ORIGINAL PAPER

Nanoethics, Science Communication, and a Fourth Modelfor Public Engagement

Andy Miah

Received: 10 February 2017 /Accepted: 26 June 2017 /Published online: 3 August 2017# The Author(s) 2017. This article is an open access publication

Abstract This paper develops a fourth model of publicengagement with science, grounded in the principle ofnurturing scientific agency through participatory bioeth-ics. It argues that social media is an effective devicethrough which to enable such engagement, as it has thecapacity to empower users and transforms audiencesinto co-producers of knowledge, rather than consumersof content. Social media also fosters greater engagementwith the political and legal implications of science, thuspromoting the value of scientific citizenship. This argu-ment is explored by considering the case of nanoscienceand nanotechnology, as an exemplar for how emergingtechnologies may be handled by the scientific commu-nity and science policymakers.

Keywords Nanotechnology.Citizen science .Scientificagency. Social media . Narrative ethics

Introduction

The years from 1995 to 2005 may have belonged togenetic science, as far as science communication isconcerned. As the Human Genome Project neared

completion, public attention was focused on how itwould usher in a new era of gene therapy applications,which would attend to all kinds of health problems. Yet,it became a decade that was widely described as a failureto communicate science effectively, as stories of design-er people - rather than therapeutic interventions - be-came the focus of public concern. Since then, greatersophistication has emerged in research into sciencecommunication, along with new proposals about howscientists should make sense of their relationship to thepublic.

One might expect, then, that the years between 2005and 2015—as the decade of nanoscience—would haveshown considerably more accomplished endeavours tocommunicate what is at stake with this new science [1],and perhaps even greater gains in public understandingas a result. Yet, this latter decade was also defined by therise of a new form of communications—social media—the end of which was marked by the prominence ofdiscussions about fake news and alternative facts. Whilea significant amount of the discourse around fake newswas intimately connected to the US electoral campaignof 2016, it must be understood as the peak of a set ofwider concerns that communication has become a morechallenging task, because of the proliferation of digitalpublishing.

The evidence for this is found within an inquiry bythe British Government [2], which spoke of the public’senthusiasm in science, but also their lack of trust inscientific journalism. This loss of trust may be partlyattributed to wider diminishing trust in journalismwhich, in the UK certainly, results from the phone

Nanoethics (2017) 11:139–152DOI 10.1007/s11569-017-0302-9

A. Miah (*)Chair of Science Communication & Future Media, School ofEnvironment and Life Sciences, University of Salford,Manchester, Peel Building, Room G50, The Crescent, Salford,Greater Manchester M5 4WT, UKe-mail: email@andymiah.net

hacking scandals of 2011. However, there is also a widerexplanation for this loss of trust, which has applicabilitymore globally and which has to do with how the author-itative position of traditional media has been usurped bythe proliferation of other digital publishing spaces andby the transformation of our daily habits of media con-sumption arising from mobile connectivity.

Anxious of the consequences of such change, theBritish Government [2] launched an inquiry into sciencecommunication in 2016 and this article speaks to someof their conclusions. In particular, it explores how spec-ulation and narrative are critical components of a sci-ence communication journey, while also arguing that theaspirations of upstream public engagement are bestserved by engaging the public on the moral and ethicaldimensions of science. In doing so, it considers theopportunities that arise from relocating science commu-nication away from traditional media structures towardsthe blogosphere and how this trend can be seen as anantecedent to the rise of citizen science and participato-ry bioethics, which have become new forms of socialexpectations of science. It argues that, whereas the caseof communicating genetics revealed a gap between thescience and the public, the case of communicatingnanotechnology reveals the crisis of legitimacy in com-municating science (as the British Government inquiryreveals), particularly where this relies on traditionalmodels of media relations.

Underpinning this article is the concern that the valueof science communication is often expressed exclusive-ly in terms of its capacity to serve scientific investment,rather than to function as a means of nurturing scientif-ically engaged citizens. The emphasis of such work isplaced often on its capacity to inspire people into sci-ence or scientific careers, as the STEM agenda attests.Yet, to achieve the kind of involvement sought by theUK’s governmental inquiry—and to achieve the kind ofaccumulation of ‘science capital’ that Archer et al. [3, 4]describe as crucial to building science education—it isnecessary to engage people on a more critical level.Doing so in a way that resonates with how they makesense of their own lives and an individual’s sense ofright and wrong is an effective means through which todo this. Foregrounding the moral implications of scien-tific discoveries or achievements, I argue, helps to de-mocratize society’s pursuit of scientific discovery in away that resonates with other societal aspirations. Theseconditions must be taken into account to ensure that

science progresses as a project that is co-produced,collectively owned, and crucially meaningful to thepeople’s lives. Moreover, these principles are necessaryto uphold, in order to achieve the transformative poten-tial of communicating science and reinforce argumentsmade by Perrault [5].

The paper is structured in three parts. First, it exam-ines the conditions of the debate surrounding the case ofnanotechnology, drawing attention to how a moral panicabout its development emerged very early on and therole of speculation in this discourse. Second, it describesinsights from science communication work on nano-technology over the last decade, which reveal how amature and strategic investment into this work hasassisted science in developing greater public under-standing and engagement. Within this section, I alsooutline how the open-ended nature of communicatingscience—that there is always more that can be done—needs adjustment, focusing the public on entry pointsinto making science meaningful to their lives, ratherthan simply understood. In this aspect, I build on Miah[6] by relying on the utility of presenting science as aseries of ethical propositions about humanity’s future,rather than an attempt to explain scientific complexity.Finally, these developments are situated within themethodological framework of research into sciencecommunication and public engagement, from the deficitto the upstream models, through which I outline theimportance of narrative ethics as a tool towards promot-ing public understanding. In this respect, I draw oncommunication principles of social media to develop afourth model of public engagement with science, de-scribed as the scientific agency model.

This exposition resonates further with the BritishGovernment’s Select Committee inquiry, particularlyits questions around the utility of the public debatesurrounding the naming of a new research ship by theNatural Environment Research Council (NERC). WhenNERC launched the public poll calling for suggestions,their exercise in public engagement quickly became an‘exercise in humour’ (Warman cited in British Govern-ment [2]) when the name ‘Boaty McBoatFace’ becamethe most popular suggestion, a suggestion that grew insuch popularity that it became the most successful pro-posal. NERC claimed that the public debate around thisdebacle led to their becoming the most ‘well knownresearch council in the world’ [7]. However, the incidentcrystallized one of the underpinning questions of sci-

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ence communication, which concerns whether or not itleads to public engagement, understanding, or involve-ment with science. In response to the suggestion that theexercise was, in fact, not a great example of publicengagement via social media (presumably because thepublic did not demonstrate having taken seriously thetask), NERC suggested that the hard work of capitaliz-ing on such public debate would begin after its occur-rence and has subsequently claimed it to have been atremendous success. But, how does one capitalize onwide reaching, superficial awareness, and translate itinto involvement with science, as a route towards great-er understanding or appreciation for the value of scien-tific investment? This question is answered in part with-in this essay by examining how to nurture scientificcitizenship.

The model I present does not reject the importance ofthe upstream approach to engaging the public early on inthe process of scientific development. Indeed, it doesnot intend to replace previous models of pubic engage-ment at all, and in this respect, it may also be distinct.One of my criticisms of the three models is that they areoften treated as methodologically hierarchical, when it ismore useful to consider which are the best parts of eachmodel and establish when each may be useful. Thus,while one might reject the deficit model in certain situ-ations, there is a need to understand when it might beuseful as an engagement methodology. After all, itscontinued use, as documented by Lee and VanDyke[8], may be more a matter of preference than of aresistance to dialogue. The scientific agency model Ipropose is, nevertheless, different from the other threein that it espouses a notion of public engagement thatgives equal value to highly speculative science, as itdoes to matters of urgent debate. To elaborate on this,it is useful to look in more detail at the case ofnanoscience.

Speculations About Nanoscience

The value of speculation to science communication ishotly contested. Indeed, the current concerns about fakenews, fake science, and fake research are intimatelyconnected to the manner in which speculation aboutfuture directions in science is played out within themedia, by scientists who are asked what kind of worldmay ensue as a result of new discoveries. Yet, the role of

speculation is central to our capacity to make sense ofscience and this section focuses on the complexity ofthese factors.

Early speculation about the impact of nanoscienceresembled reactions to other new scientific discoveries:opinions were often extremely polarized, ranging fromclaims that the new discovery or application will be apanacea for all of the society’s ills to claims that it willbring about humanity’s demise. Respectively, theseviews focused either on the opportunities that the tech-nology may create or on the mayhem that it could cause.Two prominent public intellectuals demonstrate thisdivision when commenting on nanoscience at a timewhen it was becoming part of a mainstream conversa-tion about science:

in around 20 years we will have the means toreprogramme our bodies’ stone-age software so wecan halt, then reverse, ageing. Then nanotechnologywill let us live for ever....Ultimately, nanobots willreplace blood cells and do their work thousands oftimes more effectively....Within 25 years we will beable to do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes withouttaking a breath, or go scuba-diving for four hourswithout oxygen (Kurzweil, in [9]).

Ourmost powerful 21st century technologies—robots,genetic engineering, and nanotech—are threatening tomake humans an endangered species [10].

Joy’s apocalyptic vision of the ‘grey-goo’ scenario—the horror of self-replicating nanorobots, destroying theworld and leaving artificial grey goo after transformingall life on earth into nanosubstances—is reiterated inthe best-selling novel ‘Prey’ (2002) by Michael Crich-ton. Crichton imagines the risks associated with creat-ing tiny nanorobots, drawing on reference support toembellish his scenarios. Crichton’s novel is indicativeof how debates about science are often made meaning-ful to the public through some form of literary narra-tive, or storytelling. To this end, Crichton’s contribu-tion to how nanoscience has been imagined exem-plifies what may be seen as the third pillar of sciencecommunication—science fiction—where science is thefirst, and science journalism is the second. Fictionoften foregrounds the latest scientific discoveries, orpoints towards imminent realities, which society mustconsider, putting into the public domain the need fordebate and dialogue. Science fiction—or fiction more

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generally—can be an effective way to shape the publicimagination of new science and its challenge to hu-manity [11–13]. Indeed, Curtis [14] makes this pointwhen discussing the role of documentary as an artform:

I find the best documentary reporting these days inthings that don’t really classify as documentaries.Things like South Park, movies like The Big Shortand American Honey, and the This Is Englandseries. They are all about portraying the real worldbut they do it in ways that are surprising andimaginative. They make you look at things innew ways. Whereas traditional documentariesseem a bit stuck. I think this has happened becausemost of them have beenmoved off TVand into theart house cinema circuit. As a result they tend top l ay t o wha t t h e i r aud i en ce a l r e adyknow—reinforcing their beliefs. Like the fact thatbankers are bad. Or climate change threatens theworld [14].

As for any new scientific discovery, the immediateapplications of nanoscience have been considerably lessradical than those that the advocates or critics had pro-posed [15]. Yet, the rise of knowledge about whatnanoscience could do in the near future should notdiminish the importance of speculations about where itcould lead humanity in the long term. For instance,nanodots could create more efficient solar panels, whichhas revolutionary potential in terms of our energy usage.In this respect alone, there is an important opportunityfor science communication to intervene through fiction,particularly as the science develops, to help peopleunderstand the likely timescales of applications. Indeed,there is no greater upstream location than that which isfound before the metaphorical river has even begun toform, even if this requires accepting a certain level ofuncertainty about the credibility of the speculation.While one may question whether science fiction consti-tutes engagement with science at all—since it mayactually sacrifice science for drama—it would be cata-strophic to the work of science communication to dis-miss the importance of science fiction, especially whenit is rooted within insights from cutting-edge researchand development. After all, people within the sciencefiction creation community are often involved with thescience industries, as the attendees of any science fictionconvention reveals. Moreover, a precursor to interest in

scientific news may be a wider interest in science fictionand future gazing.

Equally, aspirations for progress within scienceshould not be separated from the peoples’ broader aspi-rations and anxieties for their lives, many of which arefound within literature, rather than scientific journals.Thus, if one seeks to understand what kind of life isworth living, or what kind of society one seeks to bringabout—as a basis for deciding which problems scienceshould seek to resolve—then one must look beyondscientific possibility and, instead, formulate a deeperunderstanding of what progress in science affords forhumanity. Thus, literature—whether it is classified asscience fiction or not—can help us greatly in this pur-suit. Suchworks as ‘The Picture of DorianGray’ informhumanity of the values that surround life extension oranti-ageing science, while the movie Gattaca [16] pro-vides a glimpse into what life could be like in a worldwhere non-therapeutic pre-implantation genetic selec-tion decision-making exists. Alternatively, movies likeHer (2014) assist our capacity to imagine what it wouldbe like to build increasing complexity into our relation-ships with machines.

In the absence of sociological data, such specula-tions are often our best attempts to articulate whatlife may be like in a world where such technologiesexist. A good example here is human cloning. No-body knows how people would actually react todiscovering that they have been cloned, or what kindof existential crises might arise, or what interperson-al relationships would be strengthened or weakenedas a result. Yet, Caryl Churchill’s A Number (2006)does this precisely, in a poetic, beautiful, and sensi-tively staged two-person show. Alternatively, OrsenWelles’ War of the Worlds (1938) radio drama givesus a sense of what it might feel like to be invaded byaliens. Fiction has a role to play in helping developour imaginations about what kinds of circumstancesmay come to fruition, if a certain course of action istaken. Moreover, society is reliant on the imagina-tions of great writers to provide compelling, de-tailed, intimate, and closely observed narrativesabout such futures, to assist us in imagining thesepossibilities. To judge the credibility of such worksolely on the likely accuracy of the text is to missone central consequence of its impact, which is thatthe text is a starting point for a deeper conversationabout the future and how technology may change it.

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The merit of utilizing literary works in the attempt towrestle with questions about the future, even in sciencepolicymaking has some precedent historically. For in-stance, in the 2000s, when the US President’s Councilon Bioethics [17] debated the consequences of the hu-man genome project, such works as Anderson’s TheNightingale and Shelley’s Frankenstein were part ofthe Council’s reading list, made available publicly ontheir website. More widely, film-making has found itsway into broader bioethics work, as in the case of theNuffield Council on Bioethics’ film competition, whichinvited school children in the UK to make filmsexplaining complex issues, or the Scottish Council onBioethics film festival, which ran for ten years from2010-2015. Literary works allow us to consider howscientific discovery imposes new narratives onto hu-manity—both burdens and opportunities. FromShelley’s Frankenstein to Huxley’s Brave New Worldto Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, the prospect of scientifi-cally induced chaos and disorder lends itself to grippingnarrative structures and a concern for the future. Suchcomponents are also crucial catalysts for generatinginterest in science for the wider public, especially asnews space diminishes and entertainment spaceincreases.

Equally, the shift in journalist practice over thelast 30 or so years—from factual to emotionalreporting—grows the importance of understandingthe function of narrative in people’s lives, as ameans of making sense of the world generally,and change in particular. Thus, it is little wonderthat scientific organizations have invested moreseriously into understanding the (social) scienceof communication. Indeed, this shift is also appar-ent within the field of bioethics, where the princi-pal objective in communication terms is to articu-late the implications of new scientific discoveriesfor how we live our lives. The detail of suchexplanations is to focus on things people careabout, or, at least, how new biotechnological ap-plications may disrupt the stories we tell aboutourselves and our future. Furthermore, the rise ofthe bioethics essayist—such authors as Carl Elliott,Ben Goldacre, or Steve Fuller, who have, in differ-ent ways, become orators of humanity’s future—isindicative of how the communication turn in sci-ence has involved the expansion of futures exper-tise towards ethics [18].

These circumsrtances reval how literary texts becomeconstitutive of the range of ways in which sciencebecomes meaningful for a wide range of people [19].Indeed, their powerful narratives are often the prima-ry—or only—mechanisms through which science com-munication work reaches some audiences. Moreover,the separation between science journalism and sciencefiction is not clearly defined. Gorke and Ruhrmann [20]reveal how often science fact and science fiction con-verge in media reporting, but this should not lead us toconclude that publishing about such prospects consti-tutes more fake news. Indeed, one only has to look atthe nature documentary format to appreciate that ele-ments of fiction are critical to being able to tell stories.For example, it is impossible to capture sound of anelephant’s feet moving through a jungle and so soundis added afterwards, often created using instrumentsthat most closely approximate the actual sound. Yet,this can create an impression of what the sounds isactually like, which is absolutely not true. Thus,whereas an elephant will move quite quietly througha forest, film-makers will create a sound effect thatconveys impact and weight, which viewers then cometo expect of this species. In this respect, science com-munication has always involved some elements ofcreative narrating and the crucial concern emergeswhen this is seen to seriously misrepresent what takesplace. In any case, the relevant point here has to dowith the role of fictionalizing science within sciencecommunication.

Yet, the concerns about how fiction is utilized inscience story telling have been prominent for manyyears. Liakopoulos [21] considers that ‘the intensescientific debate that started in the early 1970scaptured enough media attention to start an attemptof scientific popularization that sometimes vergedon the border of science fiction’. (p. 8). Today,these established vehicles of science communica-tion are augmented by a third dimension—theblogosphere—as the place where fiction and factare blended through the blurred medium of digitalspace. The rise of Web 2.0 platforms, mostly de-scribed now as social media, brings with it addi-tional challenges and opportunities to the commu-nication of science, not least of which is the prob-l em o f f a ke news and , mo r e p r e c i s e l y,distinguishing between material that is informativeand that which misinforms.

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Nanopanic and the Persistence of Uncertainty

Despite the novelty of nanoscience, there are alreadyhundreds of nanoproducts available for consumption,including food, packaging, clothes, paint, and electroniccomponents. In this respect, it is perfectly possible forspeculative science, which has considerable uncertaintyand controversy surrounding it, to sit comfortably withthe utilization of products that surround our lives. In-deed, this recognition that the presence of uncertaintydoes not hamper adoption is important to come to termswith, when considering how people make sense of newdiscoveries, products, or services. Yet, there remainmany uncertainties about the risks associated with theseproducts, especially with regard to engineered nanopar-ticles. For example, Song et al. [22] investigate the deathof two female Chinese factory workers and the ill healthof five others. The authors linked their death to nano-particles found in fluid surrounding the lungs of theworkers, outlining that the same nanoparticles werefound in the substances these workers used [22]. Evi-dence of such concerns about nanoparticles has beenapparent in various parts of the world. For instance, inrecent years, activists in Grenoble protested the devel-opment of nanotechnology, scrawling ‘NoNano’ graffition the city’s bastille, perhaps articulating a degree of‘moral panic’ [23] over how the development of scienceseems to take place without recourse to public opinionor adequate regulation. Laurent [24] provides a carefularticulation of how such panics are brought about by theorganized action of specific groups, who are then able togenerate attention through their interventions.

This example also speaks to the complexity of fakenews and why this term needs scrutiny. In the case ofnanoparticles, one may assume that there is insufficientevidence to determine the risks associated with thementering our atmosphere. Furthermore, this uncertaintyis sufficient to justify making a factual claim about theinadequacy of scientific control. Yet, this extension intoconcern about regulation transcend the original factualinquiry about risk , which then requires a different kindof expertise to justify. In this case, we observe howdiscourse about fake news obscures a wider concernabout the assertion of power. The staging of these dif-ferent moral perspectives on scientific development onsome agora becomes integral to how the media commu-nicate the issues around these scientific matters, andthere are various political interests (formal and informal)

that surround the communication of nanotechnology,each of which has different moral aspirations.

The dynamic nature of risk discourses explains whyit is crucial to ensure that public engagement and sciencecommunication work is optimally placed to navigatethis complex terrain. Indeed, over the years, nanotech-nology has benefitted from some such initiatives. Forinstance, in July 2003, the Action Group on Erosion,Technology and Concentration (ETC Group) from Ot-tawa, Canada, released several papers on the potentialrisks of nanotechnology. The communiqué ‘NanotechUn-gooed!’ suggested that the world is not yet ready forthis latest and greatest technological revolution. TheETC Group argued that the likely negative effects uponthe environment and health, along with the economicrisks, require that we exercise caution in the develop-ment of nanoscience [25]. Moreover, they identified thatextensive regulations and laws are urgently needed. TheETC emphasized the need for a wide public, scientific,and political debate, a common appeal among publicengagement advocates. The subsequent question onemay ask is what form this debate should have taken inthe decade following these claims and, moreover, whatwould count as having undertaken adequate ‘publicengagement’ to satisfactorily appease the critics whoargue that there was not enough?

Yet, while a considerable amount of science commu-nication and public engagement work on nanotechnol-ogy has taken place in the decade since—much of itinformed by methodological insights, as nanotechnolo-gy research has matured—the need for communicatingnanotechnology or engaging the public has not dimin-ished. If anything, the need for public engagement withnanoscience has become even greater, particularly asmore nanotechnology products become commerciallyavailable. Certainly, the nature of the questions thatpeople face has shifted: from concerns about what hu-manity in general ought to do to questions of personalchoice and morality over whether or not to embracenanoproducts within our lives. In this respect, the needfor public debate remains strong and unlikely to relent.

The open-ended nature of science communicationhas implications for how researchers, politicians, andscientists should regard such work—not as a means toan end, but as an end in itself. In short, there is no pointat which either the institutions of science promotion orthose who speak on behalf of the public—the media,politicians, public intellectuals—may conclude their

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communicating of scientific development. Instead, onemay identify periods of prioritization in scientific com-munication, based on what are deemed to be the prom-inent, novel methods of any given period. In this respect,there is a need to think about science communicationwork as political work; there is no end point at which itwill be complete, since the need for governance and theemergence of variation in human society demand aconstant attention to such matters. Furthermore, thereis no point at which the pursuit of science capital shouldcease, if we expect to remain beneficiaries of an in-formed and engaged population. Yet, there remain openquestions on what are the best ways to engage the publicon science. The next section examines the value ofdifferent models of public engagement, before consid-ering the role of narrative within such work.

Beyond Upstream Public Engagement

Over 20 years of public understanding work, threemodels of activity have become well known to sciencecommunicators: the deficit model, the dialogue model,and the upstream model (see [26]). The early years ofscience communication work focused on reducing thepublic deficit in knowledge about science. The researchmade a set of assumptions about what was required ofscientists and what the public needed, which, today, aredeemed lacking in understanding about what should betheir ideal relationship. Yet, there still remain intima-tions of such commitments within much science com-munication work and so it is valuable to reiterate boththeir conceptual premises and their limitations. Thus,the first model of public understanding assumed a lackof public knowledge, a limited ability to communicate,and a lack of trust between science and its publics. Tothis end, public engagement work sought to addressthese issues, with the goal of promoting complicity insupporting the progress of science. Various researchersidentified inadequacies with these assumptions, whilealso drawing attention to the inherent problem of asystem whose goal was to pre-define how a publicshould regard scientific progress. It became apparentthat utilizing scientific communication to build complic-ity was both unlikely to be effective and ideologicallyproblematic. Moreover, the idea that public engagementshould perform the role of educator, or that the public

were ultimately ignorant, did not withstand sociologicalscrutiny.

Consequently, a second model of public understand-ing of science emphasized the need for dialogue be-tween scientists and their publics [27]. This dialogicalapproach emphasizes bi-directionality and exchange be-tween science and the public, providing space for inter-action and negotiation of science’s goals and values. Italso recognizes the importance of lay expertise as aninformed knowledge, which plays an important role inconstructing meanings around science through whichone can construct and negotiate knowledge. This em-phasis on active dialogue between scientists and societycan be classified not only as the scientists’ engagementwith citizens but also as engagement of citizens withscience itself.

Examples of this form of public understanding re-search include influential studies of nanotechnologyawareness within the USA, which draw on traditionalsocial scientific methods. For example, key findingsfrom a survey study among 1014 adults nationwide inthe USA in August 2006 investigating public awarenessabout nanotechnology revealed that 42% of the respon-dents have heard nothing at all about nanotechnology,27% had heard a little, 20% had heard some, with only10% who had heard a lot, while 1% were not sure [28].A similar study in 2005 also conducted for the Projecton Emerging Nanotechnologies found that participantsanswering a pre-study questionnaire of 117 participants54% outlined that they know almost nothing about thetechnology, 17% that they knew something, and 26%outlined that they knew a little ([29]: 8). Comparingthese figures with a more recent study by PEN [30], itappears that little has changed. Hart [30] shows that,despite all communicative efforts, only 7% have heard alot about nano, 17% heard some, and 26% heard a littleabout nanotechnology, in contrast to 49% who heardnothing at all and the remaining 1% being not sure. Tothis end, the studies demonstrated the need for furtherinnovation in how public understanding work shouldtake place.

Other findings from Hart [30] indicated that nearly50% of the respondents felt unable make a statementabout the nanotechnology’s benefits and risks. Amongthe rest, 20% think that benefits will outweigh the risks,while 7% believe that risks will outweigh the benefits,and 25% think that risks and benefits will be about equal(ibid). This showed the limited public awareness of

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discussions on benefits/risks and, by implication, thefailure to fulfil the ethical aspiration of promoting in-formed understanding that would allow people to un-dertake autonomous decision-making around the use ofnanotechnology within the society.

The shift in language from understanding to engage-ment reflects a third model of science communication,an era that has been characterized by power strugglesbetween scientists and the public (and which may be thesubject of the British Government’s concern within itsInquiry). Thus, one shortcoming of the dialogue modelwas its inability to address the power imbalance be-tween scientists and lay audience. This has also led towhat some have termed as a need for ‘upstream engage-ment’, where lay public are empowered to make influ-ential decisions before science is funded and resourced[31]. On this basis, citizens are involved in debates andare given the chance to express their points of view. As aresult, they can play a more active and influential role indecision-making about the future of science and tech-nology. The Parliamentary Office of Science and Tech-nology of the UK [32] articulated the premises of thismodel:

Dialogue is deliberative. Participants interact withexperts, engage in the debate and.... are capable offorming their own opinions....The decisions en-compass various points of view. Consideration isgiven to the stance of all those involved.

This way of thinking about science communicationshows how actively engaging citizens involves more thanjust ‘participation’ in surveys and questionnaires, to publicinvolvement with complex deliberate approaches and deci-sion-making. These first examples of citizen engagementgroups (as citizen juries) in the UK includedGMNation? inthe years 2002 and 2003 and the NanoJury UK in 2005,wh i ch we re fo l l owed—among o the r s—byNanodialogues—four experiments in upstream public en-gagement [33]. NanoJury UK was a two-way citizen’s juryon nanotechnology that ran in June and July 2005. It wasorganized by the University of Newcastle and Greenpeaceand involved 16 members of the public, who formed thejury. After following an introduction on nanotechnology,they were further informed by a series of evidence sessionsby expert witnesses. As a result of the investigation, the jurymade 23 recommendations how to proceed, one of those,arguing for ‘more dialogue on new technologies and in-creased interactions between citizens and scientists’ ([31]:125).

Nanodialogues (May 2005 to autumn 2006) weredivided into four different experiments and was orga-nized by Demos and the University of Lancaster. Theexperiments consisted of (1) a people’s inquiry on nano-technology and the environment, (2) engaging researchcouncils, (3) nanotechnology and development, and (4)corporate upstream engagement. All of the four exper-iments brought various stakeholders together, who werediscussing different aspects of the technology as setagenda and scenarios for the individual experiment[33], As for NanoJury UK, participants of the first threeexperiments draw up recommendations, again promi-nently all of those recommendations included an urgentcall for more ‘upstream’ public engagement work. Sim-ilarly, Burri [34] outlines an upstream engagement citi-zen panel model in Switzerland. Moreover, discussionsin the literature describe the need for undertaking ‘con-sensus conferences’ to empower citizens, rather thanjust focus on influencing policy [35].

Despite these attempts to undertake more meaningfulpublic engagement work, knowledge production, agen-da-setting, decision- and policy-making processes, thereremain limitations to this approach [36] and a number ofexplanations for this are apparent. First, there has notbeen enough good quality public engagement work onnanotechnology to allow it to enter mainstream aware-ness. To this end, science communicators might still beoperating in the first or second mode of public engage-ment work, regardless of the third era approach beingknown, as evidenced by Lee and VanDyke [8]. Second,the work that has been undertaken on nanotechnologycommunication might be ineffective as a means of en-tering into the daily lives of people in a way that allowsthem to recall its significance. Finally, Wang [37] iden-tifies the challenges connected with linking upstreamengagement to relevant political decision-making inscience. In this sense, the allure of upstream engagementmight simply be an illusion and a more fundamentalstructural shift must occur in how science is organizedthrough society to bring about more widespreadengagement.

Yet, for the present purposes, the most remarkablefinding is that the informants of the research in the USA[28–30] had difficulty recalling even the technical de-tails of the science. To this end, one might conclude thatexpectations about the public’s ability to recall scientificdetail—as an indicator of knowledge or understand-ing—should not be the primary focus of evaluating

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science communication. Rather, it may be more effec-tive to focus on those aspects of the science that haveimplication for the people’s lives. Focusing on the moraland ethical implications of science, rather than its tech-nical details, is a critical means through which toachieve such understanding. If people can be engagedon these issues more powerfully, rather than through justthe scientific facts, then a more informed public canemerge. The evidence to support this claim draws onthe earlier assumption that the most powerful way toengage people on technological transformations—inscience fiction and so on—is through the moral issuesthey present. To this end, the remaining sections explorehow narrative operates around understanding, how dig-ital media provides a vehicle for such development, and,finally, how this combined approach nurtures what maybe described as scientific citizenship.

Narrative in Nanoethics

The millennial debates about genetics were character-ized by attempts to do public engagement work after theresearch had been done. For nanotechnology, the expec-tationwas somewhat different; it was a chance to engagethe public before many of the applications had beendeveloped. While the case is unproven as to whetherearly nanocommunication work brought about a moreengaged or ethically empowered citizen, such aspira-tions resonate with the upstream model. Yet, whileaudiences might be more capable of screening for pro-pagandist messages from transnational science organi-zations, there are major challenges that the developmentof nanotechnology implies for science communicationgenerally and this is true also of the ethical challengesthey generate.

First, there is a growing convergence of the sciences,which is creating new, hybrid ethical issues with whichsocieties must grapple globally. This convergence hasbeen evident for some years through the overlappingground between bioethics, medical ethics, and environ-mental ethics. Each of these sub-disciplines emphasizesthe importance of transdisciplinary approaches to re-search, drawing heavily on philosophy, law, sociology,and political science, for instance. Second, a corollary ofthese shifts is a growing sophistication in the bioethicalmethod, which must be adopted within public under-standing work. This approach has begun to encompassnarrative studies, feminist approaches to bioethics,

cultural theory, and aesthetics. Indeed, the emergenceof ‘narrative ethics’ [38], as a way of making greatersense of the intricacies of ethical dilemmas, is indicativeof this transition. For this reason, understanding how toharness moral issues through science communicationwork is a more complex challenge than was previouslyunderstood. While success in doing so may rely ontraditional mechanisms of communication, such as lit-erary cases, role play, case studies, and so on, there isnow a greater appreciation for the complexity of thesemethods that should inform approaches tocommunication.

A final challenge to communicating nanotechnologyis the proliferation of new kinds of ethically engagedcommunity and new interest groups, which are changingthe political landscape of the debate. Prominent examplesof this include discussions about human enhancement, asmedical technologies increasingly make possible the abil-ity to make humans ‘better than well’ [39]. However, italso encompasses the ethics of life or health extension,which arises as a direct consequence of attending to age-related disease. Yet, research has shown that developingpublic engagement with the ethics of nanoscience mayassist in promoting public understanding and awareness,each of which are essential components of informeddecision-making. For example, the Eurobarometer 224[40] emphasized the importance of ethics in scientificresearch. This emphasis is followed by a strong publicdemand that scientific research must take place within theboundaries of ethical and moral principles, outlining theneed for a balanced assessment of prospects and risks ofscientific research and progress. The breadth of this re-quirement may focus on the micro ethical decisions thattake place at the point of application, or they may involvebroad inquiries into assessing possible impacts on hu-manity, the environment and society, assessment of sci-entific research, as well as questions about the regulationof science within the policy authorities and scientificcommunity. Yet, who should provide the expert commen-tary on what is ethically desirable for humanity, whenfaced with a range of scientific possibilities? This isa critical question in our times, as was made apparent inpolitical debates within the UK and the USA over the2016–2017 period.

When considering the evaluation and assessment ofscientific research, as well as its moral and ethical im-plications, it is necessary to scrutinize what counts asexpertise that will allow the discovery of an optimal

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relationship between the specialists and the broaderpublic. As Turner [41] argues, media and scientificinstitutions use the lack and ambivalence of informationto establish and expand expert power. Expertise andexpert knowledge are highly influential facts indecision-making processes and the public’s understand-ing of scientific and ethical issues. Habermas [42] em-phasizes this notion, claiming that expert culture makesdemocratic discussion impossible. Thus, expertise cancontrol and manipulate the public, public perception,and attitudes towards science and scientific research,which effectively leads to disempowerment rather thanempowerment.

While expertise can be valuable within debates aboutwhich science we should pursue, the right expertise isalso needed when presenting the ethical dimensions ofscience and scientific research [6]. To this end, scientificexpertise needs to be distinguished from ethical exper-tise within public understanding work, especially toavoid criticisms of media bias or conflict of interest.The power of experts is highly influential and relianceupon experts raises the question of public trust. In thiscontext, understanding the effect of science communi-cation involves taking into account how expertise isframed within communication systems. In turn, thisinvolves understanding what processes elevate specifickinds of people to the position of experts and, hence,understanding how expertise assists—or detracts—fromthe public’s ability to comprehend any given science.This final point raises questions about whether the cur-rent mechanisms of constructing expertise about sci-ence—principally through the media—are adequate. Ifone concludes that it is not, then it is useful to looktowards alternative communication channels for moreeffective forms of engagement.

Social Media and Nanotechnology

As outlined earlier, traditional methods of science com-munication were informed by assumptions about aknowledge deficit within the public. To this end, re-search has focused on how the mass media might bebetter utilized to develop greater understanding. Yet, themass media also has limitations, specifically its unidi-rectional logic. Until recently, television, print, and radiohave relied on an editorial voice communicating to aconsuming public, which has limited opportunity torespond. In recent times, this has begun to changethrough the rise of interactive content. For example, in

the 1980s, talk radio became a boom industry and ele-ments of this broadcasting remain prominent today. Tele-vision has progressively become bi-directional throughthe rise of chat shows and reality shows that involve theaudience through existing telephonic systems that pro-vide space for interaction. Indeed, this format has becomeso pervasive in television, that it has also generateddisruptive interventions from producers. For example,consider the case of the Netherlands’ Great Donor Show(2007). In this case, the producers created a game showwhere the contestants were all in need of a kidney trans-plant. The winner of the show would receive the kidneybeing offered by a donor, and the audience was asked tovote on who should receive it. The world’s media report-ed widespread outrage about the show in advance of itsbroadcast, but, at the moment of concluding the show, itrevealed itself as a hoax, an elaborate attempt to promoteorgan donation in a society where there is a shortage. Theexample shows how science, policy, and the public canintersect through an interactive communication platform.

Each of these formats espouses principles that areoptimally expressed through digital communication sys-tems, where the mode of participation involves highlevels of interaction with content and where we see anattempt to replicate the social sphere in digital form.While the principle of interaction certainly precededcomputer culture—consider the ‘Choose Your Own Ad-venture’ book series, for example, where readers choosethe order in which they read the book based on questionsthey are asked within the pages—technology has takeninteractivity a step further. Thus, the internet’s wide-spread utilization, via the release of the hypertext proto-col, allowed people to explore hyperlinked documentsin a network environment. This phase can also be re-ferred to as Web 1.0, where the internet was publiclyadopted into work and social life but still primarilybeing used to access information and resources beingpublished on websites and hence limited to unidirec-tional ways and models of communication.

However, online communities can be distinguishedfrom these other media in their development of a user-lededitorial infrastructure. Unlike a newspaper, which mightintegrate audience-generated content via letters pages oreven, today, blog comments from readers, the internetgrows its editorial structure from the user community. Tothis end, digital environments present rich opportunities toprogress public engagement upstreamwhile encompassingmultidirectional communication between various publics,stakeholders, and scientists. Indeed, new media platforms

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may be better suited than traditional media to building anengaged public, as their design takes more seriously theidea that public opinion can—and should—emerge fromthe bottom-up rather than be dictated from the top-downvia editorial choices. Hence, online public engagementcould advance the society’s participation in decision- andpolicy-making processes.

Outside of science, the internet has become fundamen-tal to broader public discourses on critical social issues:

More than a billion people worldwide use theinternet, both at work and in their social lives.Over the past three decades it has grown from anexperimental research network and now underpinsa range of new economic activities as well asactivities and infrastructures that support oureconomies ([43]: 81).

With a daily user base of now over three billion people,and a range of new protocols and publishing opportunities,the Web 2.0 era—with its emphasis on social experi-ences—offers a new mode of connecting people throughinformation. Social media allowsmore intelligent informa-tion retrieval, while allowing users to produce content andto collaborate and cooperate with each other, using pow-erful tools such as social networking sites, blogs, peer-to-peer file sharing and collaborative writing, and knowledgesharing tools such as wikis. This is not to say that it is anideal system. After all, there is also a loss of authoritativeperspectives that accompanies this fragmentation of infor-mation. Yet, Web 2.0 and its various networking andcollaboration applications allow for public participationin a way that redefines the current boundaries of sciencecommunication It also makes it possible for the public toaccess expertise and knowledge, without being restrictedby gatekeepers or media professionals. The web nowserves as a platform where users have greater control overtheir messages and where more people can participate inthe shaping of such conversations around information. AsO’Reilly [44] outlined, Web 2.0 offers ‘...activation ofcollective intelligence and knowledge...’ and can thor-oughly be defined as a great ‘solar system’ of collaborationand unique platform experience.

Participatory social media platforms offer ample op-portunities for upstream public engagement in all aspectsof science. Science blogs cover a wide range of issues andare creative, communication platforms for topics andissues, which hardly find their way into traditional media.Furthermore, the abundance of citizen science projects

that now exist around the world is heavily reliant onsocial media and digital platforms more generally tocreate a network of common purpose. Yet, traditionalmedia forms are also creating similar spaces throughwhich scientists to reach their audiences, an increasingimperative in an era when newspaper readership isdiminishing, and where many media outlets have goneinto administration. Within blogs, authors and readersanalyse, comment, articulate ideas, narrate, take up posi-tions, discuss, and spread opinions. Blogs offer a coher-ent, comprehensive, and linked up way to report onscience and scientific issues, to comment, and to classify.

No other communication medium allows such wide-ranging flexibility: articles can be written, modified, orextended immediately, with the results being visible andaccessible within seconds. Whereas previously, tradi-tionally scientific research results were published inspecific journals, which were hardly accessible for thepublic, blogs allow authors to publish results and reporton results directly, reducing the gap between scientistand public. The emergence of an open access era furthercalls for strategic thought on how best to make sciencemeaningful when more scientific discoveries can befound by the general public. Moreover, the iterativejournal article has emerged to replace the idea that apiece of work can be fixed or completely finished. Inthis respect, the scientific profession is alsoreconsidering its model for communicating knowledgein a way that more closely aligns with principles ofsocial media publishing. Journal articles in the futuremay more closely resemble crowd sourced Wikipediaentries, rather than fixed, finished PDF documents, andthis has huge implications for how humanity makessense of its own history.

Social media environments abolish the asymmetrybetween experts and lay people and are providing spacefor counter-arguments and critique to influence debates.Indeed, social media is becoming a part of the emergingterritory of citizen science, which is a crucial apparatusin the fledgling alliance between amateur scientists andprofessionals:

The Citizen Science Alliance is a collaboration ofscientists, software developers and educators whocollectively develop, manage and utilise internet-based citizen science projects in order to furtherscience itself, and the public understanding of bothscience and of the scientific process. These projectsuse the time, abilities and energies of a distributed

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community of citizen scientists who are our collab-orators (http://www.citizensciencealliance.org).

Feedback and responses are an integral part ofscience online; critique is no longer only happeningin a closed academic scientific circle, but scientistsand journalists are enabled to receive commentsfrom the public and directly interact via commentar-ies, questions, and remarks with those, who arenormally left behind: the public. Furthermore, froma professional background, blogs allow an interdis-ciplinary exchange, dialogue, and networking with-out disciplinary boundaries.

Participatory journalism or citizen/grassroot jour-nalism adds another perspective to unidirectionalmass media—the so-called ‘one to many’ modeldescribed by Shirkey [45]. Rushkoff [46] outlinesthat, due to increasingly centralized and profit-driven mainstream media, the ability to offer a mul-tiplicity of perspectives is diminished. The provisionof alternative and multiple perspectives on news andcurrent events is established by user-driven onlinenews websites and blogs [47]. As noted, blogs addfurther perspectives on news or report on issues,narrate stories using a personal perspective, allowingreaders to gain insights and simply tell stories,which have been overlooked by or never gainedentry into traditional media. Each of these elementsprovides a basis for developing a fourth model to-wards public engagement with science, focused onthe idea of nurturing scientific citizenship.

Conclusion: Towards a Theory of Scientific Agency

Each of the elements that I have discussed revealsthe need for a fourth model of public understandingwith science, which elevates the importance of nur-turing scientific agency and which builds on thepursuit of developing ‘science capital’ (Archeret al. [3, 4]). These arguments require crucial con-sideration especially since habits around informationconsumption have changed in recent times. Today,more innovative methods are needed, which takeinto account the fact that people now read morenews on their mobile devices than in newspapers.The collapse of expertise, diminished trust in themedia through the growth of fake news, the rise ofuser generated content, and the emergence of citizen

science all speak to the need for a much moresophisticated way of developing public engagementthrough science communication. Such work mustattend to the shifting locations within which nurtur-ing public understanding of science is possible, out-side of formal, professional communication systems,towards informal, citizen-based environments.

As outlined by Bowman and Willis ([48], 13):

‘there is a new media ecosystem emerging whereonline communities discuss and extend the storiescreated by mainstream media. These communitiesproduce participatory journalism, grassrootreporting, annotative reporting, and commentary’.

With easy opportunities to publish and distributecontent via the internet, Bruns [47] argues that ‘no newsorganisation has the power anymore to choose whatnews is fit to print and what news is discarded andtherefore the gates of publication have multiplied be-yond all control ([47], 1)’.

First hand coverage within online news outlines thepotential of citizens to observe and report more imme-diately than traditional media. The rise of alternativenews sources and citizen journalism overcomes thesignificant shortcomings of traditional gatekeeperproblems and offers a wider range of perspectives,opinions, and viewpoints by incorporating news be-yond the views of politicians, leaders, and experts. AsBruns outlines ([47],13), ‘multiperspectival news is thebottom-up corrective for the mostly top-down perspec-tives of the traditional news media’. Furthermore,news coverage online is dialogic: it forms an ongoingconversation and exchange of opinions and views. Inshort, alternative media can easily fill gaps left bymainstream media and allow overlooked events ornews to gain entry into public debate and agenda.We can observe the impact of these shifts by consid-ering the case of nanotechnology.

Engaging with the ethics of science can be aneffective way of promoting engaged participationaround nanoscience and nanotechnology, because itprovides an entry point into the debate for peopleregardless of education levels or awareness of thescience. In this paper, engaged participation means,minimally, having contributed actively to discussionsabout such matters, either through posting responsesonline or to sharing information with others throughsocial media. While so-called ‘clicktivism’ [49] can be

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to the detriment of a more consequential form ofengagement with civil society—perhaps where peopleform beliefs or take decisions on the basis of theinteraction—the expansion of media materials throughuser-generated content is a powerful indication of howthe range of actors who are producing conversationsabout science has grown. Evidence to support thisparticipatory mode of engagement is found in a rangeof publications about how political work is best ac-complished online and offline, but it is also apparentwithin the ethos of citizen science. As Kolok et al.note, ‘active participation in the scientific process canlead to personal empowerment’ ([50], 626).

To this end, research into the communication ofscience generally and nanotechnology specificallyshould seek to harness the powerful device of moralnarratives through which to activate public discourse.As a Nature editorial stated

Only by fully engaging at the outset with thecultural preconceptions of those audiences—bybeing what sociologists call ‘reflexive’—can sci-ence’s institutions do justice to their goal of en-gaging with citizens ([51], 451).

The consequences of developing scientific agen-cy, rather than public understanding or public en-gagement as ends in themselves, are the achieve-ment of personal investment into the developmentof science, not simply to its being understood, oreven for that understanding to lead to informeddecision-making or participation in the deliberativeprocess. Rather, nurturing scientific agency speaksto a broader sense of investment, which corre-sponds with Arnason's notion of ‘scientific citizen-ship’, albeit without the irreconcilable “differentintellectual roots” and “diverse positions and theo-retical tensions” ([52], 938) it implies. Approachingpublic engagement with the intention of nurturingscientific citizenship and focusing on the ethicalaspects of science, or as Perrault states, ‘keepingthe focus on public values’ ([5], 111), provides amore sustainable approach than is achieved by theother models of science communication. Further-more, it would more effectively ensure the ‘demo-cratic involvement of citizens in science’ [53],which should be the primary consideration in thegoals of science communication and publicengagement.

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of theCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestrict-ed use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, providedyou give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source,provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate ifchanges were made.

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