Communication of scientists and new information and communication technology (notes from a pessimist)

Evgeniy V. Maslanov
Insti­tute of Phi­los­o­phy, Russ­ian Acad­e­my of Sci­ences

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion of sci­en­tists and new infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy (notes from a pes­simist)

Abstract. The arti­cle attempts to ana­lyze the basic ways sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­ceeds in. As known, it embraces two major streams, which are inter­nal sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion with oth­er sci­en­tists and com­mu­ni­ca­tion with extra-sci­en­tif­ic actors. The first type usu­al­ly refers to the solu­tion of pro­fes­sion­al issues, while the sec­ond one focus­es on com­mu­ni­cat­ing the achieve­ment of sci­ence to the pub­lic. Today, with the evo­lu­tion of techno­science, the sec­ond type of com­mu­ni­ca­tion is play­ing a spe­cial role. The author sub­stan­ti­ates the the­sis that the active use of new infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy leads to the spread of sci­en­tif­ic world views and sci­en­tif­ic ratio­nal­i­ty beyond sci­ence. In the process of its use, new infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy forms a space of val­ues, intrin­sic to sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty, for non-sci­en­tists. Along with it, the intense devel­op­ment of projects to pop­u­lar­ize sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge, togeth­er with the intro­duc­tion of sci­en­tif­ic ratio­nal­i­ty through the active use of var­i­ous inter­faces, leads to a sit­u­a­tion where soci­ety is increas­ing­ly learn­ing about sci­ence. There is an inter­sec­tion of two com­mu­ni­ca­tion flows – between sci­en­tists them­selves and between sci­en­tists and extra-sci­en­tif­ic actors. In this sit­u­a­tion, a com­mon space of com­mu­ni­ca­tion is form­ing, and it can devel­op into a com­mon space of projects and dis­cus­sions between pro­fes­sion­als and non-pro­fes­sion­als. A bor­der zone of a syn­thet­ic approach is form­ing between the two com­mu­ni­ca­tion flows, where pro­fes­sion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion and sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion with non-sci­en­tists is start­ing to mix togeth­er. Such strate­gies are active­ly evolv­ing with­in social net­works or syn­thet­ic plat­forms, allow­ing both an acquain­tance with sci­en­tif­ic results and a par­tic­i­pa­tion in dis­cus­sions with sci­en­tists or even in sci­en­tif­ic research. As a result, the val­ue and sig­nif­i­cance of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge are becom­ing deval­ued.

Key­words: com­mu­ni­ca­tion, sci­ence, sci­ence pop­u­lar­iza­tion, sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ties, inter­face, new infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy, plat­forms

DOI: 10.5840/dspl2020312

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