“Science is Everywhere, but No One Knows It”: Assessing the Cultural Distance to Science of Rural South African Publics

ABSTRACT

In science communication, a prerequisite for reaching different parts of a society is to find out how these publics experience and interpret science. Since rural South African publics are perceived to exhibit a large cultural distance to science, the present exploratory study aimed to know in more detail how rural South Africans perceive and understand science in their local and social contexts. Theoretical notions on cultural distance and the methodological approach of segmentation studies were considered. Semi-structured interviews with rural South Africans were carried out in four towns (n = 52) that differ with respect to having a large scientific installation in their vicinity, or not. Sensitively comparing local and social contexts helped identifying three different publics who differed regarding their perceptions of science; however, the large scientific installations only made a difference in perceptions for those publics who were generally less exposed to and less knowledgeable about science.

KEYWORDS:

• Public perceptions of science and technology
• cultural distance
• segmentation study
• exploratory analysis
• rural publics in South Africa

Acknowledgements

This work is based on research supported by the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa. Any opinion, finding and conclusion or recommendation expressed in this material is that of the authors and the NRF does not accept any liability in this regard. The authors wish to thank their two anonymous reviewers for their good recommendations. We also want to thank Marina Joubert and Lauren Wildschut for reading the earlier drafts of this manuscript, and Harrie Esterhuyse for helping in conceptualizing this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Lars Guenther http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7760-0416

Peter Weingart http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8275-525X

Corlia Meyer http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2965-4054

Notes

1 Effective science communication is often defined as communication that informs (better) decision-making; however, this communication should begin by listening to audiences and identifying their needs, and it should relate to people’s competences and interests (Fischhoff, 2013).

2 SALT is the largest optical telescope in the southern hemisphere and was built in 2005. SKA is a radio telescope project, which biggest part is being built in South Africa. While phase 1 of the SKA project starts to run in 2018, currently the first dishes (that form part of the MeerKAT project (initial construction started in 2009)) are already running. Both SALT and SKA are global projects, financed by several countries.

3 It is one of the set goals of segmentation studies to identify segments of a population, and then subsequently derive (science) communication strategies to better reach these segments, because “certain types of messages may be enthusiastically embraced by some members of the general public, but elicit indifference or outrage from others” (Hine et al., 2014, p. 441).

4 For an overview of why research in this area was established, readers are guided to Besley (2013) and Allum et al. (2008). Research into public perceptions of S&T, mostly in the form of quantitative surveys, is—in general—interested in the publics’ scientific literacy; their interest, knowledge, and understanding of (the nature of) science; trust in science, scientists, and scientific institutions; media use; and attitudes towards science and its public funding (e.g. Bauer, 2012; Muñoz et al., 2012). Research in this field is interested in both general and specific public perceptions of S&T (Allum et al., 2008).

5 The (contested) relationship between knowledge of science and attitudes towards science has led to frequent debates (Allum et al., 2008; Gauchat, 2011). Branded the deficit model, some researchers believed that if the public was more scientifically literate, they would be more favorable towards science (Sturgis & Allum, 2004). Some researchers found support that higher literacy influences positive attitudes towards science (Allum, Sibley, Sturgis, & Stoneman, 2014; Bauer et al., 1994; Sturgis & Allum, 2004), which, in turn, positively influence support for its public funding (Muñoz et al., 2012). However, other researchers found only limited support for this connection, for instance regarding attitudes towards specific areas of scientific research (Allum et al., 2008), or in cross-cultural investigations (see Bauer et al., 1994; Bauer et al., 2007; Bauer, 2012).

6 Cultural distance is defined “as the distance that a worldview, attitude, perception, or an idea, generated within one cultural context, travels on a time scale for its democratization within the thought structure of the other cultural sub-group(s)” (Raza et al., 2009, p. 272).

7 The pretest was carried out with people from different communities in Stellenbosch, South Africa; hence, in a semi-rural context.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Research Foundation (93097).