Eine Frage der Erwartungen?: Zur Qualitätsbestimmung von Wissenschaftskommunikation aus Publikumsperspektive

Science communication is considered important for individuals and is of high societal relevance, as it fosters a greater public understanding of science and scientific methods. It informs citizens, empowers them to form opinions, and allows them to access different topics and knowledge. To effectively fulfill these functions, science communication must be of high quality. However, the development of quality standards of science communication has so far received little attention in research and practice. Studies of audience expectations for science communication are scarce. Findings from journalism research suggest that there is a relationship between the audience’s perceptions of “good journalism” and their media use. If audiences have the feeling that their needs are not taken into account, this can lead to a decline in trust and to dissatisfaction, which in turn can reduce the use of science communication. As a potential consequence, the social integration function enabling all citizens to have a common information base may not be realized. Moreover, simply having a large audience does not allow for conclusions to be drawn about either what the individuals like about the format, or whether their expectations are fulfilled. For these reasons, this article investigates both the audiences’ expectations of quality and assessments of an established and well-known science communication format: a scientific expert debate. Furthermore, the extent to which the audiences’ perceptions go hand in hand with what science communicators perceive as their tasks, what they consider as characteristics of the quality of science communication, and whether they orient their work to an imagined audience, has also not yet been researched. Therefore, this article investigates the relationship and (in)congruencies between audiences’ and science communicators’ perceptions of specific functions of science communication as well. Adding to the academic discourse on journalistic quality, we draw on Wolling’s Theory of Subjective Quality Assessment. This approach assumes that the audience has quality expectations of media products, regarding specific characteristics of both content and style, which are related to their motives for use. The audience’s assessments of these features are the basis for their selection behavior. If individuals perceive their expectations of a specific feature as fulfilled, they are assumed to assess the format positively. The more these expectations are satisfied, the more likely the format will be used by the audience. This study adapts this media quality assessment approach to an expert debate. To operationalize potential quality criteria, Arnold’s journalistic quality dimensions were utilized and extended by specific science communication aspects. Tasks and functions ascribed to (science) journalism show strong similarities with those ascribed to science communication (e.g., information transfer, education and enlightenment, criticism and control, as well as acceptance). Therefore, this approach for evaluating the quality of science communication formats was chosen. To investigate what characteristics the audience expects from a scientific expert debate, a quantitative pre-post survey was conducted. The results are compared with findings from qualitative semi-structured interviews with science communicators who are responsible for the conceptualization of the expert debate under study. Their individual understanding of the quality of science communication as well as the goals, ideas and audience images associated with the debate format were subject matter of the interviews. The descriptive results of the survey show that the audience expects the debate format and the debating experts to be credible, accessible, independent, neutral, and diverse. The audience also believes scientific information should be reliable and comprehensible in order to process complex, abstract scientific knowledge. These quality dimensions represent to a certain extent ‘basic prerequisites’ which enable participants to trust scientific findings and, where applicable, to take them into account when making decisions. In contrast, public engagement within an expert debate was less important for the audience. This may be due to laypeople needing to feel permitted to engage with scientific issues before beginning a dialogue. From this perspective, the attendants’ wish for factual knowledge and being informed could be understood as an ‘enabler for engagement’. There are discrepancies between the audience’s expectations and the science communicator’s view. In contrast to the audience, they consider a high degree of topicality and social relevance to be important quality characteristics. They hope to reach those parts of the public who are disengaged with science and seem uninterested. Furthermore, the science communicators perceive dialogue and participation to be at the core of their debate format. However, they remain vague about what form of audience participation is desired. Overall, their statements reflect the tension between normative claims for science communication and their implementation in practice. Future research may also consider other science communication formats to identify specific and overarching quality expectations of the audience. In addition, the proposal for the assessment of quality expectations developed in this article should be further elaborated on. In the future, the science communicators’ perspective could be researched more in-depth as their ideas about the success and goals of their formats significantly shape the conceptualization and development of science communication activities. All in all, further investigations that focus on quality dimensions and measurement instruments seem promising and have the potential to expand our understanding of the use and evaluation of science communication.