication should be at the core of attention when analysing science communication; second, it is important to look out for [Page 40]complex, often hidden, choreographies of what gets assembled and connected in specific ways in any moment of science communication; and finally, we put notions such as justice, democracy and care at the centre, asking how science communication relates not only to scientific knowledge but also to the realisation of specific values. We position science communication as being at the core of contemporary knowledge societies, but, embracing a co-productionist gaze, we also understand this practice as formative for the science system itself (Felt & Fochler 2013; Irwin & Michael 2003). In science communication, both science and society mutually shape each other. This perspective frames science communication as central to any effort towards research and innovation being responsible towards society (as with efforts to promote ‘responsible research and innovation’, RRI), but also to understanding the role that science plays in contemporary societies.

Based on this central framework, this chapter offers a set of insights into what such an STS approach (or, better, such STS sensitivities) can offer to the analysis and practice of science communication. We will discuss seven overlapping perspectives, each focusing on a specific aspect of what a wider STS approach would add to more classical science communication approaches. They all allow us to rethink and reconceptualise making and doing science communication; as we discuss each perspective, we outline the key ideas on which they are based before pulling out some practical implications for studying science communication with them.

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