Gerber, A. & Jensen, E. A. (2020). For science communication to be effective it should be evidence based. LSE Impact Blog.
At its best, science communication can empower research and innovation systems to address global challenges. It does this by improving the relationships with stakeholders in policy, industry, civil society and publics. In so doing, science communication can put public interests at the heart of how knowledge is produced, shared, and applied today, consequently enhancing the benefits of science and technology and mitigating their limitations or risks. For this reason, it is imperative that science communication plays this mediating role effectively. However, to continue to evolve, science communication research and practice need to be more closely aligned and integrated into what we call ‘evidence-based science communication’.
Integrating research and practice
The institutional and professional expectations of science communication today extend far beyond the origins of the practice in making scientific knowledge more accessible to the general public. We have both worked in science communication practice and research, especially at the interface between these domains, and have firsthand experience of the complex challenges facing those who seek to translate and develop the infrastructures necessary to translate scientific knowledge into tangible impacts. Ironically, perhaps the greatest challenge facing the field of science communication is a lack of effective communication.
There are high barriers keeping science communication research from being developed and integrated into practice. First, scholarly publications about science communication are scattered across hundreds of specialist (Public Understanding of Science) and non-specialist (e.g. Nature) journals. Second, this multidisciplinary field suffers from inconsistent terminology, making literature reviews and identification of relevant evidence across these hundreds of journals difficult. This adds up to a disjointed field of research where access to the best available evidence is heavily occluded.
