Communicating Science. A Global Perspective
Review by Sharon Dunwoody
The real strength of this text is that the reader will be exposed to narratives from such places as Iran, Pakistan, and Uganda.
Individuals around the world have dramatically uneven access to science information. The editors of this text logically advocate on behalf of increased access to science communication as one remedy and hope this mammoth text will serve as something akin to baseline data reflecting science communication’s history and growth around the globe. Thirty-eight countries, regions, and continents are represented here in chapters written by a diverse set of professional practitioners and scholars.
As editors Gascoigne and Schiele note, the chapters are intended to serve as “an in-depth introduction to a country’s issues in its sociohistorical context”. All edited volumes, thanks to the vagaries of multiple authors, must struggle to establish a coherence that encourages the development of meaning not only within but across chapters. This one offers one of the most expansive efforts I have seen. The reader simply must consume the first two chapters before embarking on the rest of the book. In those initial chapters, the editors identify the strengths and debits of the subsequent 900-plus pages (among them, the many definitions of “science communication” that one will encounter), as well as descriptive summaries of comparable historical moments. This effort establishes a set of useful guiderails that a reader can employ throughout the book.
However, those guiderails come with an important caveat. Consonant with the volume’s historical focus, most chapters track the evolution of science communication over time in their country or region. That evolution is highlighted by timelines at the end of each chapter that list “firsts” — the first TV science programme, the first interactive science museum, the first university course or programme in science communication — and those data then lead, in chapter 2, to global comparisons across types of science communication activities.
While most readers will find this useful and an important operationalisation of the term “global” in the book’s title, the editors correctly worry that the country-specific events and dates will be interpreted as definitive and warn that the timelines “are indicative rather than precise and show broad directions in an ecosystem of science communication”. Well said, but I fully expect that, if this text gains traction, its timelines will increasingly come to be regarded as sacrosanct. To the extent possible, the editors and their many authors need to update these elements as needed in the electronic version of the book.
The vast bulk (and I employ this word literally) of the book is devoted to historical narratives by country and region. Organised alphabetically, the litany of countries excludes some as a result of a process of requests for volunteer authors and subsequent recruitment by the editors. Major countries who began investing early in science communication are well represented here, but the presence of smaller and developing countries is spottier. However, that the reader will be exposed to narratives from such places as Iran, Pakistan, and Uganda is a real strength of this text. Although the initial chapter on Africa appears overly broad, community health scholar Margaret Kaseje and health journalist Verah Okeyo engage in earnest efforts to lay out a historical timeline across the broad swathe of countries on this continent. The reader will find more country-specific reflections in subsequent chapters on South Africa, Ghana, and Uganda.
Evaluating the quality of all these 38 narratives is an impossible challenge for any one scholar. But, as I hope will be the case for other reviewers, I can speak briefly to the chapter on the United States, my country of origin. Written by two science engagement experts (Bronwyn Bevan and Brooke Smith), the narrative has to work very hard to cram into 18 pages (not counting references) the lengthy, rich and sometimes chaotically decentralised history of science communication in this country.
While the authors may have been forced to abandon the kinds of specific, vivid vignettes that enliven history, I was frankly impressed by their efforts to corral many science communication elements within the framework of a series of discourses reflecting periods of interaction between science and society that were driven, in their view, by contested power relations and larger historical currents. Encountering my own field, science journalism, within the chapter’s scaffolding helped me situate my understanding in that wider perspective, for which I thank them.
Volumes of this nature always lead me to a question: Who can successfully access these efforts? In the last two or three decades, publishers worldwide have embarked on a variety of large-scale reference works — encyclopedias, handbooks, yearbooks, annotated bibliographies — on a myriad of subjects, each one chock-a-block with authors charged with capturing segments of the field of interest. Many of those reading this review have been repeatedly asked to contribute to these texts in the science communication domain, and some have agreed to edit them.
These volumes, many of which are available both online and in book form, have historically offered only restricted access, and their hard copy cost deters most individuals from purchasing them for personal use. Publishers with whom I have interacted tell me that the products are destined primarily for reference libraries, and there is value in such locations. But I have always regretted that the high quality analytical work of my colleagues in these collections is so inaccessible to the field as a whole.
I note with pleasure that Communicating Science. A Global Perspective has secured a Creative Commons licence that permits individuals to freely download and share the book, although owning the print copy still comes at a hefty cost. In an increasingly open access environment, let’s hope that the fine work found in these compendiums will continue to spill out into the public domain in ways that keep publishers alive while allowing users to benefit.
Sharon Dunwoody is Evjue-Bascom professor emerita of journalism and mass communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, where she taught and studied science journalism processes for more than 30 years. Her recent publications include a chapter on science journalism in Leßmöllmann, A., Dascal, M. & Gloning, T. (eds.) Science Communication, Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2019; p. 411–432.
