CONCISE is a European funded project (H2020 – SwafS, GA n. 824537) that brings together partners from five European countries: Spain, Italy, Portugal, Poland and Slovakia.

CONCISE intends to generate a European-wide debate on science communication, involving a wide array of stakeholders, from media outlets to policy makers, from scientists to business companies, from science communicators to civil society organisations. CONCISE aims at providing qualitative knowledge through citizen consultation on the means/channels (media and social networks, life experience, relatives, religion, political ideology, educational system…) by which EU citizens acquire their science-related science knowledge, and how this knowledge influences their beliefs, opinions and perceptions.

For this purpose, CONCISE will explore the understanding of 500 citizens (representing the 500 million EU citizens), regarding four selected topics: vaccines, complementary and alternative medicine use (CAM), genetically modified organism (GMO), and climate change. CONCISE will carry out citizen consultations in five countries: Lisbon (Portugal), Valencia (Spain), Vicenza (Italy), Trnava (Slovakia) and Lodz (Poland), with the participation of 100 citizens in each country (selected volunteers and representatives of different social groups, considering gender, age, educational level, ethnic minorities, impaired people, and professional careers). Their understanding and position on these four scientific topics will be evaluated, validated, compared and analysed, in order to publish the results in open access by the CONCISE team. Citizen opinions will be recorded; transcribed and analysed with a corpus linguistics software in order to get different indicators that will help all stakeholders to have a more direct and fruitful communication, avoiding the danger of discourses that generate distrust and misunderstandings. CONCISE results will be scalable and its methodology could be applied to other European countries in order to increase the communication of science in terms of quality and quantity all over Europe.

To reach CONCISE’s overall goal, the following specific objectives have been established:

  • OBJ1. To increase our understanding of how beliefs, perceptions and knowledge of science- and technology-related issues originate among European citizens.
  • OBJ2. To review the existing structural obstacles that scientists and other R&I stakeholders, including policymakers, currently face when attempting to communicate science successfully.
  • OBJ3. To evaluate the existing models for teaching science communication to communicators and scientists in Europe, and to analyse how to elaborate an action plan, including recommendations and the issues that should be explored.
  • OBJ4. To enable active citizen participation in scientific research processes, in line with the concept of responsible research and innovation (RRI), by employing a public consultation methodology.
  • OBJ5. To measure the positive or negative perception of citizens participating in the public consultation on a selection of stories related to science.