科学、公众与疫情的社会治理——科学传播学的视角

Science, the public and social governance——Perspectives in science communication

突发公共卫生危机的社会治理离不开有效的科学传播。传统的科学传播是"赤字模式",旨在通过科普以填补公众在科学知识上的赤字。这种模式割裂了科学知识的生产与传播过程,对所传播知识的准确性要求高而时效性要求低,缺少科学界与公众的对话。这种传播模式的缺陷在中国新冠肺炎疫情的治理中显露出来:科学家对知识生产的高度重视和对科学传播的相对忽视,影响了科学界对政府和大众决策所需知识的供给;在有限的科学传播中,科学用语与社会语言的隔阂,引发了大众对疫情风险的误解。因此,社会治理体系建设需要科学传播从赤字模式向对话模式和知识共同生产模式转型,融合科学知识的生产与传播过程,在传播中充分考虑社会情境与科学情境的差异,实现及时和有效的科学传播。

Effective science communication is essential to social governance of public health emergencies.The traditional model of science communication is"deficit model",which aims at filling up the deficit among the public in scientific knowledge.This model cuts off the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge,requires high accuracy and low timeliness of the communicated knowledge,and includes little of the dialogues between the scientists and the public.The faultiness of the model have been exposed in the governance of COVID-19 outbreak in China:the scientists’overwhelming emphasis on knowledge production and relative ignorance of science communication damaged the knowledge supply for the government and the public in decision;in limited science communication to the public,the estrangement between scientific expression and social language brought about popular misunderstandings of risks in the epidemic.Therefore,the building of social governance system needs the transition of science communication from the deficit model to the dialogue model or the co-production model,integrating the production and communication process of scientific knowledge,and fully considering the difference of social and scientific contexts during communication,so as to achieve the timely and effective science communication.