The Background to Effective Science Communication with the Public

Abstract

To be effective with any audience, communication must be an interactive process. As Sless and Shrensky show in Chapter 6, science communicators who think only of the message and not of the ‘audience’ are likely to fail. Communication is essentially as much a matter of listening as it is of talking and, to be effective, each party must have some understanding of the other. In this chapter, I shall review what we know about the ways in which the general public views science and scientists and I shall consider some impediments to understanding which, if overlooked, may prevent effective scientific communication.