Abstract
Science communication has emerged as a new field over the last 50 years, and its progress has been marked by a rise in jobs, training courses, research, associations, conferences and publications. This paper describes science communication internationally and the trends and challenges it faces, before looking at the national level. We have documented science communication activities in Brazil, the training courses, research, financial support and associations/societies. By analyzing the publication of papers, dissertations and theses we have tracked the growth of this field, and compared the level of activity in Brazil with other countries. Brazil has boosted its national research publications since 2002, with a bigger contribution from postgraduate programs in education and communication, but compared to its national research activity Brazil has only a small international presence in science communication. The language barrier, the tradition of publishing in national journals and the solid roots in education are some of the reasons for that. Brazil could improve its international participation, first by considering collaborations within Latin America. International publication is dominated by the USA and the UK. There is a need to take science communication to the next level by developing more sophisticated tools for conceptualizing and analyzing science communication, and Brazil can be part of that.
Highlights
Modern science communication emerged at the end of World War 2
We investigated the publication of dissertations and theses in Brazil; the publication of papers in the field, nationally and internationally; and examined important databases, three relevant international journals about science communication:
Even though 19 States18 have published papers, we identified a concentration in Brazil in the southeast (66%), followed by the south (17%), northeast (11%), central-West (5%) and north (1%)
Summary
Modern science communication emerged at the end of World War 2. As science moved from traditional concerns such as agriculture into the new frontiers of biochemistry, nuclear physics and genetic engineering, it shifted from dealing with issues familiar to ordinary citizens into areas quite remote from their everyday lives. As it became less familiar, science dealt with concepts and ideas far beyond normal human experience. It needed to alert the public to new ideas and better ways of doing things.
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