The Narrative Construction of Scientific Realities: Exploring How Public, Political & Scientific Discourses Shape Science Reforms

Increasingly, ‘scientific issues’ transcend their strictly scientific debate spaces: They become central elements of public/political discourse. Debates around research reproducibility, infrastructure emissions, or responsibility gaps from AI-use frequently result in media scandalisations and calls for substantial science reforms. With politicians and the public looking to address these policy problems, diverse (micro/meso/macro) policy solutions have been produced over the years. These solutions usually aim at restructuring scientific realities to better match political/public idea(l)s of science. Recent examples include implementations of Open Science, calls for sustainable digital technologies or the promotion of specific epistemic values and virtues (e.g. "responsible AI", “research integrity”). Due to the anticipated (re)configuration of the scientific domain, these reforms, their policies, and the surrounding public discourse deserve our critical attention.

Our session thus aims to examine how these policy problems and policy solutions are narratively constructed, publicly (re)negotiated, and institutionalised by scientific and policy actors alike. We are particularly interested in their discursive framing (e.g. as urgent), the role of trans/interdisciplinary efforts in supporting them, and potential entanglements with socio-economic hierarchies, asking: What recent policy problems of science have been identified by governments, the public, and research communities? What range of policy solutions have been proposed? And how are they narratively constructed and communicated to/in the public to sustain them?

To explore this interplay and its reflexivity, we encourage critical reflections from diverse backgrounds (e.g. empirical studies, theoretical reflections, comparative analyses) on how science policy problems and solutions are/have been articulated across different disciplines, institutions, media, and regions.