ABSTRACT
The presentation of concepts, results, and methods in this investigation into the public understanding of science and technology has sketched a relatively recent field of research that is only vaguely delimited and both conceptually and analytically rather indistinct. Despite this field’s amorphous contours, however, Jon D.Miller already noted in 1992 that the study of the public understanding of science and technology had become a “visible and recognized area of scholarship” in which relevant theoretical constructs had been brought together from a variety of disciplines and subdisciplines. Among them are research on technology assessment, innovation and technology development, risk perception and acceptance, media, attitudes, and especially science itself. The fact that the public understanding of science and technology has achieved such visibility as a field of research is due, however, to a point raised by Wynne (1995), an outspoken critic of the present state of the research on this topic. He asserted that the work subsumed under this label lacks an overarching scientific paradigm and is shaped by political interests dominating the context of research questions, especially since the 1980s.
