The public as a communication system

Abstract

The public can be considered as a communication field with three main actors: speakers, communicators, and the audience. The characteristics of these actors and the features of their interaction constitute the social infrastructure of public knowledge production. There is both theoretical reason and practical evidence to suggest that the mass media tend to construct science stories in terms of spectacular events, simple causes and unambiguous moral positions. These tendencies create some elementary problems where `science meets the public'. By `popularization' the distance between the communication systems of science and of the public can be reduced but not eliminated.