Complexity and opportunity in science communication

Abstract

Science communication is resurgent at this time, early in the 21st century, when signs abound of a return to Enlightenment and a change in structures of knowledge comparable to the 17th transition from feudalism to the early modern period. Fears that a return to Enlightenment renders critical theory and cultural studies irrelevant may be unfounded. Science today is not defined by the Newtonian physics up until the 1950s, but by complexity. Unlike earlier models of transmission that defined communication research into the 1960s, complexity theory in science makes a dialogue or interactive model so much more necessary. Complexity is infused into science communication, which as a hybrid field draws from many different disciplines external to its own cluster of subjects, and internally from different aspects of that cluster. The obvious subjects include mass communication, media studies, communication theory and new media studies.