Reorienting science communication towards communities

Abstract

Communities are rarely seen as the ideal level at which to focus science communication efforts, compared to the individual, psychological or mass, societal levels. Yet evidence from allied fields suggests building interpersonal relationships with specific communities over time is key to meaningful engagement, so orienting science communication towards communities is warranted. In this paper, we argue this case. We review previous studies, identifying three existing models of community-oriented science communication, which we label neighbourly, problem-solving and brokering. We illustrate the effectiveness of the problem-solving approach and the desirable ideal of brokering using recent examples of community-oriented science communication from Australia.