By Massimiano Bucchi. Photo Credit: Flickr A spacious meeting room in a prestigious university. Vice-Chancellor - Good afternoon everybody and thanks for being here. I am the Vice-Chancellor for Public Engagement. We are here today to discuss how to improve our university public communication and public engagement strategy. Let me briefly introduce the participants: Professor Orange, Department of Physics; Professor Green, Department of Environmental Sciences; Professor Mustard, Department of Computer Science; Professor Turquoise, Department of Political Science; Professor Brown, Department of Statistics; Professor Blue, Department of Philosophy. And of course, Mrs. Black, who heads our communication office. Mrs. Black - Thank you, Vice-Chancellor. I have asked also Mr. Mellow Yellow to be here with us today. Mr Mellow Yellow is a highly successful influencer and renowned specialist of social media and he is going to help us with his advice. He is a great expert...
By Elisa Lello and Niccolò Bertuzzi. Scientific knowledge and traditional epistemic authorities are the object of growing skepticism in Western societies. Scholars contextualized such a phenomenon into a wider coming to light of an anti-science or post-truth era, in a debate centred on the concepts of epistemic populism and, in particular, 'science-related populism '. Our study focused on popular dissent toward compulsory vaccination and pandemic management policies during the Covid-19 pandemic, a topic which is generally identified, and also by Mede and Schäfer’s work , as a crucial example of science-related populism. We focus on Italy, the first Western country to be hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and one that, according to the Oxford University Stringency Index, has taken particularly stringent measures to tackle the health crisis. Our work We started from a paradox that has been little studied. While the association of these protests with the right, even the extreme righ...