Introductory description

This is a core first year module on the BA in Liberal Arts course. The module engages students with contemporary questions around the public understanding of science, scientific objectivity and universality, and the role that the media plays in communicating science.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

The module's structure is based on problems and case-studies around the broad nexus of Science, Society, and the Media. Because these topics are dynamic and characterised by ongoing debate, each year the syllabus will be reflective of active debates and contemporary challenges.
An example syllabus may include:

I. The Science Wars

a. Introduction: Science and the Public
b. Science vs. Pseudoscience: The Problem of Induction
c. Scientific Revolutions and Shifting Paradigms
d. Two Cultures, Both Alike in Dignity?
e. Academic Hoaxes and Their Consequences

II. Science and Power

a. Science and the Status Quo
b. Biology and the Patriarchy
c. System Breakdown: Science, Institutions, and the AIDS Crisis

III. News Media and Science

a. "Fear of Mob Rule" and the Public Sphere
b. Science and popular culture: Fear and Hope in Science Fiction 1950-1993
b. News media constructions of science: Climate Change
c. Risk transmission and Public outrage: MMR

IV. Science in the Digital Public Sphere

a. Science and the Spectacle: Memes and Fake News
b. Rethinking "Common Sense:" Social Representations of Science
c. Networked Science: New Media Strategies for Public Engagement

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• By the end of the module, students will be able to demonstrate an in-depth understanding of the media's role in shaping the public's understanding of science and the practical consequences of the media's representation of specific scientific "issues".
• By the end of the module, students will be able to express their own individual understanding of the ways in which institutional interests influence science and shape media reports.
• By the end of the module, students will be able to apply and critique at least two theoretical stances explicating the relationship between science and institutional interests.
• By the end of the module, students will be able to understand and explain the complex relationship between science and other academic disciplines.
• By the end of the module, students will be able to examine how scientific knowledge is constructed and its contexts of production.
• By the end of the module, students will be able to demonstrate and deploy appropriate methods of critical analysis of media, news, and popular culture.
• By the end of the module, students will be able to demonstrate the development of research, writing, and presentation skills.

Indicative reading list

Alberti, S. J. M. M. (2005) 'Objects and the Museum', Isis, 96(4), pp. 559-571.
doi: 10.1086/498593.
Bauer, S. W. (2015) The story of science: from the writings of Aristotle to the big bang
theory. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Brake, M. and Weitkamp, E. (2010) Introducing science communication: a practical guide.
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
De Beauvoir, S. (2009) The second sex. Trans. C. de, Borde and S. Malovany-Chevallier,
London: Jonathan Cape.
DeSalle, R. and Tattersall, I. (2018) Troublesome science: the misuse of genetics and
genomics in understanding race. New York: Columbia University Press.
Emden, C. and Midgley, D. R., eds., (2013) Beyond Habermas: democracy, knowledge, and the
public sphere. New York: Berghahn Books.
Gregory, J. and Miller, S. (2000) Science in public: communication, culture, and credibility.
Cambridge, Mass: Perseus Pub.
Habermas, J. (1991) The structural transformation of the public sphere: an inquiry into a
category of bourgeois society. Translated by Thomas Burger. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press.
Haraway, D. (1996) "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the
Late Twentieth Century," in Manifestly Haraway. Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minneapolis Press.
Henry, J. (2012) A short history of scientific thought. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Hume, D. (2014) An enquiry concerning human understanding. Edited by T. L. Beauchamp.
[Oxford]: Oxford University Press; The Clarendon Edition of the Works of David
Hume.
Koertge, N., ed. (1998) A house built on sand: exposing postmodernist myths about science.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kuhn, T. (1963) "The Function of Dogma in Scientific Research," in A. Crombie, ed., Scientific
change: historical studies in the intellectual, social and technical conditions for
scientific discovery and technical invention, from antiquity to the present. London:
Heineman.
Latour, B. (1999) Pandora's hope: essays on the reality of science studies. Cambridge, Mass:
Harvard University Press.
Markham, T. (2017) Media and everyday life. London: Macmillan Education.
Nelkin, D. (1996) 'The Science Wars: Responses to a Marriage Failed', Social Text, (46/47).
doi: 10.2307/466846.
Olson, R. (2015) Houston, we have a narrative: why science needs story. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.
Pinker, S. (2018) Enlightenment now: the case for reason, science, humanism, and progress.
London: Allen Lane.
Popper, K. R. (2002) The logic of scientific discovery. Translated by the author. London:
Routledge.
Snow, C. P. (1959) The two cultures and the scientific revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Sokal, A., (1996) "A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies," Lingua Franca 4.
---, (1996) 'Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of
Quantum Gravity', Social Text, (46/47). doi: 10.2307/466856.
---, (2000) The Sokal hoax: the sham that shook the academy. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press.
Sur, Abha. (2008) 'Persistent Patriarchy: Theories of Race and Gender in Science' Economic
and Political Weekly, pp. 7-8.
Yearley, Steven. (2005) Making sense of science. London: SAGE Publications.
Due to the dynamic nature of the module, readings will change each year, based on active debates and challenges. The course will also make extensive use of academic articles, book chapters, journalistic articles, and other forms of written media as required by the individual topics.

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Research element

This is a core module on the Liberal Arts course which aims to facilitate the acquisition by students of a range of methods of enquiry from various disciplines and equip them to deploy those skills in research. Research skills are embedded into the teaching strategy of all of the course's modules which, collaboratively, seek to develop and enhance students’ capacity to conduct independently original research into a current problem.

Interdisciplinary

This is a core module on the Liberal Arts course which adopts an interdisciplinary approach spanning the arts, humanities, social and natural sciences fields in order to engage with debates on topical, local national and international issues.

International

This is a core module on the BA in Liberal Arts course which offers a unique transdisciplinary learning experience allowing students to achieve breadth and depth of knowledge. The module is inherently international in its outlook on global media and features internationalising problem-based learning activities such as a Model UN and explorations of discourse around scientific media reports in multiple languages (based on students' prior knowledge).

Subject specific skills

Oral and written communication
Digital literacy
Professional communication
Working with others
Problem solving
Information technology
Numeracy
Research across various disciplines and using a variety of methods
Peer review

Transferable skills

Complex problem solving skills
Critical thinking
Creativity
People management
Co-coordinating with others
Emotional intelligence
Judgment and decisions making
Service orientation
Negotiation
Cognitive flexibility