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Declan Fahy and Bruce Lowenstein, 2021

Declan Fahy and Bruce Lowenstein, “Scientists in popular culture – The making of celebrities” Routledge Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology (2021), Chapter 3.

 

Ⅰ. Summary

 

3-1 Introduction (pp.33-34)

  • The aim of this chapter: To explore how the presence of scientists in popular culture has increased over the last century, as well as the effect of popular culture on the scientists themselves and their own image as scientists.

→A key aspect = to understand the functions of celebrity in science.

 

3-2 Historical perspective (pp.34-38)

  • It is not new that scientists are present in public culture.

Ex: The book about Isaac Newton for children (1700s~), Thomas Edison and his competitor Sebastian Ferranti’s biography, and Microbe Hunters (1926) which became a best-seller book etc.

→ In the second half of the 20C, the growing relevance of science in public life led to new relationships between scientist and popular culture (in U.S and England).

→The author’s goal = To identify the feature that move scientists past being publicity ‘visible’ and into a broader role as full participants in modern celebrity culture.

  • Scientists has had a growing role as a social authority in popular culture throughout the 20th century, with an especially evident increase near the end of the century.
  • Carl Sagan demonstrated an increasingly important phenomenon; the photogenic, and media-savvy scientists as object of public worship.

→Sagan marked the shift from ‘visible’ scientists to ‘celebrity’ scientists.

 

  • LaFollette augured that television tended to feature scientists who conformed to its demand for the revelation of personal details and its emphasis on personal appearance(※1).

→A television trivialized scientists by portraying them as celebrities akin to other figures in popular entertainment.

 

3-3 Scientists in celebrity culture (pp.38-40)

  • The variety of media forms (in the final decade of 20C) has meant that celebrities are now a ubiquitous aspect of contemporary Western culture.
  • Journalists and writers labelled individual scientists in this milieu as celebrities.
  • Ex: Neil deGrasse’s Tyson (astrophysicist) was described as “a space-savvy celebrity” in New York Times.

Susan Greenfield (neuroscientists) was described as “celebrity neuroscientists” in popular books.

  • A notable aspect of these celebrities is the over-representation of males.

→ Women were not prominently featured in dramas, documentaries, news reports and talk shows, suffering as a result a form of “cultural invisibility”.

⇄The female scientists who did appear were portrayed largely as stereotypical superwoman consumed by their careers or as ‘romantic’ adventurous celebrities.

→1990s~: This representation became change but half of the profiles of women scientists in British newspapers referred to their appearance, clothing, physique(※3).

  • The transformation of scientists into celebrities reflects an intensification in the cultural role and reach of the media.

Cf: mediatization of science

Historical shift from ‘visible scientists’ to ‘celebrity scientists’.

  • Graeme Turner defined celebrity as a genre of representation and a discursive effect.

And a genre of representation means that there is an intense personalization in an individual’s media portrayal. = He or she is represented as a distinctive individual.

  • The idea that famous figures have a social function is important to understanding celebrity.

∵ Celebrity helps audiences make sense of the social worlds, as famous figures articulate and represent values and beliefs that are often implicit.

←The process through which a public figure becomes a celebrity has been called new words ‘celebrification’ or ‘celebritisation’.

 

3-4 Framework for analyzing scientists as cabriites (pp.40-44)

  • The authors categorized the characteristics comprising scientists who became famous in popular culture after WW2 into the following six categories.

 

  • The scientist’s represented image features a blurring of his or her public and private lives

:Celebrification occurs when media coverage moves from reporting a scientist’s public life to reporting his or her private life.

Ex: Dawkins is described charismatic and messianic with the “fierce, hawkish good look of a forties film star by The Guardian.

Ex: Tyson Twitter feed has merged his public and private lives(※2).

 

  • The scientist is a tradable cultural commodity

:Interacting with a large audience through books and television has to do with branding and marketing scientists as writers and presenters. And it often involving synergies where variations of the same products are sold across different media formats.

Ex: A Brief History of Time as the book and the film.

“Hawking’s name was used as a proportional booster” .

 

  • The scientist’s public image is constructed around discourses of truth, reason, and rationality

:The celebrity scientists is associated with discourses of truth, reason and rationality (+ progress).

Ex: A recurring pattern of representation of Hawking presents his mind as existing outside his body. His idea changed conceptions of the universe while his body failed.

→The media coverage systematically created an image that supported ‘reason’ as the base of his celebrity, effacing the larger social system that sustained him.

 

  • The scientist has a structural relationship with the ideological tensions of their times

:Famous figures who have lasting popularity are emblematic of the social, cultural and political tensions of their times.

Ex: Tyson wrote in his autobiography how he became astrophysics in spite of the space agency NASA, which in its early years was sending white astronauts into space while poverty grew in inner-city black communities.

 

  • The scientists’ representations feature the tensions and contradictions inherent in fame

: There is a tension between their scientific status and public renown.

Ex: Some physicists argued that Hawking’s popular fame far exceeded his reputation within the field.

(6) The scientists’ celebrity status allows them to comment on areas outside their realm of expertise

Ex:  Some people pointed out that Dawkins did not give a fair account of the intellectual and theological positions he challenged.

 

 

Conclusion (p.44-47)

  • Scientists have played an increasing role in popular culture over the 20C, as public culture has become a celebrity culture.
  • The shift from visible scientists of the mid 20C to celebrity scientists of the 21C marks the increasing integration of science into popular culture.
  • Science is increasingly embedded in popular culture and, by looking at celebrity, we can see how popular culture affects the production of knowledge itself.
  • The concept of celebrity is fruitful and applicable to variety of studies (such as Novel Laureates).
  • Remaining issues: (1)the nature of female scientists, (2)comparative analysis looking beyond North America and Europe(※4).

 

 

 

Ⅱ. Discussion

 

  • About Media Types:
  • My major concern is about the role of radio (p.37). Radio broadcasting was started from 1920 in U.S (and 1925 in Japan) and it is still widely used today. But as LaFollette said, television may be more important than radio in the rise of celebrity of scientists because TV directly conveys the visual image of the individual.
  • I think the relationship between Twitter and the celebrity of scientists is interesting topic(※2). As the authors wrote in p.41, Twitter may allow them to merge public and private lives. At the same time, having a large number of followers may help them be famous.

 

  • About Gender
  • The authors said that half of the profiles of women scientists in British newspapers referred to their appearance, clothing, physique during 1990s (p.39). In Japan, the accident of STAP cell (2014) is related to this topic. In this case, I think the image of women’s scientists were abused for the sake of team’s interests.
  • I think that the team of researchers prioritized promoting the unique aspect of being a "female scientist" rather than publishing a paper based on strict procedures.

 

  • About the comparative analysis
  • I don't think there are any scientists in Japan who appear frequently in movies or on TV. Of course, there are many scientists who write enlightening books for the general public (ex: Fukuoka Shinichi, Ikeuchi Satoru, Nakamura Keiko etc.), but I’m not sure if they can be called "celebrities".