Science communication today — 2015

This book reports on the work of the fifth Journées Hubert Curien, which took place in Nancy, France, from 3 to 5 June 2015, in a meeting organized as part of the Science & You project. The theme of the conference was 'Current strategies and means of action'.

The fifth Journées Hubert Curien had four main objectives:

• Confront science communication research with science mediation practices.• Reflect on and debate about science communication issues in different national contexts.• Explore the citizen dimension of science communication actions.• Analyse new science in society practices.

The papers presented in this book cover recent renewed interest in science communication and the reasons why policymakers want to communicate science. They describe how national contexts frame science communication actions and policies. They explore the public’s demand not to be treated as passive consumers of information anymore, but as actors in their own right—not only in debates about the rightful place of science and technology within society, but also in those about research processes that affect or concern them. In this way, the authority and legitimacy of scientific knowledge are being questioned as new types of relations to knowledge are emerging.

This book brings together the 11 keynote addresses from the conference.