“A Moment of Science, Please”: Activism, Community, and Humor at the March for Science

Hauke Riesch,Jamie Lewis,Neil Stephens,Olwenn Martin,Photini Vrikki

doi:10.1177/02704676211042252

Abstract

In April 2017, scientists and science sympathizers held marches in the United Kingdom as part of a coordinated international March for Science movement that was held in over 600 cities worldwide. This article reports from participant-observation studies of the marches that took place in London and Cardiff. Supplemented with data from 37 interviews from marchers at the London event, the article reports on an analysis of the placards, focusing on marchers’ concerns and the language and images through which they expressed those concerns. How did the protesters articulate their concerns and objectives, and how were these articulations used to build a community? The placards did not represent a clear, focused, and unifying message; they instead illustrated disparate concerns ranging from human-induced climate change, Trump and “alternative facts,” and local UK specific political issues concerning the country’s exit from the European Union. Our analysis shows that placards gave a playful and whimsical character to the march, with slogans displaying significant amounts (and moments) of humor, often formulated through insider jokes, scientific puns, or self-deprecating appropriation of negative stereotypes about scientists. We analyze the march through the social movement literature and as a collective identity-building exercise for an (emergent) community of scientists and sympathizers with long-term aims of establishing a louder voice for scientists, and experts, in public discourse.

Highlights

The March for Science, held in Washington, DC on the April 22nd, 2017, as well as more than 600 other cities worldwide (Sasse & Tran, 2018), was organized as a grass-root protest by scientists and science sympathizers ostensibly as a reaction to the election of Donald Trump to U.S president
It represented a collective outcry of a diverse range of scientific concerns: over Trump and “alternative facts” and about climate change, alternative medicine, antivaccination movements, general public ignorance of science, lack of funding, lack of respect and, in the United Kingdom at least, Brexit and conservative politician Michael Gove’s infamous populist remark that the public “has had enough of experts” (Clarke & Newman, 2017)
The core questions this article answers are as follows: What issues concerning science did the marchers emphasize? How were these issues collectively articulated and represented? How was humor used in the march? And what are the potential consequences of how this nascent community presented itself and its relations to the outside?

Summary

Introduction

The March for Science, held in Washington, DC on the April 22nd, 2017, as well as more than 600 other cities worldwide (Sasse & Tran, 2018), was organized as a grass-root protest by scientists and science sympathizers ostensibly as a reaction to the election of Donald Trump to U.S president. The marches in the United Kingdom took on an extra political dimension, not just because of the on-going issue of Brexit, but because Prime Minister Theresa May had announced a general election less than a week previously (18th April) This occurred in the context of the ongoing financial crisis, which begun in 2008, that contributed to the U.K. slashing public funding to universities widely affecting scientific research. With the Leave campaign positioning the people against experts, those on the side of the scientific community struggled to make their voices heard In this context, the March for Science was both an expression of public and collective disdain toward the Leave campaign rhetoric, and a statement against the impact of neoliberal and austerity policies placed onto scientific institutions in the United Kingdom. While the protest could possibly be conceptualized as relatively well-off people worried about a lack of social standing, the protest framed and understood science as a general public good under threat

Method

Findings

Discussion