A qualitative enquiry into practitioners' : reflection on science communication practice in local communities in Japan

Abstract

This thesis empirically explores the meanings, values and issues of community-based collaborative schemes of science communication - an increasingly prevalent mode of science communication practice in Japan and beyond - from the perspectives of local practitioners and local communities. One of the national programmes of community-based collaborative science communication, namely the Supporting Local Networks, was selected as the case to examine, and in total 40 in-depth interviews were conducted with 43 local practitioners at eight sites across Japan. The interviews were examined following qualitative analytical methods. The empirical study has revealed, on the one hand, that the local practitioners recognised a variety of positive values and meanings of practising science communication in their local communities, and appreciated diverse practical contributions of the community-based collaborative scheme to achieving those positive values and meanings. On the other, however, it has also been shown that the scheme posed a wide range of problems, difficulties and dilemmas to the local practitioners, which pointed to several structural limitations of community-based collaborative schemes with regard to achieving self-sustainable local science communication. Based on these findings, the author calls on science communication research to investigate further the meanings and values of science communication in a more empirical, descriptive and explorative manner. To this end, there should be more attention paid to the voices of local practitioners and community residents regarding how they make sense of science communication in the political, economic, social and cultural contexts of their own community.