engleski

Science in Post-Truth Society: New Media and Social Perception of Science

The public has always had an ambivalent attitude towards science. Science has brought new knowledge and has made life easier, but the power of knowledge has always provoked doubts about ethics of scientific endeavours. Among other factors that might be attributed to contemporary postmodern society, various characteristics of media production lead to the communication errors and negative public attitudes towards science. However, the advent of the new media has exacerbated such issues within the relationship between science and the media, taking into account that non-selective information sources on the Internet destroy the role of "gate-keeping" residing in traditional mass media and journalists. Although at first sight such a process implies potential for information democratization, it also entails possibilities of presenting completely false and unfounded opinions, especially those concerning science. In this paper, the authors show a detailed analysis of the socio-cultural changes and media production characteristics that cause misunderstandings, but they also indicate useful principles that could lead to the more successful communication and social understanding of science. The role of scientists as communicators of science is indispensable in this respect, but there is also a need to abandon the traditional and idealized concepts of science as an isolated and self-sufficient human endeavor.

science ; media ; Internet ; postmodern society ; popularization of science

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