Science Communication in the Age of AI: Agency,Authority,and a Field in Motion

Abstract

This guest editorial commentary introduces a special issue of Science Communication on artificial intelligence’s (AI) dual role as both a tool for and a topic of science communication. It argues that this dual role redistributes communicative and epistemic agency in ways that unsettle established assumptions about authorship, credibility, and trust. The commentary reviews seven studies spanning practitioner use, audience cognition, and misinformation correction, then develops two theoretical questions: how AI reshapes the social infrastructure of trust in science, and what science communication means when scientific discovery itself is partially delegated to AI.