1,721,005 research outputs found
Can We Look at Refused Knowledge Differently?
No full textThe COVID-19 pandemic has clearly shown how knowledge refused by scientific institutions can be endorsed by diverse segments of our societies for addressing health, illness, and well-being. Despite this sharp evidence, the understanding of current cultural perspectives and discourses ques
tioning the epistemic authority of science tends to be jeopardized by a normative view that reduces such refused knowledge to an irrational and deviant mindset to be opposed in order to preserve democracies and the well-being of our societies. Assuming an agnostic analytical stance over its epistemic value, this book aims to analyse the processes through which refused knowledge receives epistemic credibility, which people are engaged in such processes, how they relate with prevailing epistemic institutions and in which ways they practically enact a body of refused knowledge in their everyday lives. The book, drawing on an extensive three-year mixed-method empirical research, shows that it may be less helpful to frame the contestation of the authority of science in terms of an irrational “zeitgeist”, than to treat refused knowledge as a more pecu
liar mode of knowing the world and ways of addressing the uncertainties that inevitably affect our everyday life. Indeed, people involved in social worlds within which refused knowledge plays a pivotal role engage a complex dialectic with prevailing scientific institutions that are increas
ingly embedded in a societal landscape featured by an epistemic pluralism. As a consequence, taking refused knowledge seriously helps not only to better understand the legitimation processes that confer credibility to knowledge claims otherwise refused, but also to analyse how knowledge is, at large, the result of sociotechnical assemblages. The book thus offers a relevant contribution for scholars and students from a range of disci
plines interested in the understanding of the changing relations between science, expertise and society, including Science and Technology Studies, Sociology, Media Studies, Cultural Studies, and Anthropology. At the same time, it also speaks to a wider audience concerned with the public debate over the supposed crisis of scientific expertise in the post-truth era, as well as the current mistrust towards the political and scientific estab
lishment and their knowledge
From Bench to Bed, Back and Beyond: The Four Bs of Biomedical Research
No full textAbstract: Contemporary biomedicine is characterized by the ever-closer connection between clinical practice and research. Laboratories become nodes of articulated networks, making it no longer possible to consider them as single entities. In light of these changes, a wide range of actors – researchers, scientific instruments, data-bases, experts in bio-informatics and bio-statistics, pharmaceutical companies, clinicians, drugs, patients, cells, ethical and regulatory issues – are involved. In this Introduction, we address why these processes represent a relevant challenge for social sciences as well
The role of intermediary organizations in the mainstreaming of Responsible Research and Innovation in the Italian industrial sector
Full text linkInnovation can be conceived of as ‘collective experimentation’, and industry can be viewed as a full partner in heterogeneous innovation networks. The significance of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) depends on the possibility of aligning the diverse actors involved in innovation processes, including firms. A specific challenge in Italy is that the overall majority of industrial companies are small and medium enterprises (SMEs). By reporting the opinions of the participants in an Italian stakeholder workshop, this article suggests that intermediation processes and intermediary agents have an important influence on the uptake of RRI in SMEs
Research and Teaching Public Communication of Science and Technology on Digital Data
Full text linkIn recent decades, there has been a growing interest among Social Science researchers in computational approaches; Computational Social Science and Digital Sociology are examples of these research directions. An interdisciplinary research field that can be framed within Social Science is Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST), which examines how science and technology can affect contemporary society and how society can affect science and technology. The digitization of traditional media and the proliferation of other information channels, such as Social Media, provide new opportunities for PCST. This paper discusses the issues that need to be addressed to support PCST scholars, possible solutions to address them, and the integration of these solutions into a single platform that is being used to support research and teaching. Concerning teaching, the paper presents an example of how the platform can be used in the context of a university course
On Data, Big Data and Social Research. Is It a Real Revolution?
No full textThis chapter aims at discussing critically some epistemological assumptions underlying a data science for social research. For this purpose, it is discussed the general notion of big data and the meaning of key-concepts such as those of information and data, mainly considering contributions coming from the science and technology studies (STS) and the sociology of quantification. In particular,
it is argued the necessary shift from a discrete and transportable definition of data to a processual one, also taking into account the fact that data are always a process both when they are produced and when they are used/analysed in order to have research’s results. The notion of data-base is compared with that of infrastructure as defined in STS, so that it is clear that they cannot be considered as
repositories from which it is possible to extract meanings or results like getting minerals from a mine. Data and data-base are processes which cannot begin without a research question. For these reasons the debate opposing hypothesis-driven versus data-driven research should be overtaken: in social research, as well as in hard sciences, data-driven research simply doesn’t exist. The last paragraph is devoted to draw some conclusions from the previous discussion in the form of hopefully useful suggestions for developing a data science for social research
Politiche della ricerca e partecipazione pubblica
No full textIl capitolo esamina la natura e le caratteristiche delle politiche della ricerca, intese in modo ampio come l’insieme delle politiche della scienza, della tecnologia e dell’innovazione. Dopo aver descritto questi tre ambiti di policy, vengono introdotte alcune brevi considerazioni storiche sull’evoluzione delle politiche pubbliche della ricerca e sui modelli interpretativi del rapporto fra scienza, tecnologia e innovazione che ne sono alla base. Si sottolinea come, in generale, questa evoluzione sia caratterizzata (1) dal legame sempre più stretto che viene istituito fra la legittimazione della scienza e della tecnologia, da una parte, e la capacità della conoscenza scientifica di rispondere ai bisogni sociali e alle domande espresse nei suoi contesti d’uso, dall’altra; (2) dall’emergere di una visione processuale e sistemica della ricerca e dell’innovazione. Si osserva, inoltre, come queste trasformazioni abbiano influenzato la posizione e il ruolo degli scienziati, in particolare della scienza accademica, come destinatari delle politiche della ricerca e, al tempo stesso, come attori nella loro elaborazione. Si sottolinea, infine, come l’ampliamento degli attori considerati rilevanti per la ricerca e l’innovazione crei le condizioni per introdurre forme di partecipazione pubblica nelle politiche della ricerca
The social representation of nanotechnologies and its relationships with those of science and technology: Making familiar the unfamiliar between enthusiasm and caution
No full textThis study examined the social representation (SR) of nanotechnologies and its relationships with those of science and technology. It aimed to understand the role of pre-existing and neighbouring forms of shared knowledge in orienting the way laypeople autonomously develop ideas about an unfamiliar issue, and related implications for its perceived risks and public acceptance or rejection. The study involved 489 Italian participants, stratified according to gender, age and education level. They completed an ad-hoc questionnaire with multiple free association tasks to the word-stimuli nanotechnologies, science and technology, and close-ended questions to gauge ‘familiarity’ levels with nanotechnologies and ‘engagement’ in nanotechnologies through media. The results suggested the presence of a rather shared and organised SR of nanotechnologies whose content is cautiously enthusiastic. The biomedical domain seems to be the most easily accepted field of application for nanotechnologies, indicating a ‘preferential channel’ through which they could be more welcome and trusted. Concerning inter-representation relationships, comparisons among SRs identified a strong connection among these three objects, indicating the existence of a coherent representation system where the SR of nanotechnologies is nested in those of science and technology, which, in turn, are in a reciprocal relationship. Fine-grained comparisons allowed for grasping further insights. The results showed that the SR of nanotechnologies is the least enthusiastic, highlighting critical voices among laypeople, although peripherally. Specifically, it presents elements of perceived risks and rejection on one hand, and elements indicating a detached approach in which individuals struggle to detect potentialities and advantages on the other, contrary to what has been found for science and technology at large
Public communication of technoscience in the news: A cross-linguistic Multidimensional analysis of English and Italian newspapers
No full textTechnoscience has historically been endowed by modern societies with cultural authority, which has undergone significant questioning since the end of WWII. In this study, we consider technoscience communication in online newspapers to test whether its linguistic and communicative features differentiate it from other types of news, possibly reflecting greater cultural authority. Focusing on news in English versus Italian, we apply Multidimensional analysis to a comparable English-Italian online news corpus comparing technoscience-related articles with all remaining articles. Results indicate overall linguistic and communicative homogeneity between science and other domains. Nevertheless, small differences seem to suggest an effort to make technoscience accessible and engaging in English, whereas Italian technoscience-related news tends to be more formal and richer in specialised information
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