ACCEPTED OPEN PANELS–Science Communication/Public Engagement

25. Citing the South: Infometrics and Open Science for Sustainable Development in the Global South

Julian David Cortes Sanchez, School of Management, Universidad del Rosario; Diana Lucio Arias, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana

Tangible and intangible knowledge exchange within the Global South (GS) is becoming increasingly important. A sustainable knowledge exchange agenda within the GS may consider the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Despite the setbacks, knowledge stock (KS) such as research articles and patents, is consistently increasing in the GS by the thousands. Both the (digital) access and the appropriation of KS by society is crucial for achieving the SDGs. However, several concerns may arise regarding these complex tasks: How to integrate that KS and societies’ access to it to the design and evaluation of STi policies at the micro-macro levels? How open is the access to KS related to the SDGs for communities in the GS? Is this KS responding either to local necessities or instrumentally to a global agenda?  What is the current impact and collaboration of the KS related to the SDGs produced by/within the GS? Which is the impact and influence of funding agencies, and corporate-academic collaboration in research related to the SDGs in the GS? Methods and analytical frameworks form Infometrics (Webo-Cyber-Biblio-Sciento-metrics) enable to gain insights over those and other inquiries. The aim of this open panel, therefore, is to debate around the production, structure, access, appropriation, and impact of the KS related to the SDGs and its positive, collateral or null effects in national socio-technical systems and national/international institutions, all above analyzed within the framework of South-South cooperation.

Contact: julian.cortess@urosario.edu.co

Keywords: Infometrics, Open Science, SDGs, Science Governance, Global South

Categories: Science Communication/Public Engagement

Knowledge, Theory and Method

Governance and Public Policy

27. Collective Forms Of Governance: Rethinking The Role Of Civic Engagement With Science & Technology In Epistemically Fragmented Societies

Madeleine Murtagh, Policy, Ethics & Life Sciences Research Centre, Newcastle University; Barbara Prainsack, University of Vienna; Alessandro Blasimme, ETH Zurich

Western democracies are facing harsh criticism for their alleged inability to meet their own standards of inclusivity and justice. Against the backdrop of rising inequalities within and across societies, dissatisfaction with the rituals and symbols of representative democracy is mounting. A pronounced anti-establishment rhetoric is eroding the institutional culture of democracy, its reliance on scientific and other established sources of knowledge, and the credibility of expertise and competence. Consequently, collective decision-making about complex sociotechnical options (such as genome editing, access to sensitive personal data for research and care, and climate change) is increasingly taking place within a legitimacy void. Resistance to a Western normativity, both in the Global South and Global North, demands alternative modes, reference points, spaces of decision making.

In this panel we ask: How might we deploy collective forms of governance in epistemically fragmented and diverse societies? What role can civic engagement – understood as the involvement of publics in the governance of science and technology within and outside of the traditional institutions of representative democracy – play in producing democratically legitimate decisions on complex sociotechnical matters? What practices of public deliberation can enhance the quality of science and technology governance? Can civic engagement be an antidote to the political manipulation of public opinion? We do not assume civic engagement to be an unproblematic ‘good’. Rather we encourage critical reflection and engagement with these questions to ask what can be or might be the effects of such civic engagement? Particularly, looking beyond the precepts of a Western sensibility.

Contact: madeleine.murtagh@newcastle.ac.uk

Keywords: collective governance, governing science and technology, diversity, normativity

Categories: Governance and Public Policy

STS and Social Justice/Social Movement

Science Communication/Public Engagement

30. Contesting the ‘migration/border control machine’: entanglements of information and surveillance infrastructures with the making of publics/’non-publics’

Nina Amelung, University of Minho; Silvan Pollozek, MCTS, Technical University of Munich

In recent years information and surveillance infrastructures of migration and border control have gained more attention of civic actors, activists and researchers. Work at the intersection of STS, critical migration and border studies scrutinizes the hidden processes of data and information processing and their consequences on citizens and migrants, the seemingly neutrality of technologies or the role of technocratic experts.

But what could or should enable ‘non-publics’, those affected by the infrastructure’s consequences of social sorting, to transform into visible collectives and publics? How are other critical voices part of larger publics and controversies? How do publics emerge, and which issues and concerns gain authority and affect the design and working of surveillance and information infrastructures?

The panel engages with the making of ‘non-publics’, publics and controversies around information and surveillance infrastructures of migration and border control and addresses multiple forms of critique and contestation. It explores the arenas in which controversies unfold, the actors involved and the issues and concerns being articulated. It critically examines which actors’ voices are in- and excluded, amplified or silenced, as well as the processes and dynamics which enable or restrict public contestation. Furthermore, it reflects upon the ontological politics of research and researchers themselves. How is epistemic authority constructed within publics and beyond when engaging as experts, opinion makers and (expert) activists?

We invite contributions that study emergent publics and their arenas, actors, issues and contestations unfolding around the regulation, implementation and use of surveillance and information infrastructures of migration and border control.

Huub Dijstelbloem, University of Amsterdam, will act as discussant of this session.

Contact: nina.amelung@gmail.com

Keywords: infrastructures, migration and border control, contestation and (non)publics, ontological politics, epistemic authority

Categories: STS and Social Justice/Social Movement

Technologies of Militarism/(In)Security

Science Communication/Public Engagement

40. Digital Platforms, Knowledge Democracies and the Remaking of Expertise

Warren Pearce, Department of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield

Traditional forms of expertise appear in crisis. Digital platforms such as YouTube, Wikipedia and Zhihu increasingly shape the knowledge and expertise that constitute the infrastructure of modern knowledge-based democracies. Techno-optimism about the democratisation of knowledge has given way to dismay that the internet has eroded the shared truths that enable rational discourse. Digital platforms’ business models incentivise audience over accuracy, with publics increasingly concerned about the resulting online misinformation. Meanwhile, a new wave of right-wing ‘populist’ politicians in the US, Brazil and elsewhere have come to power by fostering an anti-expert culture. Yet within this bleak picture, new kinds of experts and expertise, particular to digital platforms, are emerging in domains as diverse as finance, science and culture.

This panel brings together researchers investigating the nexus of experts, publics and platforms across a range of topics, and employing a range of methods. Potential questions include: How are experts establishing credibility on digital platforms? How do digital platforms shape the production and communication of expertise? What are publics demanding from experts on digital platforms? How is epistemological power being reinforced or disrupted by platformisation? Are there potential futures for experts, digital platforms and democracy beyond the dystopian imaginary of the post-truth society?  This panel will contribute to STS by assessing the impact of platformisation on existing, canonical theories of expertise, and provides opportunity for reflection on the conference themes of changing digital identities and the challenge of public engagement in democracies teeming with ‘alternative facts’.

Contact: warren.pearce@sheffield.ac.uk

Keywords: expertise, digital platforms, knowledge democracies,

Categories: Knowledge, Theory and Method

Information, Computing and Media Technology

Science Communication/Public Engagement

43. Digital technologies shaping the politics of science and the science of politics

Florian Eyert, Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society; Hannes Wuensche, Fraunhofer FOKUS

In the wake of the #DigitalTransformation we observe a multiplicity of new practices emerging in science. Digital technologies like #BigDataAnalytics, #MachineLearning or #Crowdworking tools gain importance as scientific instruments, ousting established #EpistemicPractices. On the one hand, this reconfigures the politics of science, setting new epistemic norms for the organization, evaluation and communication of science. On the other hand, the science of politics incorporates new paradigms, assumptions and epistemic affordances into the ways in which scholars perceive and analyze the political and social world, thus producing new political epistemologies.

The panel aims to explore the dialogue between these two perspectives and the presentations in it will address one or more of the following questions: 

1. How do digital technologies affect the making and doing of science and the ways in which the politics and negotiation of scientific knowledge unfolds? How, for instance, are new distributed arrangements in science, like #OpenScience or #CitizenScience, shaped or enabled by digital instruments?
2. How do digital technologies affect the production and perception of scientific knowledge about the political? How do, for instance, the #ComputationalSocialSciences and #DigitalHumanities challenge and transform the science of politics? How does #ComputationalModeling impact the premises of political advice?
3. How do these two aspects affect each other and how are they intertwined?
4. What do these shifts imply for our own epistemic practices within the STS community?

The panel invites contributions that offer theoretical perspectives on digital technologies as epistemic practices as well as empirical studies of relevant cases.

Contact: florian.eyert@wzb.eu

Keywords: digitalization, epistemic practices, computational social science, citizen science

Categories: Information, Computing and Media Technology

Knowledge, Theory and Method

Science Communication/Public Engagement

45. Dilemmas in advisory science

Kåre Nolde Nielsen, UiT – The Arctic University of Norway; Sebastian Linke, University of Gothenburg; Petter Holm, UiT – The Arctic University of Norway

Interfaces between advisory science and policy are subject to a number of practical and theoretical dilemmas, inviting continuous empirical attention and conceptual refinement.

   One such dilemma concerns the separation between the respective bodies in charge of providing advice and of using it in decision-making. A close association between these bodies ensures that scientific advice is useful. However, the association can also be too close, as this may undermine the reality as well as the external perception of objective advice and legitimate decision-making.

   Another dilemma concerns accountability, e.g. when scientific advisory processes are opened up for participation by interest groups, lay experts and citizens. While there are substantive and normative reasons for stakeholder participation in the provision of relevant knowledge, this may challenge accountability and credibility of the advice.

   A third dilemma concerns tensions between complexity and transparency. Supported by model development, rising computing power and data availability, scientific advice increasingly draws on integrated model frameworks that aim to account for interactions between multiple factors. While promising more comprehensive assessments, the advice based on highly complex models may become difficult to explain and understand.

   This open panel invites studies about the relationships between scientific advice and decision-making with a particular emphasis on practical dilemmas faced by various actors at different levels (local, national, global), the steps taken to address them as well as conceptual developments on science-policy interactions.

Contact: kare.nolde.nielsen@uit.no

Keywords: Advisory science, science-policy interactions, lay expertise

Categories: Governance and Public Policy

Science Communication/Public Engagement

Environmental/Multispecies Studies

51. Doing STS amid the Procession of Disaster

Steve G. Hoffman, University of Toronto

The procession of disaster – extreme weather events, industrial legacy hazards, and the cascading failures of sociotechnical infrastructures – is the new normal. The impact of this procession on daily life ranges from inconvenient (e.g. campus closures due to extreme weather) to catastrophic (e.g. ice storms, floods, toxic contamination, catastrophic wildfires, increasingly angry hurricanes, etc.). As the regularity of large-scale tragedy accelerates, calls for sustainability, climate adaptation, and disaster resilience are converging. This open panel invites contributions that draw out the continuities and discontinuities in this convergence, especially where the links are tense for STS scholarship. Governance practices around sustainability and climate adaptation, for example, have developed from technocratic planning frameworks that promote economic growth while trying to preserve bio-physical resources. Here we find a persistently practical if pollyannaish emphasis on human behavior change and less wasteful consumption. STS scholars of disaster, in contrast, have focused on longer term sociomaterial legacies of modernity. Here we find theoretically rich but often quite removed deconstructions of the very concepts of crisis and disaster, accounts of the unequal distribution of vulnerability, exposes of entrenched institutional power, or broad denunciations of post-colonial and/or neoliberal governance. Where can STS scholars locate a constructive engagement with the programmatic emphasis of sustainability governance, disaster and emergency management, and climate adaptation? How do we continue to raise challenging epistemological and ontological questions while also engaging practical contributions to the climate crisis and procession of disaster? How are we to live, work, suffer, mobilize, and love within the new normal?

Contact: steve.hoffman@utoronto.ca

Keywords: disaster, catastrophe, climate adaptation, climate crisis, sustainability

Categories: Science Communication/Public Engagement

Environmental/Multispecies Studies

STS and Social Justice/Social Movement

58. Envisioning a Decentered Academic Knowledge System Online

Gareth A. F. Edel, New Jersey Institute of Technology; Nathan Fisk, University of South Florida

With increasing attention paid to exploitative labor practices in scholarship, marginalization of non-dominant scholars, and exclusionary pricing of access to knowledge, this panel asks what alternatives exist or could exist to the  online version of traditional paper journals.

Scientific norms focusing on access and sharing information have been fundamentally at odds with the idea of intellectual property in recent decades. However, science, and technoscientific society broadly, depend on sharing information among scholars, and communities. With ownership at issue we ask- are the current systems matching or failing aspirational norms, such as Mertonian Communalism (1942) or the more radical public or communitarian access imagined in DIY movements and Citizen Science (Cluck 2015, Ottinger 2010). We ask, what would happen if we did not assume scientific “journals” as the core method of knowledge sharing? What would an open public and expert community reviewed information system look like? Can we look at online communities and technically enabled information systems outside of the sciences and see analogues or affordances?  Many practices and technological models present options, but how can we consider an alternative to, or an adjunct to, traditional journals and peer review?

Presenters and discussants are invited to contribute case studies of knowledge development and distribution outside of the ‘online paper journal’ model, or to offer theoretical or developmental models for considerations contributing to a collaborative discussion of the possibilities and practicalities of an alternative forms of “journals,” or Shared open and public expert community reviewed information system.

Contact: garethedel@gmail.com

Keywords: Open Journals, Open Access, Knowledge Systems, Peer Review, Expertise

Categories: Knowledge, Theory and Method

Information, Computing and Media Technology

Science Communication/Public Engagement

61. Exploring Empowerment in The Co-creation of Innovation

Shelly Tsui, Eindhoven University of Technology; Cian O’Donovan, University College London; Makoto Takahashi, Technical University Munich; Sophie Nyborg, Technical University of Denmark – DTU; Erik Laes, Eindhoven University of Technology; Mandi Astola, E

Co-creation continues to be a powerful way to frame practices of technology development and governance. On its own terms, it transforms passive recipients into active co-creators, lending a participative hue to innovation imperatives that otherwise urge disruption and scale-up. And amongst design, business and policy practitioners, co-creation provides a usefully ambiguous framework with which to guide the design and deployment of experiments, interventions and instruments in domains as diverse as energy production, health care and agriculture.

The promise of co-creation is the empowerment of those usually excluded from processes of knowledge production. Advocates claim it affords more meaningful and material participation where the inputs of a diversity of stakeholders are taken on an equal-footing. Yet what exactly empowerment is in co-creation remains unclear, and this lack of clarity has implications for the extent to which co-creation will be adopted by influential actors such as policy-makers as an approach to include society in technoscientific innovation.

This panel seeks to explore questions about the empowerment and co-creation nexus. Who or what is empowered, by what means (emergence), and to what ends? Which concepts of power and agency might help us to think this through? Does empowerment for some mean disempowerment of others? What are the implications for ethics, responsibility and governance? What makes empowerment under co-creation different from existing calls for participation in innovation?

We welcome conceptual and empirical papers that explores these questions and others that deal with the role of empowerment, communities, agency in practices of co-creation and knowledge production.

Contact: s.tsui@tue.nl

Keywords: Co-creation, empowerment, knowledge production, stakeholder engagement, innovation

Categories: Science Communication/Public Engagement

STS and Social Justice/Social Movement

Knowledge, Theory and Method

63. Fakes and legitimacy reordering

Cristina Popescu, EHESS – Centre d’Etude des Mouvements Sociaux

“Fakes” come in multiple forms and shapes. With the new career of the “fake news”, and the “crisis of objectivity”, the discussions on truth, validity, legitimacy became a new impulse and developed a new, transdisciplinary profile: philosophy, social sciences, economics, but also science and technology studies, approach this topic at different levels and with different results.

The session draws on this multiple approaches to the question of fakes, and yet tries to go beyond a simple recollection of paradigmatic approaches and argumentative constructions. Far more, the contributions should aim at a comparative perspective on different modes of valuation, which are implied in producing fakes across different realms of the social life. The session welcomes contributions which look at practices of classification and categorization, but also at typical ways of thinking about normative representation of actors dealing with phenomena of ascribing and assessing worth to things, people, or institutions. How are fakes produced within the new imaginative regimes at work in our societies? Which are their consequences? And which strategies do the policy actors deploy during this acute period of legitimacy reordering? These are a few questions the session intends to answer.

Contact: cristina.popescu@ehess.fr

Keywords: fake news, truth, legitimacy, valuation, imaginative regimes

Categories: Knowledge, Theory and Method

Governance and Public Policy

Science Communication/Public Engagement

68. From Citizen to Citizen-Subject? Exploring (Re)-Configurations of ‘The Public’ in Innovation

Shelly Tsui, Eindhoven University of Technology; Benjamin Lipp, Technical University Munich; Anja Kathrin Ruess, Munich Center for Technology in Society, Technical University of Munich; Meiken Hansen, Technical University of Denmark; Bozena Ryszawska, Wro

In the European innovation policy discourse, the role of the public, namely citizens, is changing. There have been calls for more forms of public engagement with citizens in science, technology, and innovation to promote more transparency, democratization of information and knowledge, and the matching of societal needs and outcomes. To achieve this, initiatives such as living labs, demonstration projects, test beds, makers-spaces, innovation labs and fab-labs are increasing in number in public spaces (e.g. universities, neighborhoods, and popular streets). The hope is that by including the citizens directly in the innovation process through real-time feedback loops through approaches like co-creation and co-design, not only would the needs and outcomes better align, but citizens would become more knowledgeable through first-hand experience.

However, in co-creating, co-designing, and engaging in the innovation’s design process, new trends are emerging. Citizens are no longer passive recipients of innovative outcomes, and instead take an active role in shaping them. Simultaneously, citizens are treated as subjects. As a result, the distinction between “end-user”, “citizen”, and “subject” are no longer clear, and has implications for agency, power, and challenging existing structures of participation and knowledge.

We seek to explore these emerging configurations of the public’s engagement in innovation and welcome conceptual and empirical contributions. What is the relevance of the terms “users”, “subjects”, and “citizens”? How does this ambiguity affect knowledge production and the discourse of “expert” versus “lay-people” expertise? What implications do these trends have for policymakers as public experimentation initiatives become more commonplace?

Contact: s.tsui@tue.nl

Keywords: citizens, innovation, configuration, knowledge production, public engagement

Categories: Knowledge, Theory and Method

Science Communication/Public Engagement

79. Holding It Together?  Data And Disasters

Louise Elstow, Lancaster University; Ben Epstein, UCL

We propose to convene a panel on the theme of data in disasters which includes the audience as active participants on a moving stage, engaging them in moving data collection. In this time of seemingly constant crisis and increasing numbers of disasters, people and things move around. Data gathering is often only a snapshot in time and location, accurate only in specific situated instances; an attempt to pin down a moveable feast.  A myriad of types of data is collected and deployed by different actors seeking to find their new normal, respond to the needs of the community, demonstrate that the incident is under control.  We’d like to explore some of the ways in which it is held together by the practices, politics and policies involved in data construction and use. 

Panel members might want to discuss topics such as: the performativity, commensur-ation/ability or [re]inscription of disaster research data, translation and interpretation of data into representations of disaster, and disaster data ontologies and epistemologies. We welcome presentations based on: the politics and ethics of data collection and management (e.g disaster data in a post GDPR, big data world), or how the quantitative and qualitative approaches to disaster data gathering might affect framings of these events.

This is important because researching the social life of data and how it lives in disasters, should move us towards reflecting on our own data choices.

We encourage panel members who will to incorporate ‘active’ data gathering in their presentations in unusual or engaging ways.

Contact: l.elstow@lancaster.ac.uk

Keywords: Disasters, data, crisis, performativity, movement

Categories: Science Communication/Public Engagement

Big Data

Knowledge, Theory and Method

81. How can STS support a multiplicity of practices in Citizen Science?

Christian Nold, University College London; Alexandra Albert, UCL

Citizen Science is a field of growing interest for governments and social science researchers. The current situation of increased EU funding means Citizen Science is being put under pressure to professionalise, add quality and evaluation criteria. Furthermore, there is an increasing pressure to define what is Citizen Science and what it is not. One effect of this might be the exclusion of practices based around activism, art and situated knowledge that have previously been the core of citizen-led practices, and yet are being pushed to the fringes in this move to professionalisation.

STS has often uncritically supported this technocratic logic of utility and empowerment via Citizen Science. The logic of utility aims to make science cheaper by outsourcing scientific labour to the public, while at the same time claiming scientific involvement creates empowered citizens. Yet there are few actual empirical studies of impacts of this utilitarian logic on participants or what empowerment might mean in practice.

This panel asks:

What activism, art and situated knowledge practices should be seen as citizen science and how can they benefit from being framed as Citizen Science?

How can STS researchers actively support a multiplicity of Citizen Science practices?

What STS approaches can be used to expand the scope of citizen science?

This session is looking for papers that combine empirical and theoretical engagements with Citizen Science.

Contact: christian@softhook.com

Keywords: Citizen Science, Public Engagement, Art, Activism, Situated Knowledge

Categories: STS and Social Justice/Social Movement

Governance and Public Policy

Science Communication/Public Engagement

91. Institutionalization and social appropriation of RRI: A remaining challenge?

Raúl Tabarés, Fundación TECNALIA RESEARCH & INNOVATION; Vincent Blok, Wageningen University & Research; Mika Nieminen, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland; Robert Braun, Institut für Höhere Studien Vienna

Since 2013, the EC has pushed a devoted strategy to foster the embracement of RRI across the whole Horizon 2020 FP. This effort has allowed to develop a generous body of knowledge, experiences and networks around the concept with the determination to promote a significant change in European R&D. However, with the   conclusion of FP8 and the beginning of FP9 at the forefront, it´s time to reflect about how RRI has effectively permeated different institutions across the EU and outside of it. On the one hand, New HoRRIzon project has shown that the institutionalization of RRI in research organizations is still a challenge. On the other hand, other projects (e.g. RRI practice, RIconfigure) have indicated ways forward to mainstream RRI. That duality demands to explore what are the remaining challenges towards its full implementation.

In this panel we would like to explore how RRI has been diffused all over the last 7 years in Europe with the help of questions such as: Which challenges face RRI throughout the EU territory   ? What characteristics have shaped RRI diffusion? What drivers can lead the RRI paradigm towards its institutionalization? Which best practices can be shared and transferred across the continent?  

We welcome submissions from different fields of academia (political science, philosophy, sociology, social psychology, anthropology and STS of course) that want to share their findings  about this timely policy episode. We also welcome papers from different stakeholders engaged in this topic such as research funders, policy makers, science communicators and citizen associations.

Contact: FARAONDEMETAL@GMAIL.COM

Keywords: open science, stakeholder engagement, ethics, STI policy, innovation ecosystems

Categories: Governance and Public Policy

Science Communication/Public Engagement

Knowledge, Theory and Method

92. Integrating Stakeholders From the Beginning – But (How) is that possible?

Andreas Bischof, University of Technology Chemnitz; Arne Maibaum, TU Berlin

A central mean of STS is to integrate diverging perspectives on science and technology within scientific discourses, as well as integrating non-academic actors in such projects and processes. In recent years, this mission has been adopted by funding agencies and further scientifc communities. The aim to intensify interdisciplinary cooperation with other academics and transdisciplinary cooperation with stakeholders from practice has come to the fore, such as in the EU funding governance concept „Responsible Research and Innovation“ and other modes of „Post-ELSI interdisciplinary collaboration“ (Balmer et al. 2016).

The questions what does it take to intervene, and whom a specific research constellation wants to speak to and act with, are normative, dynamic and often cannot be answered in a single solution that remains the same throughout the process. The session acknowledges this difficulty and focusses therefore on the very beginnings of (academic and non-academic) stakeholder integration. How do we, can we and should we (re)organize our methods and practices to integrate different stakeholders in the very beginning? How do we rethink and remake ways of integrating and recognizing the needs and inputs of others in early stages of research processes?

The session seeks to discuss past and ongoing efforts of user-centered design or participative research, as well as other forms of outreach activity that aimed at integrating stakeholders in academic contexts. Furthermore we welcome reflections on practices and methods of interdisciplinary cooperation focussing the very beginnings of such projects.

Contact: andreas.bischof@phil.tu-chemnitz.de

Keywords: integration, stakeholders, participation, methods, beginning

Categories: Knowledge, Theory and Method

Science Communication/Public Engagement

Governance and Public Policy

96. Living In The Laboratory: Experimental Zones And The Labification Of Everything

Arzu Sedef, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna; Thomas Buocz, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna; Brice Laurent, Ecole Des Mines De Paris; Mathieu Baudrin, CSI-Ecole Des Mines De Paris; Sebastian Michael Pfote

Notions of “laboratories,” “experimentation,” and “zones of exception” are presently gaining wider currency, far beyond the traditional confines of S&T and the narrow focus on lab science. From evidence-based policy-making using controlled trials, to living labs, test beds and regulatory sandboxes, all the way to design labs, urban labs, policy labs, social innovation labs, and legal labs – experimental approaches are being deployed across countless social and political settings. These labs promise to tackle social problems more inclusively, playfully, innovatively, and effectively, while at the same time invoking elements of scientific rigor, controlled experimentation, and the promise of scalability. They frequently lower regulatory burdens and overtly enrol populations into the making and testing of immature technologies, suggesting that business as usual will not produce the right solutions and that the effects of these experiments can be contained and tested before releasing them onto society at large.

This track aims to scrutinize the ongoing “labification of everything” in processes of social, political, and technological change. Building on STS traditions in lab studies, technical democracy, public engagement, and the politics of innovation, we especially invite papers asking:

– How are lab-like settings deployed across diverse settings?

– What does it mean to live in, or be exposed to, experimental settings?

– How are livelihoods, rights, and responsibilities affected by it?

– How do localized zones of exceptions challenge/reconfigure/test the state and the law?

– Which/whose problems are labs supposed to solve? Which problems do they create?

– How do labs contest/reconfigure/stabilize socio-technical orders, redistribute power and affect (in)equality?

Contact: sebastian.pfotenhauer@tum.de

Keywords: Experimentation, Living labs, Laboratory, Technical democracy, Policy

Categories: Governance and Public Policy

Economics, Markets, Value/Valuation

Science Communication/Public Engagement

105. Making science in public: Studying science communication and public engagement

Sarah Davies, University of Copenhagen; Noriko Hara, Indiana University; Maja Horst, University of Copenhagen

Science communication and public engagement with science are key mechanisms by which scientific knowledge is mediated, negotiated, and transformed. Over the past decades, STS research has outlined the ways in which science and society are co-produced through public communication activities and catalysed a shift towards dialogue and engagement in science communication practice. More recently, issues of representation, exclusion, and contestation have risen to the fore in discussions of science in public, as well as concerns about public (dis)trust in expertise, the dizzying impacts of social media, and debates about science’s role in political activism and resistance.

This open panel invites paper proposals that analyse such ways that science is represented, transformed, contested or negotiated in public venues. Papers may explore, for instance, citizen science; science and technology-related activism; science in social media; science in museums; deliberative experiments; popular science writing; science blogging; sci­art activities; news media; or science comedy – as well as the myriad other sites and mechanisms by which science is done in public. We invite critical analysis of these sites and mechanisms. For example, papers might analyse the constitution of publics and knowledges within particular science communication activities; discuss affective or temporal regimes of public engagement with science; or give accounts of experimental practice that show how STS might contribute to doing science in public in just, generous, and collaborative ways. In particular, any analysis that showcases the significance and agency of STS in examining diverse public engagements with science is welcomed.

Contact: sarahrachaeldavies@gmail.com

Keywords: public engagement with science, science communication, STS, democratisation of science

Categories: Science Communication/Public Engagement

STS and Social Justice/Social Movement

Governance and Public Policy

119. New Multiples in STI policy? Understanding the entanglement of concepts, practices and identities

Tim Flink, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Martin Reinhart, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Barbara Hendriks, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies; Cornelia Schendzielorz, Deutsches Insitut für

In the wake of incessant reforms pertaining to the role and function of science, technology and innovation (STI) in society, the 21st century has seen a multiplication of new STI concepts, some of which are challenging the seemingly stable understandings, practices and conceptions of scientific knowledge production and their technological utilization. How do these new concepts, e.g. responsible research and innovation, grand/societal challenges, frontier research, translational research, science diplomacy, mission-oriented research and innovation, emerge? (How) do they relate to each other, and what narratives are they embedded in? What and who are their drivers? How and by whom does their articulation take place, rather top-down or bottom-up? Whom do they include and exclude and when? Do they just legitimize policymakers or (when and why) do they translate into practices and identities of actors from the science system. How are they different from ‘old’ concepts that bridged or delineated science and non-science? This panel invites contributions that assess the role and interrelation of new STI concepts and is open to single case studies, comparative conceptual works, longitudinal analyses that put new concepts in historical perspective as well as studies that investigate into practice and habitus formations in relation to new concepts.

Contact: timotheus.flink@googlemail.com

Keywords: Concepts, semantics, rhetorical studies, discourse analysis, grand challenges, RRI, translational medical research, science diplomacy

Categories: Governance and Public Policy

Science Communication/Public Engagement

Knowledge, Theory and Method

122. Nocebos, Nocebo Studies, and STS: Meaning-Making and Recalcitrance

Ada Jaarsma, Mount Royal University; Suze Berkhout, University of Toronto; Khadija Coxon, McGill-Queen’s University Press

Nocebos, described by some as placebo’s evil twin, are unwelcome yet inextricable elements of medical treatment. In the mid-twentieth century, practices of informed consent were eliciting such pervasive adverse effects that researchers coined the term “Nocebo Effect” to render such impacts recognizable. Rather than anticipations of healing, the nocebo effect expresses expectations of harm—like side effects that emerge even when patients or trial participants receive placebos. While they are rarely familiar to the broader public, nocebo effects are intimately part of the array of interactions with which individuals relate to biomedicine. Nocebos point to the porous lines between bodies and epistemologies and between clinics and daily lives; as experiments in the burgeoning field of Nocebo Studies suggest, learning one’s genetic predispositions for disease or encountering media coverage of a generic drug’s ineffectiveness contribute to negative outcomes. Nocebos dramatize a liveliness that Isabelle Stengers and Vincianne Despret describe as “recalcitrance.” At odds with bifurcating logics that keep “matter” and “meaning” apart, nocebos animate a kind of meaning-making that is palpable, involuntary, and unwanted. This panel seeks to contribute to STS by exploring how nocebos and Nocebo Studies draw attention to the ontological choreography of biomedicine, such as the assemblages, practices or relations that constitute medical treatment and research. We welcome papers that examine the import of nocebos—broadly construed—for resistance to the norms and curative ambitions of medical treatment. And we invite presenters to make use of creative or new methodologies for identifying, interpreting and making sense of nocebo effects.

Contact: adajaarsma@gmail.com

Keywords: Placebos, nocebos, biomedicine, disability studies, materiality

Categories: Medicine and Healthcare

Science Communication/Public Engagement

Gender/Sexuality/Feminist STS

126. On the Interplay of Images, Imaginaries and Imagination in Science Communication

Andreas Metzner-Szigeth, Free University of Bolzano; Andreas Böhn, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology; Luca Toschi, University of Florence

Tables, graphics and IMAGES – e.g. representations of small but complex macro-molecules in ‘gestalt’ of the Watson-Crick Double Helix or of even more immaterial objects like bits and bytes sliding down a curtain of strings as green drops – play an important role in science communication. This applies to processes of communication between sciences and the public as well as to those between or within scientific disciplines.

The function of IMAGINARIES as associative complexes is to simultaneously shape and limit our understanding of scientific findings. The idea of gene expression within the relationship of DNA and entire organisms is an example here. Another is that of data mining with regard to the retrieval of information from networks of signal transmission.

IMAGINATION, finally, points to some generative activity of creative minds figuring out how to recognize unknown phenomena or such not yet conceived nor determined in distinct structures. Albert Einstein who wrote about a dream in which he was riding on top of a sun beam during the time he was struggling to elaborate his theory of relativity, is an example here.

How to detect and observe, analyze and understand the constructive dynamics unfolding within the interplay of IMAGES, IMAGINARIES and IMAGINATION in science communication? We invite all kind of papers that can contribute to the challenging task of making progress with regard to the question of that interplay of visual, aesthetic, semantic and epistemic forms and practices. Those relevant to technology assessment, health research, informatics and studies of interdisciplinarity are particularly welcome.

Contact: andreas.metzner-szigeth@unibz.it

Keywords: science communication, knowledge construction, visualization & framing, aesthetics & heuristics, generative interdisciplinarity

Categories: Science Communication/Public Engagement

Knowledge, Theory and Method

Other

128. ‘Openness’ In Software, Hardware And Wetware: Materialities, Collectives, Values

Luis Felipe Murillo, University of Virginia; Morgan Meyer

A wide array of forms and sites of collaborative development has emerged in the past two decades with the goal of promoting “openness” as a technoscientific practice, including, but not limited to maker and hackerspaces, digital fabrication labs, citizen and community science projects of variable scope. In this panel, we propose the examination of their genealogies and material work for the purpose of rendering science and technology “open.” Questions we ask include: how is “openness” enacted across projects and technical affordances? What are the differences and disputes with respect to political projects and modes of ethical problematization they engage? How are existing moral economies in “Free and Open Source” technology development or “Open Innovation” mobilized, extended, problematized, and transformed with new projects? How is open source enacted in fields like ecology, architecture, agriculture, medicine, or biology? How are values such as openness and decentralisation translated into technical objects, codes, and blueprints? We welcome papers that propose an engagement and extension of existing theoretical and methodological frameworks in STS to examine the debate regarding “openness” in science and technology across ethical, material, political, and legal practices and expert domains with a focus on how technical objects materialize technopolitical alignments. The goal is to respond to the research agenda set by Madeleine Akrich at the 2016 4S/EASST conference to study the practices of science and technology done otherwise, as well as to engage the challenges and possibilities set forth by Isabelle Stengers of experimenting with alternative technosciences.

Contact: morgan.meyer@mines-paristech.fr

Keywords: openness, open source, values, materiality, collaboration/collectivity

Categories: Science Communication/Public Engagement

Information, Computing and Media Technology

132. Performative Futures: Fighting Reification Inertias through Open Anticipations

Sergio Urueña, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU; Hannot Rodríguez, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU; Andoni Ibarra, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU

Science and technology practices are crucially shaped by representations of the future. Expectations, socio-technical imaginaries and techno-visions are constitutive elements in the de facto epistemic-political governance of research and innovation. Some science and technology scholars (e.g., van Lente, 2006; Jasanoff and Kim, 2015; Konrad and Palavicino, 2017; Lösch, 2017) as well as certain research policy frameworks (e.g., technology assessment, anticipatory governance, RRI) have emphasized this performative character of futures by approaching it as an object of responsibility. This intellectual endeavor has been especially fruitful in relation to the visualization and critique of existing reification inertias. That is to say, the frames, regulations, commitments, feelings and so on, orienting and constraining (i.e., reifying, or closing-down) the processes, outcomes and ends of research and innovation practices.

This panel aims to explore the theoretical and practical possibilities of developing interventive, anticipatory resources that are capable of instrumentalizing the future in more open, inclusive and reflexive ways.

Some potential questions include:

• To what extent are anticipatory narratives and practices within research and innovation policy systems open, inclusive and reflexive?
• What constraining/enabling roles do socio-technical expectations, imaginaries and techno-visions of the future play in research and innovation practices?
• What potentials and limits do anticipatory methods (e.g., scenario-building, science-fiction prototyping, technology roadmapping, etc.) display with regard to reflexivity and de-reifying dynamics?
• How is/ should the epistemic-political quality of open anticipatory practices be enacted and/or assessed?
• What role and relevance does anticipatory governance display in relation to more recent policy frameworks such as RRI and “Open Science”?

Contact: sergio.uruena@ehu.eus

Keywords: Futures, Anticipation, RRI, Scenarios, “Open Science”

Categories: Governance and Public Policy

Knowledge, Theory and Method

Science Communication/Public Engagement

138. Prototyping Urban Futures

Sascha Dickel, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz; Antonia Garbe, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz; Andrea Schikowitz, MCTS; Paula Schuster, FH Potsdam; Jordi Tost, FH Potsdam; Marcel Woznica, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz | Institut für Sozi

“The future cannot begin” (Luhmann 1976) – yet, prototyping can be regarded as a mode of materializing potential futures in the present. Prototyping enables the testing of technical functions and social interactions. Moreover, prototyping might be a source of potential irritation that can shape design processes and modify the course of action by functioning as an epistemic object. Practices of prototyping take place in diverse settings such as engineering labs, planning and R&D departments, design studios, makerspaces, digital platforms, or living labs.

In this session, focusing on urban life, we ask how prototypes are developed, tested, and redesigned – together with imaginaries of futures. For instance, how does prototyping of autonomous vehicles, digital solutions or infrastructures open and close innovation pathways and stimulates visions of tomorrow’s urban life? How have the methods and functions of prototypes and prototyping changed over time? How might prototyping be related to public engagement with science and technology? Can prototypical design be regarded as a model for contemporary societal learning?

We invite contributions that reflect upon prototyping as a situated practice, critically deal with concepts and methods of prototyping and explore prototyping as a societal mode of future making and innovation. We welcome diverse perspectives, such as STS, critical and speculative design, history, urban planning and architecture, etc.

Contact: dickel@uni-mainz.de

Keywords: Prototyping, Futures, Urban, Innovation, Design

Categories: Engineering and Infrastructure

Knowledge, Theory and Method

Science Communication/Public Engagement

146. Reexamining Narratives within Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI)

Wouter Van de Klippe; Ingeborg Meijer, Leiden University; Ralf Lindner, Fraunhofer ISI; Roger Strand, University of Bergen; Erich Griessler, Institute for Advanced Studies; Anne Loeber, University of Amsterdam

Reexamining narratives within Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI)

Keywords: Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), Societal responsibilities of researchers, social inequality, Policy, Governance.

While Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is ostensibly an orientation point for efforts to make research and innovation more societally responsive, there exist contentious narratives framing RRI which both open and close forms of scholarly work.

These narratives include envisioning RRI as…

1. an intervention to command and control researchers and innovators to become more responsive to their negative societal impacts;
2. a tool to coerce citizens into becoming more acquiescent in their support for research and innovation;
3. an intervention to facilitate the development of novel forms of collaboration between representatives from diverse sectoral, disciplinary, and societal perspectives to align research and innovation with broader societal needs;
4. a policy concept which is self-serving and aims develop its own network of practitioners and supporters to sustain itself.

We invite contributions to this panel to explore questions such as: 

• What scholarly work do these narratives either open or close?
• What other narratives are present within RRI?
• Which actors are ultimately served by these narratives and how can or should this be changed?
• How are these narratives reflected in funding schemes / science policy documents?
• What does knowledge production with the aim of addressing societal concerns resemble through each of these narratives?
• What forms of knowledge production have been systematically excluded within these narratives?
• How do these narratives either encourage or discourage engagement with social movements and/or social justice struggles?

Contact: w.van.de.klippe@cwts.leidenuniv.nl

Keywords: Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), Social Responsibilities, Policy, Governance, Narratives

Categories: Governance and Public Policy

Science Communication/Public Engagement

STS and Social Justice/Social Movement

155. Scientists, citizen scientists, and naturalists in the “Anthropocene”

Brendon Larson, University of Waterloo, Canada

In a period of rapid human-wrought changes to socio-ecological systems, an important question for STS concerns the form and purpose of scientific monitoring of environmental change. On the one hand, this data has been critical in showing the extent of change and has thereby motivated policy action; on the other hand, this data has motivated insufficient action to date – and arguably what we require is not more data but political leadership. Given this context, this panel explores the changing role of different forms of knowledge production that document nature, ranging from naturalists and citizen scientists through to environmental scientists themselves. Their roles are shifting dramatically due to trends that include the following: i) a shifting baseline, whereby declining states of nature become normalized for subsequent generations; ii) increasing technological mediation of nature; iii) rapid growth of citizen science projects that rely on naturalist contributors; and iv) ongoing shifts in how scientific ‘facts’ are considered in the public domain. This panel explores questions such as the following: What does it mean to be a naturalist in the Anthropocene and is there a role for naturalists outside of centralized big data collection? How is the border between science and non-science shifting in this context? What are the implications of nature being increasingly seen as unstable? How does the hopefulness implicit in data collection endure in the face of mounting evidence of reason to despair?

Contact: blarson@uwaterloo.ca

Keywords: environmental change, citizen science, Anthropocene

Categories: Environmental/Multispecies Studies

Science Communication/Public Engagement

157. Situating Co-creation: Innovation between Local Specificity and Scalable Standardization

Anja Kathrin Ruess, Munich Center for Technology in Society, Technical University of Munich; Federica Pepponi, Munich Center for Technology in Society, Technical University of Munich; Kyriaki Papageorgiou, ESADE Business & Law School; Ruth Müller, MCTS TU

Co-creative practices, bringing together diverse actors in the innovation process to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes, seem to be flourishing across academia, industry and society. Prospective users are increasingly engaged upstream, invoking the fundamental value-proposition of co-creation, namely to tailor innovation processes to the needs, values, and political cultures of user-communities with the hope that these will lead to more legitimate and sustainable outcomes. However, co-creation faces challenges such as the scalability of context-specific solutions as well as the definition of the user-community problems to address or the imagined user-communities as such.

In this panel, we are interested in exploring the situated nature of co-creation by looking at the particular shape it takes in specific social, cultural and institutional contexts. We invite contributions that address questions such as:

– How do conceptualizations of ‘the local’ shape innovation processes and outcomes?

– How can situatedness be theorized in the context of co-creative innovation practice?

– If effective and desirable innovations are context-specific, how can we harness their benefits for other settings without losing their socio-cultural embeddedness?

– When and how could co-creation be standardized and scaled-up? Are there specific domains or fields where context matters less than in others and where co-creation can be homogenized and deployed at scale?

– How are co-creation practices stabilized in specific contexts and when are these exercises deemed fit to travel towards other socio-cultural contexts and/or technological domains?

Contact: anja.ruess@tum.de

Keywords: co-creation, innovation, situatedness, scaling

Categories: Governance and Public Policy

Engineering and Infrastructure

Science Communication/Public Engagement

166. STS for a post-truth age: comparative dialogues on reflexivity

Emine Onculer Yayalar, Bilkent University; Melike Sahinol, Orient-Institut Istanbul

The linear model of knowledge creation and diffusion has frequently been criticized by STS scholars through an emphasis on social contexts of knowledge. Based on this critique, reflexivity plays an important role in pushing the academic boundaries of STS. True to the conference focus “locating and timing matters”, it is important to take into account various accelerated ways of knowledge circulation, as STS scholars are faced with challenges of the post-truth age.

The panel calls for laying the groundwork for a reflexive dialogue on how to practice STS in the post truth age by emphasizing the importance of reciprocal sharing across a diverse group of participants. We are interested in contributions that engage empirically and theoretically with the concepts of truth, evidence and objectivity from a comparative perspective. We are particularly seeking contributions that highlight the digital and infrastructural materiality of the post-truth age. We also welcome studies of STS practices in different cultural settings, shedding light on heterogeneous ways of practicing and doing STS for a post-truth age. We invite papers dealing with but not limited to following questions:

What does sustainable STS look like? What kinds of practices and output should we be aiming for without necessarily swinging back to the ideal of objectivity?

How can STS continue to critically engage with the hegemonic narratives of S&T and find meaningful ways to address the promotion of alternative facts?

How can we conceptualize expertise in an age of networked advocacy, citizen journalism, participatory science and new demands on verification?

Contact: melike.sahinol@googlemail.com

Keywords: post-truth age, dialogues on reflexivity, academic boundaries of STS

Categories: Knowledge, Theory and Method

Science Communication/Public Engagement

Other

168. STS Underground: Locating Matter and Agency in emerging subterranean Worlds

Alena Bleicher, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, GmbH; Abby Kinchy, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Roopali Phadke, Macalester College; Jessica Mary Smith, Colorado School of Mines

This panel aims to bring together international scholars whose work addresses technologies, practices, and forms of knowledge related to the Earth’s subsurface. We seek submissions on three main themes: 1) the renewable energy-mineral nexus, 2) geoethics, and 3) emerging uses of underground space.

The renewable energy-mineral nexus. Technologies for renewable energy—such as wind and solar electricity, storage systems, and electric vehicles—require a diversity of minerals, raising questions for STS scholars about ongoing and potentially intensified dependence on extractive industries.

Geoethics. Concepts such as geoethics or responsible mining have been suggested to improve relations between mining businesses and (local) societies. Papers are invited that critically discuss these concepts, their use, impacts and effects in sectors related to underground uses.

Emerging uses of underground space. The underground has a growing number of uses – capture of drinking water, urban infrastructures, waste storage, mining, geothermal energy use, energy storage, climate technologies such as carbon capture and storage, and more. These call for integrated and comprehensive planning and monitoring. Papers that address one or several of these uses and shed light on related conflicts, policies, processes of knowledge production (e.g. in underground laboratories), and that reflect on the role of STS researchers are invited to this session.

The topics of the panel link in manifold ways to the conference theme, notably to questions of continuities and discontinuities and material legacies that built into sociotechnical infrastructures and those of processes of localizing geopolitical, economic and epistemic globalization.

Contact: alena.bleicher@ufz.de

Keywords: renewable energy-mineral nexus, geoethics, undergrund space, infrastructures

Categories: Engineering and Infrastructure

Energy

Science Communication/Public Engagement

170. Studying data/natures: between arts, academia and administration

Ingmar Lippert, IT University of Copenhagen; Tahani Nadim, Museum fuer Naturkunde; Filippo Bertoni, Aarhus University

Recently, nature’s increasing datafication and the politics of the resulting data/natures’ emergent sociotechnical orderings have received much attention in STS (Bowker, Edwards, Lippert, Nadim, Sullivan, Turnhout, Waterton). But, how do we engage with data/natures? And how does the answer to this question inform our understanding of these politics of nature? While all agree that the formation of data/natures clearly relies on specific kinds of digital infrastructures, different approaches have variously engaged with those involved (from natural, environmental, or data scientists, to policy makers, from technocrats, to artists, and capitalist actors) – often in implicit ways.

This panel invites papers that reflexively and critically take these different approaches as their explicit focus. What can we learn from different ways of engaging various publics, audiences, or communities that produce, handle, and populate data/natures? In attempting to respond to this question, our panel considers what kinds of politics STS analytics afford, and – in turn – suggests alternative ways to not only study, but also actively transform, repurpose, prototype, and sabotage data/natures.

Contact: 

Keywords: datafication, data/natures, environmental STS, engagement

Categories: Environmental/Multispecies Studies

Information, Computing and Media Technology

Science Communication/Public Engagement

214. Who are the Publics of Outer Space?

Richard Tutton, University of York; Lauren Reid, Freie Universität

Who are the publics of outer space? How do spaceflight and research agencies, commercial companies, and advocacy organizations address public subjects in different capacities such as citizens, consumers, or audiences? While national institutions led the development of spaceflight in the last century, today new commercial entities are coming to the fore: wealthy billionaires in particular have assumed the role of speaking on behalf of humanity and its future. In this new technopolitical economy of spaceflight, this panel investigates enduring and emerging technoscientific imaginaries of national or global publics (Welsh and Wynne 2013). We address the relationship between institutional framings of space technoscience and the roles that publics play, for example, by validating, objecting to, or confirming the societal and economic value of scientific research and international cooperation.  The panel also considers how research agencies and institutions recognize public diversity and difference in the context of outer space technoscience, and the extent to which people of colour, LGBTQ, women, and other underrepresented publics are addressed by dominant commercial and public actors when framing the meaning and logics of current and future human activity in outer space. The panel therefore contributes to STS scholarship on public engagement as well as the social studies of outer space.

Contact: richard.tutton@york.ac.uk

Keywords: outer space, spaceflight, publics, imaginaries

Categories: Science Communication/Public Engagement

Other