El periodisme científic com a sinècdoque: la part pel tot

Abstract

Public communication about science revolves around a handful of topics and an equally reduced number of sources. That is to say, faced with the impossibility of giving an exhaustive view of the whole of science and the whole of the scientific community, the communicative system (journalists, the media and other agents of communication) carry out, as in any other area of actuality, a process of selection and reduction of the information. The problem which arises from this reductive process is that, as with a synecdoche, the part can be mistaken for the whole. This article examines, in the first place, the social responsibility of the sources of scientific information, and in particular whether these sources form part of the reduced nucleus of icons which represent the rest of the scientific community. Subsequently, we analyze the processes which limit the concentration of information to a handful of questions which not only mark science news but also condition the social agenda, the political agenda (in the few cases in which science is included therein) and, finally, the scientific agenda itself.