Helena Machado, Cláudia de Freitas, Amelia Fiske, Isabella Radhuber, Susana Silva, Christian O Grimaldo-Rodríguez, Carlo Botrugno, Ralph Kinner, Luca Marelli
Research about science and publics in the COVID-19 pandemic often focuses on public trust and on identifying and correcting public attitudes. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 209 residents in six countries-Austria, Bolivia, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and Portugal-this article uses the concept of performativity to explore how participants understand, and relate to science, in the COVID-19 context. By performativity, we mean the ways by which participants understand themselves as particular sorts of publics through identification with, and differentiation from, various other actors in matters that are perceived as controversies surrounding science: COVID-19 vaccination, media communication of science, and the interactions between governments and scientists...
February 2, 2024: Public Understanding of Science