Researchers belong to the professional groups that most Swedes trust, when they comment on the coronavirus in the media. This is one of the findings of a new study recently published by the non-profit Swedish organisation VA (Public & Science).
The corona pandemic has been a dominant topic in public discourse since the winter of 2020. In collaboration with researchers at Södertörn University and Karolinska Institutet, VA (Public & Science) has conducted a study to investigate how people in Sweden are receiving and interpreting information about the pandemic, and how the pandemic is being reported by the media. The objective was to investigate what influences people’s perceptions in a crisis situation where research and researchers play a central role amidst a constantly changing flow of information.
December saw the launch of Sweden’s national citizen science portal, medborgarforskning.se. At a conference on citizen science run by VA (Public & Science) on 8 December 2021, the portal was highlighted, along with the already up-and-running European portal EU-Citizen.Science.
Public dialogues, citizen science, game development and co-creation activities. For 4.5 years, VA (Public & Science) together with 8 European partners has been testing different ways to involve the public and other stakeholders in the research process. The aim of the EU ORION Open Science project was to investigate how research and funding organisations can ”open up” the way they fund and do research.
Michael Bossetta, a researcher in media and communication studies at Lund University has been named Sweden’s best science communicator. He beat six other researchers to win the title at the final of the Researchers’ Grand Prix on 25 November in Stockholm. Läs mer
A reality TV experiment, augmented reality app, smartphone game and citizen deliberation forum. These are just a few of the stakeholder engagement initiatives highlighted in a new paper on ”Involving society in science” published in EMBO reports (Volume 22, Issue 11, 4 November 2021).
The countdown has begun. On 25 November, seven finalists will take to the stage to present their research in the most exciting and comprehensible way possible – in just four minutes! Join in and vote for your favourite in the Researchers’ Grand Prix.
Experiments, stand-up comedy, guided lab tours, classroom visits and answering all sorts of questions about research and what life might be like in the future, were some of the activities undertaken by researchers in Sweden as part of European Researchers’ Night. Known as ForskarFredag, the science festival ran from 20-25 September, engaging 350 researchers and around 27,000 participants across the whole of Sweden.