The invisibles: Science, publics and surveys

This is a guest post by two science communication researchers, one working at the University of Otago, New Zealand, the other at the University of Queensland, Australia: Fabien Medvecky and Joan Leach. How much can large-scales surveys tell us about attitudes to science and what can we say about the categories of publics constructed around …

Publicness and Öffentlichkeit – some linguistic musings

Since Roman times, the word ‘public’ has been deeply embedded in the English language, from republic to publican to public convenience; but it still causes problems, as we have discovered several times on the pages of this blog. ‘Public’ has multiple meanings; it is a staple of academic inquiry; but it is not a word …

Re-imagining the public / re-imagining the political

  Last month (15-16 May) I attended a conference organised by Michel Ledda, Robert Cowley, and David Chandler from the Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD) at the University of Westminster entitled: ‘New perspectives on the problem of the public’. Together with Sujatha Raman I work on the Leverhulme funded project ‘Models of Managing …

Public, publics and citizen: What do these words mean?

Sciencewise has published a paper ‘Which Publics? When?’  by my Making Science Public colleagues Alison Mohr, Sujatha Raman and Beverley Gibbs, which has already provoked some blog responses. One blog by Sciencewise Executive Chair Roland Jackson has given it a very positive reception but mentions “a nagging feeling that this word ‘public’ is part of …