Lived Experience,Shared Knowledge: Reimagining Community-Driven Science Communication Research

What comes to mind when you think of science? This may seem like an odd opening to readers of a journal dedicated to science communication, but as a community of researchers and practitioners, we often take it for granted. For broader publics, science aligns with what the sociologist Anthony Giddens (1991) refers to as an “abstract system”—the large systems and structures that manage and operate modern life. These systems are vast and sprawling, operating through various webs of activity and domains of expertise, often vaguely understood, if at all, by those who interact with them. For these reasons, abstract systems depend on two important factors of perennial interest in the field of science communication: expertise and trust. Society functions with the assumptions that we depend on the knowledge of experts to maintain the structure and processes of these systems in our everyday lives and we trust that they will work in fair and appropriate ways. Our interactions with members or representatives of abstract systems are dependent on a vast array of “access points” (Giddens, 1991). These access points provide “experts” with the opportunity to display traits that demonstrate both expertise, based on types of training or credentials, and sustain trust to non-expert audiences. For non-experts, these interactions help shape and define how we think and feel about the system. They also shape how “experts” think and feel about “non-experts.”

Whereas science communicators typically think of science as a systematic way of thinking as well as a wide network of disciplines and fields, actors, and institutions, those who are not science communication researchers or practitioners think about science much differently based on the “access points” that are most salient for them. In Summer 2021, Pew Research found that 65% of U.S. adults said science had a mostly positive effect on society. When further pressed on what exactly Americans had in mind when they think about science, the most prominent topic on respondents’ minds was health and medicine. Topics such as the environment, space exploration, or even computers and digital technology were not that frequent (Spencer & Funk, 2022). Despite this broad trend, whether it is access to scientific information or opportunities for engagement with science, it should come as no surprise to readers of this journal that “access points” related to science are unequally and inequitably distributed among the U.S. public. The scientific community no doubt understands this given the decades-long push to create more opportunities for science—and scientists—to reach non-scientist audiences. However, our best efforts to broaden engagement will miss the mark if we do not sufficiently understand the particular and unique dynamics of these problems among populations that have systematically different experiences with these access points.

As a community of scholars dedicated to understanding the communication dynamics surrounding issues related to science, we believe that there is a necessary and timely need to reflect on the type and nature of these access points directly with community and how they connect to understanding of and engagement with science. This requires recognizing the historical oppression, discrimination, and inequities that have garnered earned mistrust among persistently marginalized groups, and how we as science communication researchers can think constructively about our contribution to inclusive science communication efforts (e.g., Canfield & Menezes, 2020).

Our focus on this topic is inspired by two trends within the science communication literature. First, there is a tendency in both research and practice to take a general population approach to public understanding and engagement with science. Specifically, within the context of trust and misinformation, researchers have mainly focused on certain sub-sets of the population—such as ideological and religious groups, or simply the “vaccine hesitant.” These sub-sets are more likely to appear in science communication research compared with other sub-sets of the population, such as persistently marginalized racial and ethnic groups. Among studies focused on race and ethnicity, few focus on Black Americans even though many science communication researchers are aware of the historical and persisting inequities faced by this community in not only science but also medicine (for notable exceptions, see Druckman et al., 2021; Plutzer, 2013).

Relatedly, Canfield and Menezes (2020) called attention to these shortcomings by advancing the framework of inclusive science communication that “recognizes the need to root [science communicators’] work with an ethic of inclusion and equity” (p. 8). A growing number of practitioners are already implementing this framework in their work (Canfield et al., 2020), but it is less integrated within science communication research. Even the most well-intentioned public engagement efforts may fall short if we do not have research-backed evidence on how the shared and lived experiences among marginalized individuals and groups shape how they define and perceive science or the pathways for creating dialogue on contentious scientific topics. Being intentional about these efforts requires researchers to have conversations with specific communities about what issues matter and why. It is through this type of reflexive, iterative research that science communication researchers can support the efforts of science communication practitioners and community collaborators and together develop approaches to public engagement that are inclusive, equitable, and evidence-based.

Second, while there has undeniably been a surge of attention among science communication researchers to health-related contexts as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, including within the context of marginalized groups, substantive engagement with relevant literature in health communication is often stymied by the familiar academic pattern of siloing. In other words, while there is a topical sense in which more studies are focusing on health-related scientific contexts and information, the theoretical concepts and approaches we tend to adopt often bear the marks of our own set of “access points” to science, in which we tend to view medicine and health as merely a subset of the broader scientific enterprise. While in an abstract sense that is accurate, if we consider how the “access points” for science and medicine differ for members of the public, and marginalized populations and Black Americans in particular, the limitations and missed opportunities such an approach entails become more apparent.

Within health communication scholarship, there is a growing body of research on medical mistrust among Black Americans (Jaiswal et al., 2020; Williamson, 2021; Williamson, Bigman, & Quick, 2019, Williamson, Smith, & Bigman, 2019). Research on this topic put forward specific mental models, schemata, and related concepts that condition how Black American respondents process medical information. Yet, it is less understood how medical trust relates to trust in science among Black American communities. In 2022, we received funding from the National Science Foundation to develop a clearer understanding of how Black American experiences shape their thinking about science-related topics, and the group-level dynamics that may lead to how they interact with the spread of misinformation and misperceptions. Through a partnership with a Milwaukee-based non-profit organization, our first phase of the project seeks to understand what access points are most relative to community members, and how these experiences—both lived and historic—shape their perceptions of science and health-related issues. After conducting five community conversations with Black Americans this fall, we learned a great deal about how systemic racism, discrimination, and marginalization faced in every aspect of society, but especially science and medicine, shape how members of this community think about science, and the topics and issues where science-related information appears most often in their lives. In the Spring, we will conduct several focus groups building on what we uncovered in the community conversations, developing a clearer picture of the mental models and schemata that are most salient when it comes to engaging with science-related information. In the meantime, we are in the process of communicating about our findings from the community conversation with community through various modes and formats. Through this type of intentional dialogue at the early stages of our project, we seek to ensure that Black Americans’ lived experiences are central to the insights and recommendations that we develop in the later stages of the project.

We believe that through these efforts, we not only work with community directly in how research efforts can best support their needs and wants but also provide a framework for how to move past our tendency as researchers to seek answers to specific questions, and instead focus on what matters to community and how that informs the research questions we address. On a broader level, this project also provides needed insight into how some of the more complex questions within science communication research can be unveiled through the lens of health and medicine. By reimagining an approach to science communication that includes co-creation with community and traversing disciplinary boundaries, we hope to encourage the science communication community to reflect on the importance of shared and lived experience within community, and the integral role this plays in their engagement with scientific information and institutions. We see this as a positive and needed step for the research community to advance inclusive science communication efforts and to garner greater awareness of how cross-disciplinary research can provide ways for science communication to develop more inclusive approaches.