On June 24, NEWSERA’s own Cristina Luís, Esther Marín and Inês Navalhas conducted a workshop at Portugal-based science communication convention SciCom Pt 2021. The conference, taking place online with events spanning along three days, took on the theme “Old challenges, new threats: communicating uncertainty and fighting misinformation“.
During their workshop, Luís, Marín and Navalhas focused on one of the issues central to the NEWSERA project: how can we strenghten the relationship between scientific research and different parts of society? First, it’s crucial to understand the incentives and barriers that influence the involvement of scientists in the communication of science.
Making and Communicating Science: How to Break Barriers?
Convenors: Cristina Luís (CIUHCT/Ciências ULisboa), Esther Marín (cE3c/Ciências ULisboa), Inês Navalhas (CIUHCT/Ciências ULisboa)
When: Thursday, 24 June, 11.50
Description: The communication of science, as a way to establish a relationship between research, scientists themselves and the rest of society, is confronted with several challenges. One has to do with how science communication is integrated in scientific practice.
Several research works have documented the existence of different incentives that motivate scientists to carry out science communication activities. These incentives can be divided into three groups: a general sense of social commitment; the opportunity to gain professional or personal benefits; and communication activities being perceived as an integral part of a researcher’s work. Additionally, some barriers to science communication were indentified: lack of recognition of these activities; lack of time to devise, program and carry them out; or the belief that scientists who engage in science communication can be somehow discredited.
Having documented these factors, it’s important to understand how barriers can be overcome and what new incentives can be created. How can the scientific community contribute to break these barrires? What kind of incentives might motivate scientists to share their work with society (e.g., civil society, policy makers, industry)? In this workshop, participants are invited to reflect about these issues in order to find, together, solutions that can be beneficial to all parties involved.
Number of participants: 18
Read the full programme of SciCom Pt 2021 here (in Portuguese) or visit the SciCom Pt website.
Cover photo by Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels
