Alexander Gerber

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Science Caught Flat-Footed: How Academia Struggles with Open Science Communication

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Science Caught Flat-Footed:
How Academia Struggles with
Open Science Communication
Alexander Gerber
Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with
the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right.
—Jane Goodall, ethologist and devoted science communicator.
Abstract As high as the potential of Web 2.0 might be, the European academia,
compared to that of the US, mostly reacts hesitantly at best to these new oppor-
tunities. Interestingly enough this scepticism applies even more to science com-
munication than to scientific practice itself. The author shows that the supposed
technological challenge is actually a cultural one. Thus possible solutions do not
primarily lie in the tools or in the strategies used to apply them, but in the
adaptation of the systemic frameworks of knowledge-creation and dissemination
as we have practised them for decades, if not centuries. Permeating an ‘Open
Science Communication’ (OSC) under closed paradigms can only succeed if
foremost the embedding frameworks are adapted. This will include new forms of
impact measurement, recognition, and qualification, and not only obvious solu-
tions from the archaic toolbox of enlightenment and dissemination. The author
also illustrates the causes, effects, and solutions for this cultural change with
empirical data.
The swan song of what was meant to be an era of ‘‘Public Understanding of
Science and Humanities’’ (PUSH) rings rather dissonantly today, given the wailing
chorus of disorientation, if not existential fear, intoned by science communicators
across Europe. Almost 30 years after the game-changing Bodmer report (Royal
Society 1985), another paradigmatic shift is taking place, probably even more
radical than any of the transitions during the previous four eras (Trench and Bucchi
2010; Gerber 2012). This fifth stage of science communication is being predom-
inantly driven by interactive online media. Let us examine this from the
same perspectives which the very definition of ‘‘science communication’’ as an
A. Gerber (&)
German Research Center for Science and Innovation Communication, Berlin, Germany
e-mail: a.gerber@innokomm.eu
S. Bartling and S. Friesike (eds.), Opening Science,
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-00026-8_4,  The Author(s) 2014
73
umbrella-term also comprises of: (1) the communication about science, and (2) the
communication by scientists and their institutionalised PR with different publics.
Communication about Science
Journalists are witnessing a widespread disintegration of mass media outlets and
their underlying business models. In terms of circulation and advertising revenue,
this demise may not be as abrupt as in the U.S. (see Fig. 1), but is surely just as
devastating for popular science publishers in Europe, and consequently their staff
and freelancers in the long run (Gerber 2011, 2012). Brumfiel (2009) was among
the first scholars to make the scientific community aware of the extent of the
science journalism crisis, quoting blatant analyses by experienced editors, such as
Robert Lee Hotz from The Wall Street Journal: ‘‘Independent science coverage is
not just endangered, it’s dying’’ (p. 275). Afflicted by low salaries and even lower
royalties from a decreasing number of potential outlets, science journalism is
additionally (or maybe consequently) suffering from a continuous decrease in
credibility.
Fig. 1 The business models of traditional print journalism in the U.S. have eroded remarkably
fast: the industry has lost as much market share in five years as they had gained in the 50 years
before. The disintegration of mass media outlets in terms of circulation and advertising revenue
may not be as abrupt in Europe as it is in the U.S. Nonetheless, popular science publishers in
Europe are also heavily under pressure
74 A. Gerber
Questioned about who is most appropriate to explain the impact of science upon
society, only 16–20 % of Europeans nowadays name journalists—a further
decrease from 25 to 32 % five years before (see Fig. 2). In fact, a majority expects
the scientists themselves to deliver their messages directly: 63 %, increasing from
52 % five years earlier (European Commission 2010). Unfortunately, it has not yet
been investigated properly as to what extent this credibility also (or particularly)
extends over the science blogosphere and other online platforms, or whether
interactive online media have even been catalysts, and not just enabling technol-
ogies, in this development.
Every discourse or effort to reinvent journalism regarding media economics
(e.g. crowdfunding), investigation methods (e.g. data-driven journalism in the deep
web), formats (e.g. slide casts), and distribution (e.g. content curation) almost
inevitably seems to circle around interactive online media. Obviously the web is
not only seen as the main cause of the crisis, but also as the main opportunity for
innovations to solve it.
On the other hand, one could also argue that due to an increasing number of
popular science formats on television, science journalism now reaches a much
wider audience as compared to print publications which have always merely
Fig. 2 Who is most appropriate to explain the impact of science upon society? Less than one out
of five Europeans nowadays name journalists, and the numbers are constantly decreasing (light
grey 2010, dark grey 2005). In fact, a majority expects the scientists themselves to deliver their
messages directly. Interactive online media offer new opportunities to do exactly that
Science Caught Flat-Footed: How Academia Struggles with Open Science Communication 75
catered to a small fraction of society. Especially on TV, however, we as com-
munication scholars should be wary of the distorted image of science reflected by
conventional mass media. Coverage and content are mostly limited to either the
explanation of phenomena in everyday life (‘‘Why can’t I whip cream with a
washing machine?’’) or supposed success stories (‘‘Scientists have finally found a
cure for Cooties’’). Thereby journalism neither succeeds in depicting the ‘big
science picture’ of policy, ethics, and economics holistically, nor the real com-
plexity of a knowledge-creation process authentically, which is everything but
linear, being a process in which knowledge is permanently being contradicted or
falsified, and is therefore never final.
However, the notion of what the essence of science really is could perfectly
well be vulgarised through web technologies, in the sense of making the different
steps within this process of knowledge-creation transparent, for instance by means
of a continuous blog or other messaging or sharing platforms. Yet there are still
only very few examples for such formats (see below), and they are particularly
sparse in journalism.
The tendency to reduce science to supposed success stories is certainly also a
result of its mediatisation, i.e. science and science policies reacting and adapting to
the mass media logic by which it is increasingly being shaped and framed (Krotz
2007; Fuller 2010; Weingart 2001). This brings us to the second dimension of
science communication.
Communication by Scientists and the Institutionalised PR
Self-critical scholars as well as practitioners of science communication wonder
how far we have effectively come since 1985, when the Royal Society envisioned
a public which would understand ‘‘more of the scope and the limitations, the
findings and the methods of science’’. Even then the ‘‘most urgent message’’ went
to the scientists themselves: ‘‘Learn to communicate with the public, […] and
consider it your duty’’ (The Royal Society 1985, p. 24).
Almost 30 years later the resources for institutionalised science PR and mar-
keting have multiplied remarkably. Compared to the early 1990s when profes-
sional communicators were rare exceptions, there is hardly a single university or
institute left today without a communication department. Larger institutions
employ up to 70 full-time communicators in the meantime. Yet less than one out
of ten citizens in Europe actually show any interest whatsoever in science centres,
public lectures, or science fairs (European Commission 2010, see Fig. 3)—albeit
with a blanket coverage across the continent. Such obvious contrasts between the
supply and demand of certain formats make science an easy prey for critics
arguing that its communication is inherently elitist. At least the often misinter-
preted decrease in naïve trust in science—66 % in 2010 compared to 78 % in 2005
(European Commission 2010)—is an encouraging sign of an increasingly critical
public (Bauer 2009).
76 A. Gerber
PR professionals have been ‘PUSH-trained’, so to speak, to focus on the dis-
semination of research results, ideally in the form of a well-told success story, as
described above, and thereby significantly contribute to the distorted media image
of scientific reality. Unfortunately just now that science, at least on an institutional
level, seems to have come to terms with the mechanisms of mass media; PR and
marketing are being shattered by a seismic shift towards a horizontalisation of
Fig. 3 Presumably as a direct result of mediatisation in the era of PUSH, the so-called ‘‘myth of
science’’, the naïve trust in science being able to solve any problem, has decreased significantly.
In some countries like Germany (inner pie) this trust is even lower than the European average.
This development is often misinterpreted as a problem. It should instead be seen as an
encouraging sign of an increasingly critical public
Science Caught Flat-Footed: How Academia Struggles with Open Science Communication 77
communication better known as social media. Particularly the new media-savvy
student generations have an entirely different understanding of how the relevant
information should ‘find them’. Even most communication scholars are still
amazed of the pace of this transition. In countries like Germany, for instance, the
Internet overtook television two years ago in terms of activated and structured
demand for information, i.e. the medium of choice to look for quality informa-
tion—an increase from 13 % in 2000 to 59 % in 2011 (IfD Allensbach 2011).
Unanimously most studies show, however, that science has as of yet largely
avoided adapting both its communication efforts and its own media usage to the
above mentioned changes in the information behaviour of laypeople (Procter et al.
2010; Bader et al. 2012; Allgaier 2013). In a web technology use and needs
analysis Gerber (2012, 2013) showed that the use of even the most common online
tools is still a niche phenomenon in the scientific community. Furthermore, the few
well-known tools were also the ones to be the most categorically rejected, e.g.
Twitter by 80.5 % of the respondents.
Yet the diffusion of Web 2.0 tools in academia is only partly a question of
technology acceptance. For instance, online communication is still not taken into
account in most cases of evaluation or allocation of research funding. Most experts
in a Delphi study on science communication (Gerber 2011, 2012) therefore demand
a critical discourse about possible incentives for scientists. If online outreach,
however, became a relevant criterion for academic careers, we would also have to
find more empirically sound ways to measure, compare, or even standardise and
audit the impact of such an outreach. Approaches like ‘Altmetrics’ are promising
but still in a conceptual phase. At least for another few years we will therefore have
to deal with a widening gap between the masses of scientists communicating
‘‘ordinarily’’, on the one hand, and the very few cutting edge researchers and
(mostly large and renowned) institutions experimenting extensively with the new
opportunities, on the other. Thus the threat of increasing the already existing
imbalances between scientific disciplines is just as evident as the opportunities
for increasing transparency, flattening hierarchies, or even digitally democratizing
the system itself, as sometimes hyperventilated by Open Science evangelists.
We must not forget that technologies only set the framework, whereas the real
challenges and solutions for an ‘Open Science Communication’ are deeply rooted
in scientific culture and the system of knowledge creation itself (Gerber 2012).
Much will, therefore, depend upon the willingness of policy makers to actively
steer the system in a certain direction. Yet they also have to reconsider whether
they thereby risk fostering (even unintentionally) the above mentioned distortion
of scientific practice. The ultimate challenge lies in balancing incentives and
regulations, on the one hand, with the inevitable effect of a further mediatisation of
science, on the other, since both remain two sides of the same coin.
Public relations and science marketing professionals will keep struggling with
the increasing ‘loss of control’ as long as they hang on to their traditional paradigm
of dissemination. An increasing number of social media policies in academia
shows that the institutions have realised the challenges that they are facing in terms
of governance. By accepting ‘deinstitutionalisation’ and involving individual
78 A. Gerber
scientists as authentic and highly credible ambassadors (see above), PR can make
the most essential step away from the old paradigm to the new understanding of
Open Science Communication (OSC).
The common ground for both above mentioned trends—the ‘deprofessionali-
sation’ of science journalism and the ‘deinstitutionalisation’ of science commu-
nication at large—is the remarkable amount of laypersons finding their voices
online and the self-conception of civil society organisations demanding to be
involved in the science communication process. As much as this inevitably shat-
ters the economic base of science journalism and as much as it may force the
science establishment to reinvent its communication practice, we should be
grateful for the degree of communication from ‘scientific citizens’. Thereby the
challenge lies less in permitting (or even embracing) bottom–up movements as
such, but rather more in resisting the use of public dialogue as a means to an end.
While valorising ‘citizen science’ as an overdue ‘co-production’ of authoritative
social knowledge, Fuller warns us not to treat broadcasts of consensus confer-
ences, citizen juries, etc. simply as better or worse amplifiers for the previously
repressed forms of ‘local knowledge’ represented by the citizens who are now
allowed to share the spotlight with the scientists and policy makers. (2010, p. 292)
The questionable success of most of these public engagement campaigns has
increasingly been challenged recently. Grassroots initiatives like ‘Wissenschafts-
debatte’ or ‘Forschungswende’ in Germany criticise openly the fact that pseudo-
engagement has merely served as a fig leaf excuse for the legitimisation of
research agendas which are still being built top–down. Instead it will be necessary
to supplement the dragged-in rituals of ‘end of pipe’ dissemination with a fresh
paradigm of ‘start of pipe’ deliberation.
Undoubtedly such initiatives cater to the transparency and true public
engagement pursued by the ideal of Open Science. Thus within the ‘big picture’
we should embrace the opportunities of the OSC era, and in particular the inter-
active online technologies driving it.
Outlook
Driven by interactive online media, OSC has the potential to exceed the outdated
view of communication as a ‘packaging industry’. In the next few years we can
expect a second wave of professionalisation in science PR and marketing, e.g.
through specialised social media training. The performance of communication
professionals (and probably also the performance of scientists) will increasingly be
measured by whether they succeed in truly engaging a much wider spectrum of
society or not. New cultures of communication may foster a scientific citizenship
but will also raise new questions regarding imbalances and distortion within the
scientific system, and thus the challenge to measure communication impact
properly, and even normalise and standardise these new measurements.
Science Caught Flat-Footed: How Academia Struggles with Open Science Communication 79
Open Access This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution
Noncommercial License, which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in
any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Science Caught Flat-Footed: How Academia Struggles with Open Science Communication

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