Abstract
Scientific institutions have long mistreated LGBTIQA+ individuals across a variety of cultural contexts. 1 This traumatic history begs the question of what exactly the field of science communication owes to LGBTIQA+ communities, and Queering Science Communication addresses this question in an honest way. This text is possibly the first work of its kind to study science communication in a way that centers queerness. As someone who identifies as queer and engages in queer science communication research, I thoroughly embraced the invitation to review this book and I was heartened to see the flagship publication of the field, Science Communication, engage with the idea that science communication can be a queer enterprise.
In Queering Science Communication, editors Orthia and Roberson bring together a diverse cohort of researchers, educators, and practitioners to produce a compilation that addresses the topic of queer science communication. In this work, science communication generally refers to the communication activities of scientists or scientific institutions that are oriented toward lay publics, from a variety of angles. Although the authors do not offer a finite definition of queer, they do encourage readers to draw insights from the book and the many sources it offers so that they might construct their own definition. One of the most notable features of this compilation is its inclusion of varied contributors, which Orthia and Roberson describe as a deliberate effort “to avoid compounding a known issue in the LGBTIQA+ community where queer discourse can fail to adequately represent the incredible diversity of voices available” (p. 4). The effort to cultivate a multiplicity of voices is admirable, especially given recent calls in our discipline to acknowledge the influence of researchers’ individual identities on the work they produce (e.g., Deuze, 2021). In addition, the editors’ inclusion of multiple national contexts offers international diversity without labeling the book a work of “international communication”—a label that tends to position Western nations as the default context for communication research. Indeed, Queering Science Communication should be praised for featuring diverse gender, sexuality, and national identities and showcasing practitioner voices alongside academic voices.
The book covers a wide range of topics relevant to science communication. These topics are broadly grouped into four sections which cover the negotiation of queer identities, representations of queerness, experiences of queerness, and the queering of institutional agendas in science communication. In each of these sections, we glimpse the struggles that queer-identifying individuals face in science communication contexts. Examples are Armstrong and Locke’s queering (as method) of public science institutions (Chapter 4) and Viaña et al.’s collective autoethnography as Filipino scientists (Chapter 6), which clarify challenges to queer equity such as heteronormative assumptions in natural science museums or even outright discrimination of LGBTIQA+ scientists. The results are robust, thought-provoking, and highly readable.
This work also critiques science communication as a social institution and imagines what more queer-friendly science communication could look like. This critical orientation is exemplified in the final entry of the text from Orthia and de Kauwe, which seeks to engage in its critique of the institution of science communication twice in parallel formats: once as a fairly standard academic format and once as an informal writing anthropomorphizing science communication as a domineering romantic relationship in what the editors describe as a “smutty, metaphorical exploration . . .” (p. 18). This very readable entry makes an important point about the ceiling for queer equity in a social institution of science dominated by western hegemonic views of science. The whole work leaves the reader with much to think about in terms of the ability for science communication (and scientific institutions) to better serve LGBTIQA+ communities without truly radical change.
Practitioner voices are featured in short-form “practice spotlight” sections, which accompany scholarly chapters and which the editors describe as an effort to “highlight queer-themed events, activities, exhibitions, organizations, networks, media products, and short, sharp research findings of relevance to science communication professionals” (p. 8). Among the notable spotlights in this series are from Alifuoco et al. (p. 60) and Durcan and Bandelli (p. 175). These practice spotlights showcase the success of using eclectic science media (in this case, a microorganism “love calendar”) as a venue for queerness and the hard work of shared governance for LGBTIQA+ individuals in a science art gallery organization, respectively. Science communication as a field is heavily oriented toward the development of science communication practice (Metag, 2021). The great success of the practice spotlights in this work is that they allow practitioner readers to see a variety of applied science communication initiatives taking place, and allow academic readers to see how the research being conducted in their field is being used in practice, which makes this a readable text for multiple audiences. Altogether, the book’s structure is an effective model for works in other practice-oriented communication disciplines.
Alongside the unqualified successes, there are areas for improvement. I struggled with the spotlights that focus on “short, sharp research findings.” In one such spotlight, Frentz describes a systematic literature review and points to insights from this work to suggest that scientific journal articles need to do a better job at critically engaging with sex and gender terms for human participants (p. 29). This finding is not surprising, but I anticipated more supporting detail, such as the search and inclusion criteria for the literature Frentz reviewed, and other details that can help the reader to critique the research method. This lack of detail likely is a natural byproduct of the short format of the practice spotlights and, perhaps, writing for practitioners (who might be less interested in methodological critique); however, omitting key methodological details diminishes the value of the insights for a broad readership.
The practice spotlights that were more research focused seemed to suffer because they did not have room to breathe, which was especially evident for Lopez and Roca’s spotlight dedicated to a study of effective science communication on Twitter (now rebranded to “X”). In this more research-focused practical spotlight, which describes a text analysis, Lopez and Roca could have benefited from more space to critically discuss important considerations for the implications of their work. For example, the spotlight could have benefited from more discussion of the specific affordances (possibilities, qualities, and constraints) of social media platforms (Da Silva, 2023), which would help the work age better, given the ever-evolving social media landscape (e.g., X’s rebrand).
Another clear area of improvement for future work is to draw from a wider variety of research methodologies. Despite not being explicitly a work of critical studies, nearly all of the research chapters used a critical methodology, with the only exceptions being an autoethnography in Chapter 6 and an interview study in Chapter 8. The editors acknowledge this weakness, “one significant gap for our discipline is a lack of information about LGBTIQA+ people in science communication and data on queer science communication-focused work” (p. 103). However, it is still worth mentioning that it would be valuable for future works of queer science communication to strive for a variety of research methodologies.
To conclude this review, I emphasize again that to my knowledge this is the first compilation work of queer science communication. This is innovative enough in its own right, but the authors also give us a novel structure that grants space to the practical world of science communication. There are some issues in the execution of this structure, but the work overall is a very readable text that addresses many of the key issues with science communication and queerness, and gives us some hints about how we can do better as a field. This work has clear value to researchers, practitioners, and educators to guide science communication in a way that makes it work better for LGBTIQA+ individuals and communities.
