The establishment and operation project for emerging science and technology media center

Research Summary

In the past decades, the importance of social dialogue communication has largely been overlooked in Taiwan's development of science and technology, which incurred expansive social costs as a result. In view of this, the goal of this project is to organise a transdisciplinary research group, including scholars of sociology, journalism, biomedical science, law and climate science, to establish the Science Media Center (SMC) in Taiwan. The main tasks of this project can be divided into six components: communication strategy innovation; scientific information translation; empowerment workshop for media and scientific researchers; multi-stakeholder network operation; public communication and collaboration; and international cooperation. The communication strategy innovation will be developed based on the gap analysis of existing science and technology communication, the risk identification of emerging industries and public risk perception survey.

The communication strategies will contain the standard operational procedure and checklist to support the emergency response for social controversy. In order to implement the concepts of co-production and co-design, this project will establish a multi-stakeholder network that includes media, NGOs, governmental agencies and industrial members. Combined with the mutual empowerment workshop for media and scientific researchers, this project attempts to address the gap of risk perception between different social groups. In order to initiate the successful scientific information translation and public communication, the project will construct multiple channels to engage the target audience. Furthermore, the center also puts much emphasis on the active collaboration with the target audience through innovate approaches such as hackathon for science media.

The project team will make exchanges with members of science media centers of the United Kingdom and other countries to learn about their experiences, and organize workshops for researchers from Southeast Asia to introduce the science communication strategy developed by SMC. The ultimate goal is to establish a dialogue platform for media, industry, academia and public through the transdisciplinary research group, so as to support the thoughtful development of innovative industries, and a systematic science communication model for the society.