Browsing by Author "Joubert, Marina"
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- ItemCountry-specific factors that compel South African scientists to engage with public audiences(SISSA Medialab, 2018) Joubert, MarinaA study in South Africa shed light on a set of factors, specific to this country, that compel South African scientists towards public engagement. It highlights the importance of history, politics, culture and socio-economic conditions in influencing scientists' willingness to engage with lay audiences. These factors have largely been overlooked in studies of scientists' public communication behaviours.
- ItemFact-checking role performances and problematic covid-19 vaccine content in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa(Cogitatio Press, 2024-10-14) Riedlinger, Michelle; Montana‐Nino, Silvia; Watt, Ned; Garcia‐Perdomo, Victor; Joubert, MarinaThe move from political fact-checking to a “public health” or debunking model of fact-checking, sustained by policies and funding from platforms, highlights important tensions in the case of Covid-19. Building on findings from studies focused on journalistic role performance, we investigated how professional fact-checkers in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa conceived of and performed their professional roles when addressing Covid-19 vaccination topics. Interviews with fact-checkers from six well-established, Meta-affiliated, International Fact-Checking Network-accredited organizations operating in these regions indicated that fact-checkers recognized the diversification of tasks and new roles associated with addressing problematic content from social media users. However, fact-checkers expressed unanimous commitment to prioritizing political and media watchdog activities in response to problematic Covid-19 vaccine information spreading from elite sources. To compare these role conceptions with role performance, we conducted a content analysis of Covid-19 vaccine content posted in 2021 to these fact-checkers’ Facebook accounts. We found that content was mostly associated with explainers or debunking content (addressing hoaxes or rumors about Covid-19 vaccines from non-elite social media users). In particular, the abundance of explainers, compared with other genres of fact-checking content, aligns fact-checkers with professional roles as civic service providers, educators, and “interpreters” of health information. Only a small proportion of the Covid-19 vaccine-related posts from each fact-checker contained verifications of claims from authoritative (elite “top-down”) sources (i.e., politicians, media, and health/science professionals). This study offers insights into a particularly tumultuous time of political activity in these regions and considers implications for practice innovation.
- ItemFrom top scientist to science media star during COVID-19 – South Africa's Salim Abdool Karim(Academy of Science of South Africa, 2020) Joubert, MarinaAround the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has turned a handful of leading scientists into highly visible public figures. Anthony Fauci is the media star in the USA; Roberto Burioni in Italy; and in Sweden, it is Anders Tegnell. In Germany, Christian Drosten has become a household name, while Hugo Lopez-Gatell is highly visible in Mexico. In South Africa, we witnessed a remarkable surge in the public prominence of Professor Salim Abdool Karim following his appointment, in mid-April 2020, to lead a Ministerial Advisory Committee advising government on combating COVID-19. Data from Pear Africa, a South African media monitoring company, show that Abdool Karim featured in 545 print, broadcast and online media items during April 2020, compared with 20 in April 2019. Tracing Abdool Karim’s journey towards becoming a trusted public voice of science on COVID-19 reveals meaningful insights into the relationships between scientists, policymakers and the South African public. It also illustrates how Abdool Karim follows an international cultural trend whereby charismatic scientists approach celebrity status under certain conditions, giving them unique power in shaping public trust in science.1 For this case study, I explored the characteristics of Abdool Karim’s engagement with the South African public during the COVID-19 pandemic in the light of two key dimensions of quality in science communication, namely ‘visibility’ (including accessibility) and ‘credibility’ (encompassing expertise, trust and relevance). Both are needed for people to make decisions about costs, risks, benefits and ethics.2 Furthermore, I considered the effect of his communication skill (efficacy) and his willingness to engage (attitude).
- ItemIn the footsteps of Einstein, Sagan and Barnard : identifying South Africa’s most visible scientists(Academy of Science of South Africa, 2017) Joubert, Marina; Guenther, LarsHighly visible scientists are increasingly recognised as influential leaders with a special role to play in making science part of mainstream society. Through consultation with a panel of 45 experts working at the science–media interface, we sought to identify the most visible scientists currently living and working in South Africa. In total, 211 scientists – less than 1% of the scientific workforce of the country – were identified as visible in the public sphere. The demographic profile and institutional spread of South Africa’s visible scientists suggest that more should be done to increase the diversity of scientists who are publicly visible. Although only 8% of South Africans are white, 78% of the group of visible scientists were white, and 63% of the visible scientists were men. Only 17 black women were identified as publicly visible scientists. While visible scientists were identified at 42 different research institutions, more than half of the visible scientists were associated with just four universities. Recent controversies surrounding the two most visible South African scientists identified via this study, and the potential implications for fellow scientists’ involvement in public engagement, are briefly discussed.
- ItemPublic engagement with science : origins, motives and impact in academic literature and science policy(Public Library of Science, 2021-07-07) Weingart, Peter; Joubert, Marina; Connoway, Karien‘Public engagement with science’ has become a ‘buzzword’ reflecting a concern about the widening gap between science and society and efforts to bridge this gap. This study is a comprehensive analysis of the development of the ‘engagement’ rhetoric in the pertinent academic literature on science communication and in science policy documents. By way of a content analysis of articles published in three leading science communication journals and a selection of science policy documents from the United Kingdom (UK), the United States of America (USA), the European Union (EU), and South Africa (SA), the variety of motives underlying this rhetoric, as well as the impact it has on science policies, are analyzed. The analysis of the science communication journals reveals an increasingly vague and inclusive definition of ‘engagement’ as well as of the ‘public’ being addressed, and a diverse range of motives driving the rhetoric. Similar observations can be made about the science policy documents. This study corroborates an earlier diagnosis that rhetoric is running ahead of practice and suggests that communication and engagement with clearly defined stakeholder groups about specific problems and the pertinent scientific knowledge will be a more successful manner of ‘engagement’.
- ItemPublic science communication in Africa : views and practices of academics at the National University of Science and Technology in Zimbabwe(SISSA Medialab, 2016) Ndlovu, Heather; Joubert, Marina; Boshoff, NeliusThis study of the science communication views and practices of African researchers — academics at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) in Zimbabwe — reveals a bleak picture of the low status of public science engagement in the developing world. Researchers prioritise peer communication and pay little attention to the public, policy makers and popular media. Most scientists believe the public is largely not scientifically literate or interested in research. An unstable funding environment, a lack of communication incentives and censoring of politically sensitive findings further constrain researchers’ interest in public engagement. Most NUST academics, however, are interested in science communication training. We suggest interventions that could revive and support public science engagement at African universities.
- ItemRemembering Rein Arndt, 1929–2020(ASSAf, 2020-05-27) Joubert, Marina; Raubenheimer, Helgard; Siegfried, RoyReinhard Richard Arndt died on 1 January 2020 at the age of 90, and 23 years after his retirement from his presidency of the Foundation for Research Development in 1996. A detailed account of Arndt’s professional career is given in Christopher Vaughan’s book A Biography of the Academic Rating System in South Africa (National Research Foundation; 2015). This collage of personal tributes and reminiscences commemorate the passing of a remarkable man who played a significant role in the development of science in South Africa.
- ItemScience communication as a field of research : identifying trends, challenges and gaps by analysing research papers(Sissa Medialab, 2017) Guenther, Lars; Joubert, MarinaResearch in the field of science communication started emerging about 50 years ago and has since then matured as a field of academic enquiry. Early findings about research-active authors and countries reveal that scholarly activity in the field has traditionally been dominated by male authors from English-speaking countries in the West. The current study is a systematic, bibliographic analysis of a full sample of research papers that were published in the three most prominent journals in the field from 1979 to 2016. The findings reveal that early inequities remain prevalent, but also that there are indications that recent increases in research outputs and trends in authorship patterns ― for example the growth in female authorship ― are beginning to correct some of these imbalances. Furthermore, the current study verifies earlier indications that science communication research is becoming increasingly institutionalised and internationalised, as demonstrated by an upward trend in papers reflecting cross-institutional collaboration and the diversity of countries where authors are based.