This study examines public attitudes toward gene-edited foods in Japan, focusing on how underlying worldviews shape these responses. Drawing on a national survey and a latent class segmentation model based on 23 worldview variables, we identify four distinct segments: Communitarian, Environmentalist, Governmentalist, and Individualist. The findings indicate modest rather than sharply polarized differences in attitudes, with the Communitarian and Environmentalist segments expressing greater caution than the Governmentalist and Individualist segments. Across all four segments, gene-edited foods are broadly perceived as unnatural, yet support for commercialization remains comparatively high, suggesting that perceptions of unnaturalness do not necessarily translate into strong opposition to commercialization. This pattern suggests that evaluations of gene-edited foods are shaped by multiple normative considerations, in which moral or symbolic concerns coexist with pragmatic judgments about societal benefits and technological governance. These findings suggest that similar levels of support or skepticism can emerge from differing normative orientations.
Quantifications played an important role during the COVID-19 pandemic, not only in providing current situational information but also in legitimizing state-imposed protective measures and restrictions. Contrary to more theoretical assumptions in the literature, however, figures or statistics were not simply accepted. This article undertakes a qualitative content analysis of user comments on Twitter (now: X) that respond to quantification-based legitimizations of state-instructed protective measures in Germany. The analysis identifies three main areas of critique: the timeliness and relevance of data, its factual accuracy, and the political implications of their use in justifying protective measures. The overlap of epistemic and normative criticism points to broader conflicts of knowledge and values, where concerns extend beyond the validity of data. The article emphasizes the importance of a reflexive approach that remains sensitive to the challenges and pitfalls of quantifications in the design of future risk and crisis communication strategies.
Climate change communication is often framed as a contest between scientific knowledge and skepticism, but this binary overlooks fragmentation within the broader climate-concerned public. Drawing on cultural cognition theory, this study examines how competing discourse frames organize climate change debate on Twitter/X. A total of 556,470 English-language tweets posted between July 2014 and April 2024 were analyzed using Latent Dirichlet Allocation and Analysis of Topic Model Networks, supplemented with manual validation. The analysis identifies six discourse frames, dominated by Action & Responsibility, Political Process & Policy, Scientific Evidence & Impact, and Skepticism & Counter-Narrative. The findings show that skepticism consitutes a cohesive but minority discourse, while substantial fragmentation also separates scientific, activist, and policy-oriented communication. Scientific evidence remains weakly integrated into both mobilizational and institutional discourse, and grassroots activism is structurally separated from policy discussion. These patterns recast climate communication as a problem of coordination and cultural translation across “discourse islands,” rather than simply one of correcting misinformation or increasing the supply of scientific facts.
This qualitative study, conducted at Finland's research universities, analyses high-profile academic leaders who have chosen to be disconnected from social media. We conducted individual interviews with 19 leaders and performed a situational analysis to investigate the rationale for abstaining from social media. Academic leaders rationalised disconnection by reasons related to personality, sociability, critical rationality, and health and security. The leaders' intensive involvement in three social worlds intensified the individual rationale for disconnection and enabled the leaders to work successfully despite disconnection. These social worlds were research and science, sensitive academia, and insider networks in society. In the context of the managerial neoliberal university, its promotional communication culture, and competition for visibility, the leaders' disconnection from social media has a dissident, resistant characteristic. The study contributes to prior research through its comprehensive approach to academic leaders' operational environment. Future research should elaborate on the systemic approach to social media in universities.
Research focused on the United States shows that people’s trust in science varies considerably between disciplines. Existing explanations of these trust gaps stress the role of ideology: when people perceive scientists of a particular discipline to be ideologically like-minded, they tend to trust them more. Here, we report two findings: First, trust gaps between disciplines also exist in France: A representative sample of the French population (N = 1,012) trusted researchers in biology and physics more than researchers studying climate science, economics, or sociology. Second, the more precise and consensual participants perceive scientific findings to be, the more they tend to trust the scientists (across and within disciplines). While these findings are correlational, they align with a non-ideological explanation of trust in science: the rational impression account. This account proposes that people can come to trust scientists by relying on basic cognitive inference processes, which tend to be generally rational.
This article explores the persistent troubles in the relation of science and its publics through a sociological lens. It conceptualises science communication as a wicked problem, a systemic challenge involving boundary negotiations across differentiated social worlds. We then examine how actors themselves interpret this wicked situation. We find that multiple paradigms of deficits, that is, master discourses of narrating this wickedness as crises, have become prominent. Over time, these crises have centred on issues of knowledge, trust, participation, and, most recently, political action. Yet, earlier crisis discourses do not disappear; instead, they persist alongside their successors. In conclusion, we call for a reflexive approach that critically examines how actors' categories and discourses shape problem perception and communication strategies. The article advocates for avoiding normative allegiance to single master discourses and emphasises the importance of empirical investigation of the relation of science and its publics across periods, countries, and disciplines.
This study examines how scientific literacy dimensions-nature of science understanding, scientific reasoning, positive beliefs about science, and interest in science-are related to willingness to participate in medical research, mediated by conspiracy beliefs about and trust in medical researchers. Survey data were collected from a sample of 600 Slovaks recruited via an online panel. Regression-based mediation analysis revealed that positive beliefs about science and interest in science exhibited total and indirect associations with willingness to participate in medical research. By contrast, nature of science understanding and scientific reasoning were related to willingness to participate in medical research only indirectly. The indirect pathways of all scientific literacy dimensions operated through conspiracy beliefs about and trust in medical researchers, with trust showing the strongest positive association with willingness to participate in medical research. These findings highlight that the association between scientific literacy and willingness to participate in medical research is rather complex, mediated by beliefs about medical researchers. Addressing these beliefs alongside scientific literacy promotion may enhance public willingness to participate in medical research.
Trust in scientists has declined among US conservatives, while belief in science itself remains high among nearly everyone. This indicates a political differentiation of scientific authority where political ideologues are increasingly getting their scientific information from different scientific sources. But beyond pure information consumption, those who have eschewed mainstream scientific authority are also more likely to find support for their scientific identity in a more differentiated medium like the Internet. To examine this possibility, we use the General Social Survey NSF Knowledge scale and a question measuring self-perception of scientific competency to operationalize a concept we call "scientific humility/arrogance." We then compare liberals and conservatives on this measure across self-reported mediums of scientific consumption. We find that accessing scientific information through the Internet has the general effect of humbling extreme liberals with no such effect found among conservatives. We discuss implications for researchers and stakeholders in scientific communication and understandings.
Science-based experts have started to utilize social media to seek direct contact with audiences and social recognition for their expertise. Experts need to balance professional principles and the expectations arising from the changing media landscape. To understand how science-based experts navigate their way on social media, we utilize the concept of boundary work. We analyze how medical doctors enact and expand expertise on Instagram via boundary work in relation to publics, self, and markets. Using qualitative content analysis, we studied 2125 Instagram posts from the 20 most-followed doctors in Finland. Doctors enacted expertise by holding on to their epistemic authority, maintaining their professional role at the core of their posts, and avoiding advertising medical services. However, they expanded expertise by building relationships with their audiences, using anecdotes and personal experiences in their communication, and creating new communicational products for their audiences.
Uncertainty, though integral to scientific practice and advancement, is routinely omitted from science communication. While extensive study has uncovered the effect of this in politicized scientific fields, its influence in unpoliticized sciences is murkier. This survey-experiment study in the USA investigates audience perceptions of communicator trustworthiness when reading excerpts of neuroimaging journalism portraying the field as (a) uncertainty-filled or (b) certain enough to be on the cusp of enabling mind-reading. Findings bolster hitherto mixed results and (exploratorily) suggest perceived communicator trustworthiness may hinge on an author's uncertainty matching audience members' tolerance for uncertainty-when they score high in science literacy.
People often reject scientific evidence that is at odds with their previous beliefs. Here, we examine the role of threat in such motivated science rejection and whether affirmations in science communication can effectively reduce threat, thereby alleviating motivated rejection. Across three experimental studies (Ntotal = 2728) set in written interview scenarios about the alleged effects of gender-conscious language (i.e. using language that explicitly accounts for all genders, instead of, e.g. using generic masculine forms), we find consistent evidence for threat, especially autonomy threat, as an important driver for motivated rejection of researchers' trustworthiness and evidence credibility. Shared value and autonomy affirmations, however, showed less consistent and, if any, very small effects as modulators of motivated science rejection, questioning their practical relevance in science communication.
Recent decades have seen the rising establishment of public engagement professionals supporting communication and engagement in the contexts of science and health research. This article explores how public engagement professionals consider the ethical dimensions of their work. Based on analysis of 17 interviews with science communication and public engagement specialists at UK academic institutions and in practice settings, we examine the ways in which they frame ethical issues associated with engagement, as well as how they frame both publics and researchers. In doing so, we explore two tensions that together highlight how the rising popularity of engagement methods, including engaged research, can increase awareness of the need to ethically scrutinise engagement and associated practices. We also argue that public engagement professionals can further contribute to and advance academic discussion around engagement, arguing that ongoing research with practitioners is beneficial for academic understanding of communication, engagement and engaged research.
Today's increasing and indiscriminate use of generative artificial intelligence to access science-related information is a serious cause for concern. Here, we investigated the role of knowledge about generative AI in individuals' engagement with AI-generated science-related information. Specifically, we focused on the relationship between epistemic AI knowledge, regarding the features and construction processes that characterize AI output, and individuals' likelihood of changing their dietary decisions following exposure to AI-generated content. Based on two consecutive online surveys with embedded performance tasks, Study I (n = 500) and Study II (n = 800) demonstrated that less epistemic AI knowledge and higher trust in generative AI significantly increase the likelihood of changing decisions and reasoning, often to align with the generative AI's responses. People were also more likely to change their decision in the presence of information reliability cues such as two concordant generative AI responses, regardless of alignment with experts' views or the presence of reliable sources.
This study examines six types of science, health, and medical sources, focusing on public perceptions of each source's gender, credibility, benevolence, and political affiliation. Results reveal that medical doctors were rated highest in credibility and benevolence. All of the expert sources were more likely to be reported as male, reflecting persistent stereotypes. Public health experts and academic scientists were perceived as more liberal, whereas medical doctors and industry scientists did not have perceived political affiliations. Across all sources, perceptions of political partisanship corresponded with lower credibility perceptions. Implications for science and health communication research and practice are considered.
Research involving animal experimentation is a contentious issue at the intersection of science and society, making science communication about it especially challenging. Yet, we lack a systematic account of the barriers researchers and communicators face in this context. Our systematic review used a peer-reviewed search strategy and screening by independent reviewers. The resulting 65 documents (e.g. research articles, editorials, comments) underwent full-text qualitative content analysis. Seven barrier themes emerged from the dataset, most prominently: The Research Is Not Well Suited for Science Communication, The Public Is Difficult, and The Discourse Environment Is Complicated and Dysfunctional (occurred in 86%, 85% and 83% of the 65 documents). Each theme contains multiple barrier categories with varying prevalence across the analysed documents. We elaborate on the most prevalent categories and present examples. This offers researchers and communicators an overview of what they might face so they can prepare accordingly, ultimately strengthening public debate.
This article aims to advance our understanding of the communication of science conducted within the framework of externally funded research projects, also known as project-based science communication. It deploys semi-structured interviews to explore the experiences and perceptions of 26 communication specialists, project managers and other professionals who have been involved in the Communication & Dissemination Work Packages of Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe projects. Interviewees regard the communication of European Union-funded projects as beneficial, both personally and for society as a whole-in the latter case, primarily in instrumental terms. They identify several challenges to their communication functions, ranging from working conditions to structural factors such as project size or project duration, to the relationship with researchers and other partners. Many interviewees also hold a critical opinion of the current communication practices within European Union-funded projects and acknowledge the potentially detrimental effects of the multiplication of projects with attached communication responsibilities. The ultimate purpose of this article is to elicit interest in project-based science communication within the science communication scholarly community.
Citizen science (CS), which integrates the public into research processes, has been shown to enhance public understanding of science. Consequently, CS is increasingly employed across various disciplines, including the social sciences. In citizen social science (CSS) projects, citizen involvement typically extends beyond data collection, encompassing multiple stages of the research process-from conceptualization to data analysis. Despite the growing scholarly enthusiasm for CSS, this essay highlights key methodological and practical challenges associated with such co-created CSS initiatives. Using a systematic review of recent literature, we identify challenges across all consecutive steps of the research process involving co-creation. We conclude by advocating for a more nuanced perspective on CSS, emphasizing the need for a heightened awareness of these challenges.
