Final Report Editor Ulrike Felt June 2003

Universities as actors at the science-society interface 306
through an increased number of PUS-initiatives targeting school children in particular
one hoped to revive their interest in the sciences and raise their motivation to engage
in studies in these domains. This situation of crisis has lead to the “discovery” of
women as a central target group in some countries, as they represent a so-far
“unused” resource of brainpower in these scientific areas. Such a move can definitely
be observed for example in the case of Austria. While this could on the one hand be
judged as a positive development – given the under-representation of women in the
national science systems – it should on the other hand not be overlooked that they are
mainly called to enter these domains at a moment when they are loosing attractiveness
in the eyes of male students.
Secondly, the growing activity of universities in the PUS-domain was triggered by
budgetary constraints and the increasing demand for accountability for the public
money spent. Under these circumstances universities are expected to increase their
visibility in the public sphere. It became regarded as unacceptable, that Universities
would engage in research without sufficiently communicating about their findings, but
also about the impact they would have for society at large (however often this vision of
“society at large” meant in concrete terms the economic system). Thus regular and
more intense contacts to the media as multiplicators and actors in creating public
visibility became central and science journalists became a central target group to be
addressed for the universities.
Apart from these two more pragmatically oriented motivations for starting PUSinitiatives,
which are both direct reactions to a change in the universities’ environment,
the engagement with the public was also framed by a number of other ideals. Despite
the radically new rhetoric which would speak about dialogue and interaction with the
public, one ideal still strongly present was that of citizen enlightenment. Indeed much of
the communication work carried out could still be subsumed under the classical ideal of
“educating the public” in order to make them more “rationally functioning citizens” in
their positioning towards techno-scientific developments. We find this in a number of
countries – it was explicitly mentioned in the French and Austrian case – even though
expressed in slightly different ways. Here, universities should play the role of an expert
institution and of a source of valid and reliable information. As a consequence less
importance was attached to more open and interactive settings were people could
meet and question science, although this was partly formulated as an explicit aim. This
mindset is partly explainable by the above-mentioned double role universities hold as
knowledge producers and as knowledge communicators aiming at establishing and
assuring both a good work environment for the near future as well as an unquestioned
position of holding expertise.
In the French case and less clearly in Portugal one can also see a second layer of
arguments overlapping the educational approach. Communication was needed in order