The public relations project Ö will serve as a communication hub for the CRC Linguistic Creativity in Communication. The project’s tasks go well beyond common public relations work in a CRC due to the general public’s substantial involvement in the planned research program via citizen science activities and the planned research on science communication itself. We aim to actively involve interested citizens in the design, implementation, evaluation and results assessment of our projects through various participation formats. Citizens participating in the CRC’s research will thus gain insights into linguistic research and theorizing. All these activities will be carefully designed, implemented and scientifically monitored.
According to recent Eurobarometer data requested by the EC, only 26% of EU citizens think information received via social networks is reliable and 85% consider fake news to be a real problem in their country and a threat to democracy. This project is primarily based on fieldwork experience and a review of literature, regulatory and voluntary reference standards conducted by the Consortium with the aim of establishing a tool of indicators and protocols, based on the GRI indicator model, that can be used in the field of higher education and adapted to non-formal education, to measure the veracity and transparency of information content.
The objectives of the project are:
Partners:
ICMedia Madrid, Spain
Begoña Morales Blanco-Steger (Directora de Soluciones para la Sostenibilidad, Indra)
Prof. Mercedes Medina (School of Communication, Marketing and Media Management Department, University of Navarra, Spain).
Luis Blázquez Bernaldo de Quirós (Director en Interaxion, Rome)
Modern societies performs their understanding of issues in conferences, opinion polling, scoping exercises, everyday conversations and mass media coverage where the sciences are granted variable cultural authority. This Indo-European network will construct a system of science culture indicators based on news analysis and on attitude measures. Trends in science news (1990-2010; intensity, positioning, issues) are linked to trends in public attitudes to science (interest, attitude, knowledge, engagement: Eurobarometer surveys, 1989-2010 & India's National Science Survey (2003), ). The network mobilises and develops joint expertise in discourse analysis, computer-assisted text analysis, large scale survey research, and sophisticated statistical techniques to track the cultural authority of science.
Geplant sind unter anderem die folgenden Tätigkeiten:
Um eine Übersicht über den Umfang und die Verteilung der Aktivitäten im Bereich der Wissenschaftskommunikation zu gewinnen, wurde eine Online-Befragung unter deutschen Wissenschaftlern durchgeführt. Für jeden der fünf Wissenschaftsbereiche wurden jeweils 1.500 Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler per Zufallsauswahl aus der Adressenliste bestimmt, so dass die Brutto-Stichprobe 7.500 Personen umfasste. Nach einer Bereinigung der Stichprobe, in der u.a. Doppelungen entfernt wurden, blieben 7460 Personen, die zur Teilnahme an der Befragung eingeladen wurden.
Insgesamt zeigt sich, dass die befragten WissenschaftlerInnen der Wissenschaftskommunikation positiver gegenüberstehen, als dies das traditionelle Bild des nur mit den Fachkollegen kommunizierenden, der Öffentlichkeit gegenüber abweisenden Wissenschaftlers suggeriert. Insofern ist davon auszugehen, dass die von Medien und Politik formulierte Erwartung einer 'Berichtspflicht' der Wissenschaft sich ebenso durchsetzt wie das Bewusstsein, dass die Kommunikation mit der Öffentlichkeit sowohl im Interesse des Fachs bzw. des eigenen Forschungsgebiets mit Blick auf die notwendige Ressourcenbeschaffung als auch für die Rekrutierung des Nachwuchs ist.
In dem abgeschlossenen Projekt ging es um die Frage: Erreicht die Wissenschaftskommunikation das, was sie soll?
Zum Stand der Wissenschaftskommunikation lässt sich eine positive Bilanz ziehen. Es gibt viele innovative, gut strukturierte Konzepte. Dieses Bild bleibt auch im Vergleich der deutschen Situation mit der in anderen europäischen Ländern und den USA erhalten. Zugleich wird deutlich, dass es kein Patentrezept für den Erfolg von Wissenschaftskommunikation gibt. Es lassen sich aber Faktoren benennen, die Projekte geeigneter und weniger geeignet erscheinen lassen, die an sie gestellten Leistungserwartungen zu erreichen.
(together with Peter Weingart)
The aim of this project is to establish the field of research and study of , Public Understanding of Science' at the University of Bielefeld. The main activities are to initiate research on the changing relationship between science and the media, to promote and carry out teaching of respective courses for graduate students, to provide practical experiences by acquiring and coordinating internships for students, and to initiate the communication between scientists and journalists. This project is funded by the Ministry of Science and Research of Northrhine-Westfalia for the period 2000-2003. It provides for two doctoral fellowships.
(together with Peter Weingart and Matthias Winterhager)
One of the indicators of the independence of the media is that although they orient themselves in their reporting on science to scientific reputation, which they take as a sign of reliability and competence of the scientists. They depart from it and create media prominence for certain scien-tists. This project with students focused on the growing impact of media prominence of scientists on the reputation of such media stars in science. Results of the project are on the internet (http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/iwt/mw/lf/). A special case, the German media coverage of the Goldhagen debate, is published in: Weingart,P., & Pansegrau,P. (1999): Reputation in Science and Prominence in the Media - The Goldhagen Debate. Public Understanding of Science, 8, 1, 1-16.
(together with Peter Weingart and Anita Engels)
The project analyzes how a science-driven discourse about future environmental changes initiated repercussions in central areas of modern societies and restructures social reality. The German discourse about anthropogenic climate change is taken as a case study. In addition to the scientific line of discourse the project analyzes the systematic differences in the way global climate change was also communicated in the spheres of politics and the mass media. Each of these three areas is the object of a retrospective longterm analysis covering the period from 1975 to 1995, during which global climate change as established as a legitimate field for political action in Germany.
The aim of this Ph.D. project was to analyze the specific communicative and cognitive functions of metaphors in science journalism on the basis of the German media reporting on anthropogenic climate change. Starting from the cognitive science and the idea of the independence of media the study focused on the achievement of objectives like "high news values" or " processes of understanding" from the audience. The study shows that metaphors are important instruments not only for "eye-catching" but also for giving the reporting a coherent frame. Science journalists often use metaphors which have been developed in scientific discourse and expand them in extensive metaphorical scenarios. This determines public perception of the scientific problems and can be also an indicator for the legitimacy of the reporting.
(together with Peter Weingart)
Film and Television as the most influential media have attained a crucial position in shaping public perception. Im-plicitly, and sometimes even explicitly, they compete with science in setting the agenda on major issues of policy relevance. This function of media in general has been recognized by scientists, this function of film in particular is rarely appreciated. The aim of the project is to study systematically the treatment of science in feature films, way in which to explore the filmmakers translate popular perceptions of science into film plots and the mechanism which shape their own perceptions about the world of science, their decisions to represent this world in stereotypical ways. Research is directed to a) setting up a comprehensive data bank of movies that treat science, the results and/or the process of research and the actions and motives of scientists, b) constructing interpretative schemes that allow inter-individually reliable analysis of the patterns of depicting science in film.
The internet offers various types of virtual communication, like e-mail communication or chatrooms. These developments have caused a considerable amount of changes in interpersonal communication. One special case among the different types of virtual communication offered by the internet is the e-mail communication. People communicate via e-mail rather than telephone or conventional letters. Email communication is faster, more frequent, less sophisticated, and much less formal compared to traditional letters and much cheaper and more anonymous than telephone conversation.
E-mail communication uses written language but in a specific way one can describe emails as very oral in character: they are often shorter, less well planned, vocabulary and grammar are less important than a straigth-forward, easily understandable message etc. Thus, e-mail communication is conceptually oral language in a written medium.