How can scientists best inform the public and change attitudes? Does the message or the messenger matter more? We test the effect of scientific expert messengers and messages in a preregistered, nationally representative survey experiment in the United States. Consistent with our hypotheses, scientists can move public attitudes in areas where knowledge is based on a non-ideological misperception to a greater extent than the same science-based message from another source. Although we focus on political science as a field and Congressional term limits in the United States as a topic area, our findings have broader implications for science communication with policymaking relevance given the persistence of misperceptions among the public across all natural and social science research fields.

Politicization is frequently employed as an analytic concept to explain the relationships between politics and media coverage of climate change. However, relatively few works explore how different notions of politicization are mobilized by actors in media discourses themselves. This article does so via a framing analysis of climate change coverage in Canadian newspapers. I investigate how different relationships between science and politics are conceived and associated with varying positions on climate change. In particular, I examine a supposition in science and technology studies that the media remains committed to deficit models and thus uncritically reproduces the authority of science. Scientistic discourses exist but among a diversity of politicization framings. A key finding is that the strongest appeals to scientific neutrality are associated with climate skepticism. This casts light on the nuanced, strategic \"politics of politicization\" in climate change debates. A more fine-grained and reflexive approach to politicization discourses can help identify productive interventions.

Art is increasingly used to engage publics on emerging and controversial technologies, but we still know little about what works in art-based engagement and why. To investigate what art can do for public engagement, we systematically reviewed academic work published from 2000 to 2018 about the effect of art on organized public engagement. We used the dimensions of Responsible Research and Innovation as an analytical framework to identify what outcomes are achieved and what processes contribute to those outcomes. The 30 included studies showed that art mainly supported engagement by (1) reaching wider audiences, (2) fueling individual reflection, and (3) making visible how technologies come into being and interact with the world. With due consideration of the risks of instrumentalization, future research should empirically and reflexively investigate the outcomes and methodologies of art-based engagement, especially concerning collective reflection and change.

This study examines science communication within Ask Me Anything sessions hosted by US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists on Reddit. In addition to considering a unique social media platform, our work makes an important contribution in revealing the limitations of a traditional approach to studying science communication and modeling an alternative. First, using an \"assembled\" approach, we qualitatively explore themes in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists\' posts and consider how they reflect the goals of \"deficit\" and \"dialogue\" models. Second, using a \"disassembling\" approach, inspired by Davies and Horst and actor-network theory, we more deeply examine our experiences studying the Ask Me Anything sessions. We then demonstrate how this alternative approach identifies \"hidden\" human and non-human actants that may have shaped science communication as \"mediators.\" We use these insights to reject the common assumption that science communication on social media occurs solely and directly between scientists and publics.

The coronavirus pandemic created a situation in which virological and epidemiological science became highly politically relevant but was uncertain and fragmented. This raises the question as to how science could inform policymaking and public debate on societal crisis management. Based on an online survey of Germans (N = 1513) representative for age, gender, education, and place of residence, we investigate citizens\' prescriptive views of the relationships between science, policymaking, and the media. Views differ depending on their informational needs and epistemic beliefs. People with a need for definite information and a view of scientific knowledge as static wanted scientists to dominate policymaking and journalists to deliver definite information about the coronavirus. People with an informational need to construct their own opinions wanted journalists to question policy and scientific advice. Furthermore, they rejected the idea of scientists dominating policymaking. Results are discussed with reference to theories of science and democracy.

Guided by neo-institutional theory, this study compares how researchers from science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines differ from researchers from the arts, humanities, and social sciences fields in terms of how macro- and meso-level concerns shaped their willingness to conduct public engagement. Focus group discussions conducted among researchers based in Singapore revealed that science, technology, engineering, and math and arts, humanities, and social sciences researchers held different macro-level concerns. Particularly, science, technology, engineering, and math researchers raised more concerns about media misrepresentation, while arts, humanities, and social sciences researchers were more concerned about receiving political repercussions and public backlash. With regard to meso-level considerations, researchers from all disciplines cited similar institutional constraints for public engagement; however they possessed varying public engagement competencies and held differing perceptions of their social duty to engage the public. Hence, researchers of different disciplines desired different kinds of media training. Policy and managerial implications as well as directions for future research were provided.

Arenas where experts interact with publics are useful platforms for communication and interaction between actors in the field of public health: researchers, practitioners, clinicians, patients, and laypersons. Such coalitions are central to the analysis of knowledge coproduction. This study investigates an initiative for assembling expert and other significant knowledge which seeks to create better interventions and solutions to addiction-related problems, in this case codependency. But what and whose knowledge is communicated, and how? The study explores how processes of repetition, claim-coupling, and enthusiasm produce a community based on three boundary beliefs: (1) victimized codependent children failed by an impaired society; (2) the power of daring and sharing; and (3) the (brain) disease model as the scientific representative and explanation for (co)dependence. These processes have legitimized future hopes in certain suffering actors, certain lived and professional expertise and also excluded social scientific critique, existing interventions, and alternative accounts.

Despite the promotion of public engagement in science, there has been little empirical research on the sociocultural and attitudinal characteristics of participants in science communication activities and the extent to which such individuals are representative of the general population. We statistically investigated the distinctiveness of visitors to a scientific research institution by contrasting samples from visitor surveys and nationally representative surveys. The visitors had more cultural capital (science and technology/art and literature) and believed more in the value of science than the general public, but there was no difference regarding assessment of the levels of national science or of the national economy. A deeper examination of the variations in the visitors\' exhibit-viewing behaviors revealed that individuals with more scientific and technical cultural capital viewed more exhibits and stayed longer at the events. This trend in exhibit-viewing behaviors remained consistent among the different questionnaire items and smart-card records.

In recent years, there has been an explosion of do it yourself, maker and hacker spaces in Europe. Through makers and do-it-yourself initiatives, \'hacking\' is moving into the everyday life of citizens. This article explores the collective and political nature of those hacks by reporting on empirical work on electronic waste and do-it-yourself biology hacking. Using Dewey\'s experimental approach to politics, we analyse hacks as \'inquiry\' to see how they serve to articulate public and political action. We argue that do-it-yourself and makers\' hacks are technical and political demonstrations. What do-it-yourself and makers\' hacks ultimately demonstrate is that things can be done otherwise and that \'you\' can also do it. In this sense, they have a potential viral effect. The final part of the article explores some potential shortcomings of such politics of demonstration.

Both academic and legal communities have cautioned that laypersons may be unduly persuaded by images of the brain and may fail to interpret them appropriately. While early studies confirmed this concern, a second wave of research was repeatedly unable to find evidence of such a bias. The newest wave of studies paints a more nuanced picture in which, under certain circumstances, a neuroimage bias reemerges. To help make sense of this discordant body of research, we highlight the contextual significance of understanding how laypersons\' decision making is or is not impacted by neuroimages, provide an overview of findings from all sides of the neuroimage bias question, and discuss what these findings mean to public use and understanding of neuroimages.