2019
Through a comparison of science communication in theory and science communication in practice, Metcalfe reveals that debates around models are what best define the central activity in academic science communication and that many hypotheses are not appropriately empirically grounded. This dissertation, while not of great influence yet, helps clarify academic science communication's identity by centering its activities around the debate of "models". She argues that all variations of theorized models still fall into one of the main three: deficit, dialogue, or participatory. Modern academic science communication is currently obsessed with the activity of cementing mutually exclusive models while damning and discarding the “evil deficit” ways. Metcalfe, having spent decades as a professional Science Communicator before beginning her PhD, helps to ground academics, reminding them how practice actually works. This paper, and further work by Metcalfe, might stop the needless over-simplistic obsession of denouncing the deficit model en-masse and inspire more context-specific unique situational analyses. Metcalfe argues that the deficit model is neither wrong nor right, rather, its utility varies according to the specific situation.
This paper helps me by confirming my suspicion that little empirical research has been done in assessing which models best explain how science communication is actually done, providing me with a place for further research. It also helps me to avoid lambasting the deficit model simply because it’s trendy to do so, while at the same time reminds me that debates around models are a central activity of academic science communication with much more meaningful work, at the intersection of theory and practice, to be done.
Reference:
Metcalfe, J. E. (2019). Rethinking science communication models in practice. The Australian National University.