Tensions in science communication: Challenges, contexts, crises
The Public Communication of Science and Technology Network in partnership with the journal Cultures of Science invites participants of the PCST Conference in 2025 to submit original research and/or practitioner articles, commentaries, and essays for a special issue that will address “Tensions” in Science Communication, a theme that is part of the debates taking place next May in Aberdeen, Scotland.
Tensions are crucial to the development of relations between science and society through science communication. They are generated by demands and pressures among social actors, practice and theory, culture and science, economic and political needs, and others, making them an essential component of science and technology communication.
Contributions are welcome to explore Tensions related to:
- Investigating democratic participation aimed at public legitimation versus ‘top down’ communication by scientific elites
- Embedding responsible research, innovation, and communication in the context of free-market economics
- The challenges and benefits of applying and/or adapting science communication models in different contexts
- Evaluating the status and quality of scientific evidence in the context of misinformation
- Exploring ethical tensions in science communication research and practice
- Comparing complexity versus simplification in science communication and science popularisation
- Managing equity, inclusion and accessibility in the context of diversity
- Tensions around the role of science communication in large-scale social crises involving science and the military, global inequalities, politics, (de)colonization and economic interests
- Comparing tensions between approaches to science communication in different countries and regions, e.g. between the ‘minority-’ and ‘majority-world’, Global North and Global South, or Western and Non-Western world
- Matching calls for polyvocal engagement and procedural justice against the requirements of research funders, to deliver equitable co-creation
Interested authors should submit a title and abstract, highlighting the link to the theme tensions by 30th of June, 2025.
Submissions should be made to the Guest editors Dr Germana Barata (germana@unicamp.br) and Mohamed Elsonbady Ramadan mohamed.elsonpaty@gmail.com) with the subject “Special Issue on Tensions in Science Communication”.
Selected contributors will be announced in July 2025 and invited authors must submit full manuscripts directly via the Cultures of Science submission system to start the peer-reviewed process by 31st of October 2025. Submissions can be made as an original Research and/or Practitioner Article (not more than 10,000 words), Commentary or Essay (not more than 2,000 words).