Ana Delicado - Communicating Science and Technology in Society: Issues of Public Accountability and Engagement

Responsible Research and Innovation is a transparent, interactive process by which societal actors and innovators become mutually responsive to each other with a view to the (ethical) acceptability, sustainability and societal desirability of the innovation process and its marketable products (in order to allow a proper embedding of scientific and technological advances in our society (Schomberg , 47).

Among other issues, RRI encompasses ethics , governance , and public engagement and has become a mandatory issue in research carried out with European funding .

Conversely, science funding is increasingly dependent on demonstrating the societal impact of research, showing its economic and social value and usefulness, with significant consequences over assessment practices (Whitley ).

These trends have greatly multiplied the objects of study addressed by sociologists of science and technology and led to increasingly porous borders with other sub-disciplines of sociology (environmental sociology, political sociology, sociology of social movements , sociology of health , sociology of communication , to name just a few).

One such object may the relations between science and the policy sphere. Some sociological research has been focusing on scientific advice for policy , in the sense of the use of knowledge to facilitate or improve decision-making (Pielke ).

Sociological interest in these forms of participatory decision-making and consensus building stems also from its reverse. In the past few decades there have been a multitude of scientific controversies spilling out to the public sphere and embroiling citizens, and attracting the attention of sociologists. From mad-cow disease (Miller ).

Less contentious but no less bountiful for sociological research is another kind of encounter between scientists and citizens, namely in the co-production of knowledge. Callon ().