Felicity Mellor asks where we are going with public engagement

Seen from the city of Malmö on the southernmost tip of Sweden, the Öresund Bridge appears like a delicate thread, stretching impossibly across the waters separating Sweden and Denmark. Some three and a half centuries ago the two nations were bent on a violent and devastating war. Today, the bridge represents a new era of economic integration and trans-national cooperation – a fitting symbol, perhaps, for the delicate task of bridging scientific and public cultures explored at the Bridges to the Future conference held in Malmö at the end of June.

The tenth biennial meeting of the International Network on Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST) brought together over 400 science communication researchers and practitioners from around the world. Among the many topics discussed was the apparent shift from top-down, or deficit, models of the public understanding of science (in which scientists impart facts to the ignorant public, in the expectation that understanding of science will mean support for it), to the recent emphasis on public engagement.

Three models

Massimiano Bucchi, Professor of Sociology of Science at the University of Trento, suggested that the deficit model, participation and dialogue offer three distinct approaches to communication, and that they differ from each other both in their methods and their ideological bases.

Where the deficit model involves one-way information transfer from scientists to non-scientists and draws on a technocratic ideology, dialogue proceeds through consultation and negotiation and is rooted in notions of social responsibility. Participation, Bucchi claimed, is different again, being open-ended and directed towards the production – by both scientists and public – of a fully-democratic civic science.

Two-way trust

Even though the deficit model has been widely criticised for its assumption that the public lacks knowledge, one delegate noted that nearly all communication is founded on a deficit of some sort. So what is the deficit of the dialogical and participatory models?

Professor Alan Irwin of the Copenhagen Business School suggested that, although it is often assumed that what needs to be addressed is a deficit in the public’s trust of the institutions of science, we must also acknowledge scientists’ own deficit in trust. Too often, scientists appear to fear and reject public opinion, criticising the public for a lack of trust in science without scrutinising their own lack of trust in the public.

Look to the destination

The conference itself provided plenty of evidence that the deficit model is indeed alive and kicking. This raises questions about how the differing assumptions and motivations behind deficit, dialogical and participatory forms of communication play out in cultural contexts far removed from the western societies in which most science communication theorising takes place.

What does public engagement with science and technology mean in societies with very different experiences of local organisation and national government, or where science is located within a colonial past and a present shaped by global capitalism?

As Irwin noted, the meaning, purpose and values of communication are of central importance, yet talk of participation and dialogue typically slips around the question of why one does it.

What, then, is public engagement meant to achieve? Is it a means of imposing consensus on an unwilling public – as Bucchi put it, a communication ‘fix’ for delivering the same ideological ends as the deficit model – or is it a process through which non-scientists are able to determine the nature of the technological society in which they wish to live?

Building bridges is not enough. We also need to make sure the bridges take us to the places we want to go.

Dr Felicity Mellor is a Lecturer in Science Communication in the Humanities Department at Imperial College London