Filter by author: Susana Herrera Lima

Twelve researchers from 11 countries used autoethnographic techniques, keeping diaries over 10 weeks of the COVID-19 crisis, to observe and reflect on changes in the role and cultural authority of science during important stages of viral activity and government action in their respective countries. We followed arguments, discussions and ideas generated by mass and social media about science and scientific expertise, observed patterns and shifts in narratives, and made international comparisons. During regular meetings via video conference, the participating researchers discussed theoretical approaches and our joint methodology for reflecting on our observations. This project is informed by social representations theory, agenda-setting, and frames of meaning associated with the rise and fall of expertise and trust. This paper presents our observations and reflections on the role and authority of science in our countries from March 10 to May 31, 2020. This is the first stage of a longer-term project that aims to identify, analyse and compare changes in science-society relationships over the course of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Activists, social organizations and members of citizen collectives in Mexico and Latin America have assumed not only the fight for water and territory, but also the difficult task of interacting with experts in different scientific fields, and the challenge of placing their causes in the public space. They take the role of cultural mediators between affected people, scientists and politicians within hybrid transdisciplinary working groups. Within the framework of these groups' actions, a new current of communication of science has emerged, one that shifts its interest from encouraging involvement with scientific knowledge for its own sake, to untangling, understanding and communicating socio-environmental issues for the explicit purpose of contributing to social transformation.

Este ensayo presenta un recorrido sobre las transformaciones y tendencias en los temas y problemas de investigación en comunicación pública de la ciencia abordados por estudiantes y académicos de la Maestría en Comunicación de la Ciencia y la Cultura del ITESO, en Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, México, a lo largo de sus veinte años de funcionamiento. Se identifican los cambios en los contenidos, las perspectivas y las formas de abordar problemas de comunicación pública de la ciencia desde la perspectiva sociocultural del programa de posgrado.

Este trabajo aborda la comunicación de problemáticas socioambientales en contextos urbanos, a partir de una investigación situada en la intersección entre el campo de la comunicación pública de la ciencia y el de la comunicación de lo socioambiental. El objetivo es dar cuenta de las voces y formas emergentes en las prácticas de comunicación sobre lo socioambiental, así como del papel que se asigna a la ciencia y al conocimiento científico en las narrativas que colocan en el espacio público diversos actores sociales al comunicar problemas socioambientales relacionados con agua y bosques en el AMG (Área Metropolitana de Guadalajara). Se ha identificado que estas voces y formas emergentes demandan nuevos modelos de CPC.