Rhetorical Science Communication

Science changes and influences social and political discourse. This leads to epistemic conflicts: Why should we be guided by scientific knowledge? How does scientific knowledge actually function? What does it mean to deal with it critically? How does it relate to other forms of knowledge?

This pressure to compete and justify leads to numerous ideologically motivated attacks on and strategic imitations of "scientificity", which creates a great need for effective communicative clarification and positioning. How can science communicators convey the scientific discourse - i.e. their own scientific questions, topics and concerns - to various inter- and transdisciplinary stakeholders and the "public" in an appealing and convincing way?

The concept of science communication has a special role to play here. It has evolved considerably in recent years and has become a generic term for a diverse, heterogeneous and rapidly growing discipline in theory and practice. Rhetorical science communication deals with the recontextualization of scientific discourse for specific audiences. The focus is on:

    (1) the components of the communication process, i.e. sender, message, channel, receiver;
    (2) the variables of the rhetorical situation, i.e. exigence, audience, framework conditions, resistance;
    (3) the means of persuasion, i.e. logos (content level), ethos (personal level), pathos (affective level).

Rhetorical science communication thus focuses on how procedural, situational and persuasive coordinates can be coordinated in order to effectively build trust and identification between the sciences and the public(s).

The following topics are currently at the center of rhetorical science communication research:

Audience Orientation, Invitational Rhetoric, Knowledge Design, Public Engagement, Impact and Evaluation.