Pedagogy in science communication can be wide ranging, spanning formal education, informal education, everyday science learning, and professional development contexts. This chapter considers how we might apply the concept of queer pedagogy to these multiple processes and settings. To paraphrase Luhmann (1998), what would a queer pedagogy of science communication (QSCP) look like? What would be its ambitions, and where would it take place? Is QSCP something just for queer science communicators and students? Or would the practice also include queering the science communication curriculum? Or is it about queer learning, teaching, and practices within the broad umbrella of science communication? In this chapter we approach all these questions and explore what queer theory might bring to science communication and the possibilities of teaching it queerly.

Radical pedagogies (hooks, 2003; Freire, 2018; Giroux, 2020) and queer theories have served as forms of critical or subversive interventions in both oppressive classroom relations and social architectures of heteronormative sexualities and genders for a long time now. Pedagogy is often understood as referring to the ‘how-to’ of teaching. Yet more recently, as Luhmann notes, ‘flagged by signifiers such as feminist, radical, and anti-racist,’ pedagogy is now ‘highly critical of mainstream education and of its tendency to reproduce racial, gendered, and class-based power relations in its institutions, ideologies, and practices’ (Luhmann, 1998 p 125, italics in the original). Common to these radical pedagogical approaches is the desire to intervene in the reproduction of power dynamics and to create more inclusive learning environments through the transformation of curricula and the structures of social interactions within classrooms. In using queer here we draw on the distinctions made by Morris (1998) between the use of queer as a subject position and queer as a politic, which do not always necessarily overlap. While queer theory emerged from the study of, and viewpoints of, people who are considered outsiders in terms of sexual and gender identities, it has also been used to interrogate all claims of ‘normalcy’ and the processes by which these are defined and policed (Greene, 1996; Morris, 1998; Shlasko, 2005). If, as Britzman (1995) suggests, queer pedagogy's goal is the radical practice of deconstructing normalcy, then as Luhmann (1998) argues, ‘it is obviously not confined to teaching as, for, or about queer subject(s)’ (p 129).

As science communication continues to establish itself as a discipline in the 21st century, there has never been a better time to consider contemporary science communication and its practices. Misinformation and digital marketing are changing the context for science journalism. Emerging political eras are altering the way we think about expertise and trust in policymaking, as well as the power of protest. Predatory publishing, open access and the use of social media are presenting novel contexts for researchers to consider in the communication of their work. Meanwhile, there are contemporary scientific and technological developments that are consistently generating important ethical and social questions. Against this backdrop in 2020, we faced one of the greatest global health issues in a generation, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whilst international events, and social movements have drawn heightened attention to questions of inclusion, equity and the abuse of power.

Contemporary Issues in Science Communication is a multidisciplinary series, welcoming submissions from a wide range of disciplinary areas, and international in outlook. Books contained in the series seek to be engaging, straightforward and conversational style, and of interest to science communication practitioners as well as academic audiences.

Books published in the Contemporary Issues in Science Communication series consider such science matters and their relationships to communication, engagement and broader social conversations. The series links the present with the past by publishing titles that develop our understanding of the history of science communication, both in practice and as an academic discipline. However, they also cover a range of topics relevant to contemporary science communication, including, but not limited to: definitions, history and ethics of science communication; expertise, replication and trust; interdisciplinary knowledge; ideologies; knowledge and new forms of media; public policy; gaming, sci-art and visual communication and inclusivity in science communication. The scope of the series is broad but so are the challenges facing science communicators and public engagement practitioners.

In this book, the first in the series, Tara Roberson and Lindy A. Orthia encapsulate these ambitions. In Queering Science Communication: Representations, Theory and Practice, they bring together an edited collection of insights that highlight the intersections of queerness and science communication.

It seems appropriate that when we started to write the introduction for this book about queering science communication it was Mardi Gras season in Australia. Mardi Gras is an annual celebration of queer protest, liberation, and visibility that takes place in Australia's largest city, Sydney. Like many things queer, when Mardi Gras began life in 1978 it was with a long overdue burst of passionate outrage in the guise of fun, which resulted in police violence against queer people and many arrests. Since then, Mardi Gras has become a globally renowned tourist destination that injects millions of dollars into the economy, it is broadcast live on mainstream Australian television, and it has inspired many other queer events worldwide (Markwell, 2018).

As authors Alice Motion and Herve Sauquet describe in their contribution to this book, the Mardi Gras programme also now incorporates sciencethemed events, demonstrating that queer people are everywhere and science communication is relevant to everyone. Queer people face specific issues in the world of science and have unique contributions to make to science communication, so bringing ‘queer’ and ‘science communication’ together in dedicated events, products, and networks is an important part of queer protest, liberation, and visibility. We hope this book will serve those aims.

Yet an examination of the science communication research literature reveals that little has been published on the intersection between queerness and science communication over the past thirty years or more (Roberson and Orthia, 2021). This is despite the damage Western science has inflicted on queer people during its long history as self-appointed ‘expert’ on all things queer. Nor have queer people's protests against that damage made many academic headlines in science communication research. Even within the recent flurry of scholarly interest in equity, access, and diversity in science communication (Finlay et al, 2021), queer themes have thus far rarely rated a mention. Mardi Gras may have become mainstream, but there is still work to be done.

It is remarkable that it has taken until now for a book like this to exist. Anecdotal evidence points to a large number of lesbian, gay, bi+ , trans, gender diverse, non-binary, intersex, agender, asexual, aromatic, and queer (LGBTIQA+ ) people working in the science communication field and indeed being drawn to it from other fields of science and technology (Roberson and Orthia, 2021).

I felt a sense of simultaneous calm and excitement overwhelm as those words hung in the air and we closed out the video interview. While past interviewees had shared their LGBTIQA+ identities when asked this question, this time it resonated with me differently, reinforcing my sense of self and queer belonging in science communication. Researching efforts at building inclusive science communication (ISC) research and practice revealed that many of the leaders in this movement had numerous marginalized identities of which they live at the intersection. The ISC movement was a space where they both passively and actively were their full selves, in research, practice, and – simply – life.

This conversation exemplified a larger trend in the strengths and struggles of existing efforts at addressing inclusion in science communication and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Increasingly, organizations and lab groups are taking a holistic approach to equitable science communication and addressing common exclusionary practices (Judd and McKinnon, 2021). Despite this notable effort to meaningfully support inclusion among some axes of identity, a remaining challenge is creating science communication communities that are radically and intentionally inclusive of queerness. This chapter seeks to briefly present how this came to be and provide recommendations for how we might build science communication communities that are inclusive of intersectional queer identities moving forward. It focuses specifically on mobilizing communities in alignment with the importance of shared experiences and identity, relationship building, and self-efficacy to create social change (Orthia et al, 2021).

In this chapter, references to queerness may encompass aspects of sexuality, gender, and variations in sex characteristics, recognizing that these are distinct elements of identity, and yet also how the queer community aspires to include all people who have identities that are not binary-cisgender and/or heterosexual (Yoder and Mattheis, 2016).

Queerness in STEM and science communication Communities

The STEM fields have been making nominal efforts towards equity for 50 years. Early conversations focused specifically on race and ethnic diversity in the STEM fields (Gillette, 1972) and – later – binary gender inequality without addressing queerness (Hanson et al, 1996; Settles et al, 2006).

If it was possible to locate a ‘start’ to the pandemic in the UK, then most people would point to the end of January 2020. This was when the first two officially confirmed cases of coronavirus were found in North Yorkshire, a county in northern England. The Guardian covered the contact tracing effort by Jeremy Hunt – a Conservative politician and chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee – and Public Health England. They led with the headline ‘Hunt begins search for “close contacts” of the two UK coronavirus cases’ (Boseley and Walker, 2020).

There is a capital ‘p’ Political chapter that could be written here. It might emphasize the failures of the UK government to identify the scale of the threat posed by a virus that had forced China to place millions into lockdown measures just over a week before. If this argument seems an unfair one to level at the government at the end of January 2020, then it is one that holds more weight when we consider that widescale government intervention was not enacted until 16 March. But the point about government inaction and ineptitude has been well documented in the popular press, academic literature and investigative journalism (Calvert and Arbuthnott, 2021).

So, this chapter takes a different approach. It focuses on the ‘close contacts’ element of The Guardian headline. It examines international scientific and public health literature up to January 2020. The chapter shows that ‘close contact’ is defined as being within two metres of an infected person for 15 minutes or more. In outlining the history of these two parameters – two metres and 15 minutes – the chapter shows that having such a simple binary of ‘more dangerous’ and ‘less dangerous’ sits at odds with the unimaginable complexity of the phenomenon of transmission. Despite this, this one-sizefits-all definition of ‘close contact’ was consistently used in public health messaging. This speaks to the power of numbers to make the unknown known, establishing quantitative realism even when reality is evasive (Desrosieres, 2002).

Understanding data bounds is not just about data. This chapter marks a break from the previous five by identifying how broader historical norms can help shore up certain data bounds and marginalize others. It does so through a single case study: the way a projection of 90,000 cases per day failed to circulate in the media.

In May 2020, a group of experts in the UK set up the Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Independent SAGE). This operated in opposition to the official Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) that advised the UK government on the handling of the pandemic. According to Independent SAGE, they are ‘a group of scientists working together to provide independent scientific advice to the Conservative government and public on how to minimize deaths and support Britain's recovery from the COVID-19 crisis’ (Independent SAGE, 2021b). Much of their work on communication centres on influencing the news media's coverage and more direct forms of communication (for example, social media) to pressure the government to change their approach to coronavirus.

As part of this strategy, they held weekly press conferences that were live streamed on YouTube. In one of these press conferences on 2 July 2021, Professor Christina Pagel – a member of Independent SAGE – made the following projection: ‘In mid-July we will have a seven-day average of 90,000 [cases per day]’ (Indie SAGE, 2021). This average of daily cases would far surpass the peaks of any of the previous waves.1 The alarming figure was used by Pagel to underpin her argument that the government should change tack. Instead of opening society on 19 July 2021 – the proposed date – they should wait until the vaccination programme had been rolled out fully. This would mean people gained immunity through vaccination rather than natural infection.

The importance of the 90,000 figure, and the underlying argument, seemed to land with the two main audiences of the broadcast. Members of the public watching the briefing provided some direct reaction to the figure in the live chat:

Introduction

The vast majority of science learning and engagement occurs beyond the walls of a classroom across the span of one's lifetime (Falk and Dierking, 2010). Given this fact, there is a large portion of the global population who seek opportunities that allow them to pursue their lifelong scientific interests and curiosities in a variety of settings. These opportunities can be considered informal science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) engagement opportunities and include people of all ages, interests, and backgrounds who engage with STEM on their own initiative through dynamic mediums. Among informal opportunities that promote public participation in STEM are those in which the public engages with and contributes to scientific research activities. These types of projects and programmes may include and/or be referred to as examples of volunteer monitoring, public participation in scientific research (PPRS), or more generally, as citizen and community science (CCS). Regardless of the name or title ascribed to this form of participatory STEM engagement, these opportunities largely remain rooted in traditional scientific norms and practices, which can often be exclusionary or unwelcoming for individuals with marginalized identities and backgrounds, including members of the LGBTIQA+ community.

In a broad sense, CCS can be used to identify an array of projects that involve ‘nonscientists engaging in doing science’ (NASEM, 2018). CCS describes activities that typically involve public audiences in the process, methods, and standards of scientific research with the aim of advancing scientific knowledge or application (NASEM, 2018). As a practice and a field, CCS is not well defined or well bounded, however, it is becoming the term most commonly recognized within the scientific and science communication communities. Beyond engaging in doing science, which commonly involves the processes of data collection and scientific research, CCS engagement serves as an example of informal science learning by engaging volunteers with scientific content and processes (Bonney et al, 2009). While the responsibilities and duties of participants in CCS may vary based on a variety of project design factors and overall project model of participation (Shirk et al, 2012), generally the role of a CCS volunteer is to assist with and contribute to scientific research or monitoring activities.

Introduction

In recent years, forms of public science communication that overtly intersect personal and professional identity have become more commonplace. This intersection represents a rich opportunity to connect science to audiences who have been historically excluded and to experiment with different forms of expression. Of course, efforts to do or share science in cultural contexts that break free of a white, heteronormative, and patriarchal establishment are prone to criticism from those who prefer to propagate these traditions. Of these critiques, perhaps the most perplexing and anachronistic are those that position personal or political narratives at odds with the requirement for ‘objectivity’ in science (Saini, 2020). While objectivity is paramount to the design of reproducible scientific experiments and unbiased interpretation of results, we must recognize that scientists are people shaped by their life experiences. Good research should not require scientists to leave their identity at the laboratory door. This is especially important for people whose identities are not well represented in lab culture.

Mainstream international efforts to include underrepresented people in science first centred on gender equality with the United Nations declaring the first International Day of Women and Girls in STEM in 2015 (United Nations, n.d.). There is much important work to be done to include women in science, but some of these more widely adopted diversity initiatives can leave ‘other aspects of identity side-lined’ (Moore and Nash, 2021, p 4), can perpetuate the myth of a gender binary, and can ultimately be exclusive. Visibility for other groups of people who have been historically excluded from science is growing, however, and has, in some cases, been assisted by campaigns starting on social media that coincide with broader acknowledgements of these communities.

In common with other minority groups, LGBTIQA+ people and concerns are underrepresented in science and science communication research and practice (Roberson and Orthia, 2021). In recent years, there has been a growth in organizations and networks that support queer-identified people working in STEM and international days of celebration or ‘observance’. The inaugural international ‘LGBTQ+ STEM Day’ was held in July 2018 but is now formally ensconced as an annual event on 18 November, a date symbolic of the anniversary of the US Supreme Court fight against workplace discrimination by gay activist and astronomer, Frank Kameny (Stenhoff, 2020).

Introduction

Many LGBTIQA+ individuals struggle with pervasive discrimination, prejudice, and stigmatization, detrimentally affecting their physical and mental health (Clark, 2014). Although science communication can present these concerns, and even encourage action, it may be limited by its scientific focus, which sidelines queer voices and objectifies queer individuals (Roberson and Orthia, 2021). This exemplifies the urgent need for queering science communication theory and practice, challenging traditional cis-heteronormative visions, and including diverse voices for genuine social transformation (Rumens et al, 2018). Furthermore, diverse modalities of queer science communication are needed, especially in contested spaces where queer bodies and identities are constantly being questioned, discriminated against, and marginalized; and where Western views of queering science communication may not fully acknowledge local culture, history, and socioeconomic condition. In this chapter, we use the Philippines as a lens to explore queering science communication in a non-Western space where the queer and the colonized remain subjugated and dispossessed by social, economic, and cultural conditions.

We first illustrate how the Philippines is a contesting space for queer identities and then reflect on opportunities and barriers for queering science communication in the country. In order to explore challenges in coming out as a queer Filipino scientist/science communicator and their implications for communicating science that impacts queer people, we employ collective autoethnography. We draw upon and jointly reflect on our lived experiences (Chang et al, 2013), illustrating these challenges as ‘subjective eyewitnesses’ and ‘experienced knowers’ with discourses of authenticity and suffering (Jasanoff, 2017). We conclude by laying the groundwork for what queering science communication entails and how it can promote free expression and societal equity in vulnerating spaces for the LGBTIQA+ community.

The Philippines: a contested space for queer identities

The Philippines is an archipelagic Southeast Asian nation composed of diverse indigenous and ethnolinguistic groups. It has endured Spanish colonial rule for 300 years and the US for half a century (Tan, 2001). Prior to colonial subjugation, effeminacy, cross-dressing, and gender-transitive behaviours were observed in the indigenous culture (Garcia, 2013; UNDP and USAID, 2014), epitomized by the babaylans or bayogs.

A lot has changed since the most recent case study from this book, taken from July 2021. After so-called ‘freedom day’ was introduced in mid-July, there was a summer and autumn period of fewer restrictions. The emergence of the Omicron variant in South Africa in November 2021, however, meant the Conservative government introduced a series of measures. These included red listing countries, booster jabs, advising home working and introducing mandatory mask wearing indoors.

For some, these restrictions did not go far enough – a policy closer to lockdowns was called for. A BBC News Online article explained that there were benefits of introducing a lockdown – the delaying of the peak of cases, lower pressure on hospitals, and so on – but this would also cause ‘harm to jobs, mental health and education’ (Triggle, 2021). While the scope of what was traded-off was expanded to include mental health and education, it still operated within the same broader paradigm of Trade-Off.

But the government did not introduce a lockdown and the UK did not experience comparable levels of pressure on hospital systems. It seemed that vaccine coverage enabled England to not lockdown. After the wave of Omicron reduced, so did the restrictions introduced by the government in November 2021. And as the country pushed into 2022, these restrictions have not re-emerged. This has led many to talk of a ‘post-pandemic’ era – one defined by optional lateral flow tests, peeling two-metre stickers on shop windows and dust slowly gathering on face masks. In this world, Trade-Off has become a thing of the past.

For some, this would make the empirical basis of this book less relevant to the ‘post-pandemic’ world. But the stories traced in each of the chapters were not aimed at better understanding the pandemic per se. Rather, they pointed to six key characteristics of ‘data bounds’ and four imperatives for scholars looking to put this concept to work. This means that data bounds outlive the COVID-19 empirical basis upon which they are built – they should be used to understand highly quantified phenomena in the postpandemic world.

The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in a deluge of data: deaths from coronavirus, viewing figures for conspiracy theory videos, unequal vaccine coverage, changes in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the list goes on. While much of this data has been useful in understanding and dealing with COVID-19, there has been a noticeable excess. This has flowed into the so-called ‘post-pandemic’ world, where numbers burst from the seams of public discourse. Experts constantly update us with newfangled metrics, politicians point to the latest iteration of international league tables and journalists report on a dizzying volume of data. We need to step away from this daily churn of the quantitative and ask: what does this data actually mean?

Some approach this effort as a technical exercise. During the pandemic, Tim Harford's More or Less show on BBC Radio 4 provided an excellent weekly dive into salient numbers. The team applied statistical rigour to certain factoids, helping them to detect the pitfalls of small sample sizes, the role of nefarious categorization for political ends and how experts would communicate misleading conclusions from the data (see More or Less (2021) for an example). This was undoubtedly important work. It allowed the public to navigate the sea of data that was flowing their way.

But it often erred on the side of ‘if only they conducted the right statistical test, these numbers would not be a problem’. This meant that they missed a certain something about how numbers gained meaning in society. Quantitative facts are not just the result of mathematical and statistical processes. They are characterized by complexity and paradoxes: at once scientific and ideological, empowering and discriminatory, precise and uncertain, objective and subjective, emotive and informative, truthful and deceptive, fixed and malleable.

To untangle this complexity, I argue that we must begin by accepting two premises. First, we need to pay attention to the way mathematics and statistics combine with politics, culture, technology and economics. The technical process of producing a number – collecting data, cleaning it and analysing it – cannot be divorced from the context within which this occurs.

Whereas the previous three chapters have focused on the relationship between quantitative realism and data bounds in general terms, Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 circle back to the Trade-Off data bound introduced in Chapter 2. This chapter focuses on a data visualization that came to visually represent Trade-Off: the graph showing the number of cases, hospitalizations or deaths per day across the entire pandemic. This ‘humped’ graph – capturing how cases rose and fell across 2020 – provides a way into a discussion about the affective qualities of data visualizations – and by extension, the emotive nature of data bounds themselves. It does so by tracing the story of a particular performance of this graph by a Sky News presenter.

On 11 November 2020, the UK passed the grim landmark of 50,000 deaths within 28 days of a positive test for coronavirus. Later that day, Sky News released a two-and-a-half minute video on YouTube titled ‘COVID-19: How did the UK get to 50,000 deaths?’. The broadcast was relatively simple: a journalist, Roland Manthorpe, stands in front of a large screen containing a succession of data visualizations. He begins on the right of the screen, moves to the left part way through and then comes back to the right again – all the while expressively using his hands, posture and voice to provide his interpretation of the changing images behind him. Nothing about the components of this clip is particularly unusual – presenters will often stand next to, or in front of, a data visualization and explain it to the public.

But it was how Manthorpe performed that underpinned most of the comments below the video. One comment by Jake Jabz read: ‘Why is he so animated, he's talking about deaths in the UK like he's a presenter on Blue Peter’ (Sky News, 2020c).

For Jake Jabz there was too much animation for the severity of death, and this resulted in a performance closer to children's television (Blue Peter) than a serious news broadcast. And there is something true in this comment – the first time I saw this clip, I was struck by the oddness of Manthorpe's approach to telling this data story. It all felt a bit too energetic, lively and affective for graphs about deaths.

As cases were rising in the middle of October 2020, ITV news – a popular commercial television channel – broadcasted a roundtable of coronavirus experts. Some argued for a national lockdown to be introduced, while others called for the UK to live alongside the virus. During the debate Devi Sridhar, Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, explained that, “Right now, we are taking a hit to the economy, major economic damage, without the public health benefit, which, in a way, is kind of a worst of all worlds” (Channel 4, 2020).

Sridhar's argument draws our attention to the two main ways of talking about the effects of the pandemic: public health and the economy. But it also emphasizes the way this conversation is often underpinned by numbers, even if they are not explicitly stated. If we rework her statement using data, we can see the implicit logic: ‘At the moment, in England, GDP growth is negative and cases and deaths linked to COVID-19 are high, which is the worst of all worlds.’ The fact that Sridhar does not need to refer specifically to these indicators demonstrates the way these metrics do not just represent the economy and health during the pandemic – they have come to stand in for these two phenomena. To talk about the economy and health, generally means talking about economic metrics and public health indicators. The numbers have become the phenomena they attempt to represent.

This is not unusual – it has become common to use ‘the economy’ and ‘GDP’ interchangeably. But the pandemic witnessed the rapid establishment of two contradictory data bounds that rested on the ability of numbers to stand in for health and the economy. Trade-Off was the dominant way of thinking of the pandemic in England – it positioned official measures to combat the virus as improving public health but coming at the cost of the economy. In her quote above, Sridhar was talking from the second, less popular, data bound: Protect Both. It emphasized that public health measures could protect both the economy and health, whereas a lack of state intervention would mean both the economy and health would suffer.