Learning on ScreenScience Communication
What do our students do during their year at Imperial? The phrase ‘Science Communication’ is somewhat misleading. It might imply that there is some specialised knowledge and particular skills peculiar to the communication of science to which Science Communication Group has access and which we teach our students. I don’t think any of us believe that is true. A more accurate description of what we do might be ‘communication for scientists’. The practical skills needed for the communication of science are the same of those for the communication of anything else, we simply allow our students to develop and practise these skills in the context of science.
Academically we provide a selection of courses. In Science Studies, students look at the philosophy, sociology, and rhetoric of science together with the history of communication in science. Our students can then see what science looks like to various outsiders, often a rather different beast from how it is experienced from inside the scientific profession. We believe this helps students to understand how strange science looks to everyone who has not been educated and trained in it. In Media and Communication Studies we consider the history of media, basic communication theories, semiotics, narrative and documentary theory. We cover these areas to give our students some background in the culture, structure, and practices of the communication industries they will enter. There are also options available in areas related to these core subjects. These have included controversies in science, science ethics, science policy, science education, and science and literature.
The purpose of the Leverhulme Trust grant which set up the Science Communication Programme at Imperial College fifteen years ago was to produce scientific gamekeepers; specialists who would speak for science and accentuate the benefits of science and technology for society. It is probably true that most professional science communicators are employed in that role. But the Science Communication Group has always been keen to produce poachers as well; critical communication specialists who will examine the motivations of powerful institutions supporting science, question the assumptions and practices of the ’science communication industry’ itself, and explain the complex and shifting cultural, political and social relations between science and the rest of society through both journalism and broadcasting.
The most powerful single message we hope our students take away with them is that whatever the context of the communication of science, it must be undertaken in the cultural framework of media practice and in a language familiar to intended audiences. Popular communication of science framed in the interests of specialised communities (of either scientists themselves or of their various academic or other critics) is unlikely to succeed.
Nicholas Russell
Emeritus Reader in Science Communication
Imperial College London
www3.imperial.ac.uk/humanities/sciencecommunicationgroup
Blog: refractiveindex.wordpress.com
Public Understanding of Science
In addition to Imperial College, London, a number of institutions and organisations in the UK and overseas offer courses on widening understanding of Science.
BBSRC: Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council
www.bbsrc.ac.uk
COPUS: Coalition On the Public Understanding of Science
www.copusproject.org
The Nuffield Foundation: Science in Society
www.nuffieldfoundation.org/science-society
Oxford University: Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science
www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk
Science and Technology Facilities Council
www.stfc.ac.uk
University of Glasgow: Public Understanding of Science
www.physics.gla.ac.uk/~kskeldon/PubSci
