Abstract
The Science Media Centre (SMC) is a new type of organisation at the science–media interface that acts like a press office and supports newsrooms. The first SMC was founded in 2002 in the UK, but, despite its supposed success, its impact on public debates has so far hardly been studied. Based on theoretical considerations and an interview study, this paper argues that the SMC can be understood as a public policy instrument to secure science’s licence to practice. As a technical fix to the social problem of a ‘crisis of public trust in science’, the SMC acts as an emergency press office in science- and technology-intensive controversies. Its deficit model-informed communication policy is that the political is technical, the technical should be evidence-based and this evidence should come from scientific experts. The implications for public debates are considered.
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