Constructing communication: Talking to scientists about talking to the public

Abstract

Recent work has started to explore "scientific understandings of publics" alongside public understandings of science. This study builds on this work to examine the ways in which public communication is talked about by scientists and engineers. The author identifies a range of ways of talking about the purposes and content of science communication to the public, arguing that the dominant framework for these is one-way communication, and that, in addition, such communication tends to be constructed as difficult and dangerous. However, the author further identifies a range of minority discourses that understand public communication in more complex terms. © 2008 Sage Publications.