Browsing by Author "Weingart, Peter"

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    Public 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’.
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    A unique fingerprint? Factors influencing attitudes towards science and technology in South Africa
    (Academy of Science of South Africa, 2016) Guenther, Lars; Weingart, Peter
    From an international perspective, research in the field of public attitudes towards science and technology has been conducted since the 1970s. A frequently proposed – and empirically supported – theory is that strong interest in and knowledge about science in a society is associated with more favourable attitudes towards science. This positive attitude in turn affects support for public funding of science. However, this research field is not without controversy, and for the South African population many questions remain unanswered. Initial research has not explored the factors that shape attitudes towards science and technology in detail. We re-analysed data from the Human Sciences Research Council to explore the above theory. Interestingly, for the South African population, higher levels of scientific literacy and use of information sources are associated with more promises but also more reservations towards science and technology. This is especially true for relatively young and educated survey respondents. In international comparison, South Africa shows a unique fingerprint to some extent, but also shares characteristics with industrially developing countries of Europe (such as Greece or Portugal). To understand the correlations better, future research should aim to examine the overall picture when investigating the diverse South African population more extensively.