Futures Literacy Workshop: Future of Science Communication

In July, Foresight Team of PRAXI Network, a Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH) unit, ran a Futures Literacy Workshop as part of the 13th FORTH Retreat exploring the Future of Science Communication.

In recent years, it has been noticed that public trust in science has been increasingly weakening in the last few years, affecting all scientific disciplines. Science communication constitutes an interdisciplinary practice of raising awareness, informing, and educating the public to understand better and enhance their interest concerning the process and results of scientific research. Its crucial role at the crossroads of science and society makes science communication a key tool for mitigating and reversing the corrosion of trust in science. Thus, adopting a forward-looking and proactive attitude is considered necessary to formulate future communication strategies in a way that a more direct relationship between science and society can be built.

In this context, during the Workshop, the participants had the opportunity to share their ideas on how the field of Science Communication will probably evolve in 2040. Following up on this, the participants, using an unfamiliar future as a catalyst, were called to think out of the box and redefine the practices they use to communicate their research findings to the public.