Prof. em. Dr. Peter Weingart

• 08.02.2013 RBB Kulturradio: Interview with Prof. Weingart on "Wie geht man im Nachbarland Österreich mit Plagiatsfällen um?"
• 23.08.2011 WDR5 Politikum: Interview with Prof. Weingart on "The Politics of Scientific Advice" (Justus Lentsch and Peter Weingart)
• 09.08.2011 FAZ: Review of "The Politics of Scientific Advice" (F.A.Z. 9.8.2011, Nr.183, S.8)
• 22.4.2011 Deutschlandfunk: discussion with Prof. Weingart: "After the case Guttenberg - what is the value of science?" at 41. ZEIT Science Forum.
• 9.2.2011 CSPO Live Webcast mit Prof. Weingart: "Scientific Advice to Politics - Institutions Matter"
• 8.2.2011 CSPO Live Webcast mit Prof. Weingart: "The Science-Media Connection: Does the orientation to the media have an effect on science?"
• 12.1.2011 DRS2 (Schweizer Radio): Interview mit Prof. Weingart zu "Klischees über Wissenschaftler "
• 3.11.2010 Panel discussion on "Thinking and Learning in the Disciplines" with Prof. Weingart
• 22.9.2010 Spektrumdirekt Interview mit Prof Weingart: "Wissenschaftler müssen wahrhaftig kommunizieren"
• 11.2009 Goothe.de: Interview mit Prof. Weingart zum Klimawandel in den Medien
• 27.7.2009 TAZ: Bericht über den Vortrag von Prof. Weingart am 14.7.2009
• 16.7.2009 Deutschlandfunk: Bericht über den Vortrag von Prof. Weingart am 14.7.2009
• 16.7.2009 Tagesspiegel: Bericht über den Vortrag von Prof. Weingart am 14.7.2009
• 14.7.2009 Video: Wie viel Biologie vertragen die Sozialwissenschaften? (Vortrag von Prof. Weingart am 14.7.2009 beim Forum zur "Evolution des menschlichen Sozialverhaltens" der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften)
• 27.4.2009 Deutschlandfunk/Die Zeit: Podiumsdiskussion mit Prof. Weingart zu "Wissenschaft, Macht, Politik - Wie systemrelevant sind Wissenschaftler für die Politik?" (Podcast)
• 11.8.2008 RBB Kulturradio: Interview with Prof. Weingart on "Politikberatung" (Podcast)
• 22.4.2008 FAZ: Die Macht des Selbstverständlichen (Leitlinien Politikberatung)
• 19.4.2008 SWR2: Interview with Prof. Weingart on "Leitlinien Politikberatung" (Podcast)
• 17.4.2008 "Leitlinien Politikberatung": - Die Zeit - Berliner Zeitung - FAZ - Neues Deutschland
• 24.1.2008 Deutschlandfunk: Interview with Prof. Weingart on "Wissenschaftsjahre" (Podcast)
• 13.12.2007 Deutschlandfunk: Report on scientific policy advice in Germany (Podcast)
• 27.11.2007 Deutschlandradio: report on discussion panel  "Wie wissenschaftlich ist die Wissenschaft? Über die Neutralität von Experten in den Medien" with Prof. Weingart at Bremen conference "Wissenswerte"
• 18.3.2007 Deutschlandfunk: Interview with Prof. Weingart on Climate Change (Podcast)
• 14.2.2007 Zeit online: Interview with Prof. Weingart on Climate Change
• 18.1.2007 WDR: Interview with Prof. Weingart
• 14.12.2006 Zeitenblicke: Interview with Prof. Weingart on science and the media
• 06.06.2006 Magazin für die Ehemaligen der FU Berlin: Beitrag über Prof. Weingart

Focus 1: Science and the Media - Public Understanding of Science
The media play an important role in shaping public discourses including those involving issues related to science and technology. The traditional view of the popularization of science is being challenged in the new arrangement between science and the media that may be termed a closer science-media-coupling. Rather than determing the contents of popularization science is confronted with media that have their own criteria of what is important or true and construct their own reality. Scientists turn to the media in order to reach public and political attention and secure legitimacy. Research in this area focuses on the science-media interfaces, the representation of science in the media and the repercussions of the sciences' orientation to the media.

Focus 2: Discourses between Science, Politics and the Media
Environmental threats of global dimensions such as anthropogenic climate change or the loss of biodiversity have become news items. Widespread public attention for these topics has been desired by the scientific community as well as by environmental groups and concerned politicians and now appears as a success story. However, especially reporting in the mass media has also revealed the particular risks of this attention. Scientists frequently complain about misrepresentation of their cautious pronouncements and/or about short attention cycles among the media. A connected problem is that political legitimacy needed for unpopular decisions is dependent on a thorough public understanding and sustained attention. This has moved the specific problems of the communication between science, politics and the mass media into the focus of several research projects.

Focus 3: Dynamics of Knowledge
The study of the dynamics of knowledge is motivated by the observation that in knowledge societies certain concepts, ideas, or images are represented in the media and become all pervasive as fads or catch-words, focusing attention for a time, and either have enduring effects on discourses or disappear again. Research focuses on the spread and interaction of ideas and concepts back and forth from everyday domains of knowledge to scientific disciplines, and across different contexts of meaning. It reaches beyond the boundaries of the sociology of science and is conceived as a new direction in the sociology of knowledge.

Focus 4: Bibliometrics
The measurement and quantification of science is a key issue in modern science studies. Based on publication statistics and citation analysis, bibliometric methods provide most valuable tools for the production of science indicators. These indicators turn out to be important not only for studies in history and sociology of science, but also for purposes of science policy and administration. Combined with other measures and peer review, the indicators can be applied in the context of research evaluation. Advanced bibliometric methods like cocitation mapping can be used - far beyond the pure number-counting of publications and citations - to draw two-dimensional representations of the cognitive and social structures of specialities in science. In recent years the 'business' of indicator production is in danger of getting commercialized. It is therefore important to keep the quantitative methods closely linked to analytical and qualitative studies of science.

Research Focus 1: Science and the Media - Public Understanding of Science

The Meaning of the Media for the Reputation of Scientists

One of the indicators of the independence of the media is that although they orient themselves in their reporting on science to scientific reputation, which they take as a sign of reliability and competence of the scientists. They depart from it and create media prominence for certain scien-tists. This project with students focused on the growing impact of media prominence of scientists on the reputation of such media stars in science. Results of the project are on the internet ( http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/iwt/mw/lf/). A special case, the German media coverage of the Goldhagen debate, is published in:

Recent Publications:Weingart,P., & Pansegrau,P. (1999): Reputation in Science and Prominence in the Media - The Goldhagen Debate. Public Understanding of Science, 8, 1, 1-16.
in German: Weingart,P., & Pansegrau,P. (1998): Reputation in der Wissenschaft und Prominenz in den Medien: Die Goldhagen-Debatte. Rundfunk und Fernsehen, Sonderband: Die Medien der Wissenschaft(2-3), 193-208.

Public Understanding of Science and Technology

The aim of this project is to establish the field of research and study of ,Public Understanding of Science' at the University of Bielefeld. The main activities are to initiate research on the changing relationship between science and the media, to promote and carry out teaching of respective courses for graduate students, to provide practical experiences by acquiring and coordinating internships for students, and to initiate the communication between scientists and journalists. This project is funded by the Ministry of Science and Research of Northrhine-Westfalia for the period 2000-2003. It provides for two doctoral fellowships.

Recent Publications:Weingart,P. (1999): Aufklärung von oben oder Pflege des Dialogs - die plötzliche Entdeckung von Public understanding of science in Deutschland.  (3), 64-67
Weingart,P. (1998): Science and the media. Research Policy, 27(8), 869-879

Science in Film

Film and Television as the most influential media have attained a crucial position in shaping public perception. Implicitly, and sometimes even explicitly, they compete with science in setting the agenda on major issues of policy relevance. This function of media in general has been recognized by scientists, this function of film in particular is rarely appreciated. The aim of the project is to study systematically the treatment of science in feature films, way in which to explore the filmmakers translate popular perceptions of science into film plots and the mechanism which shape their own perceptions about the world of science, their decisions to represent this world in stereotypical ways. Research is directed to a) setting up a comprehensive data bank of movies that treat science, the results and/or the process of research and the actions and motives of scientists, b) constructing interpretative schemes that allow inter-individually reliable analysis of the patterns of depicting science in film.

Research Focus 2: Discourses between Science, Politics and the Media

Discourses on climate change in science, politics, and the mass media

The project analyzes how a science-driven discourse about future environmental changes initiated repercussions in central areas of modern societies and restructures social reality. The German discourse about anthropogenic climate change is taken as a case study. In addition to the scientific line of discourse the project analyzes the systematic differences in the way global climate change was also communicated in the spheres of politics and the mass media. Each of these three areas is the object of a retrospective longterm analysis covering the period from 1975 to 1995, during which global climate change as established as a legitimate field for political action in Germany.

Recent Publications:Weingart,P., & Pansegrau,P. (1997): Von der Hypothese zur Katastrophe - die Verarbeitung wissenschaftlicher Unsicherheit in den Medien. In: ZiF (ed.), Mitteilungen, 25-32. Bielefeld.
Engels,A., & Weingart,P. (1997): Die Politisierung des Klimas. Zur Entstehung von anthropogenem Klimawandel als politischem Handlungsfeld. In: P. Hiller & G. Krücken (eds.), Risiko und Regulierung. Soziologische Beiträge zu Technikkontrolle und präventiver Umweltpolitik, 90-115. F rankfurt a.M. Suhrkamp
Weingart,P. (1998): Climate Coalitions: The Science and Politics of Climate Change, Introduction, Minerva, 37, 103-104
Weingart,P., Engels,A., & Pansegrau,P. (2000): Risks of communication: discourses on climate change in science, politics, and the mass media. Public Understanding of Science, 9, 261-283.

Discourses on Global Environmental Risks: Globalization of Science under Conditions of Growing Media Orientation

This project analyzes discourses on global environmental risks and their institutional changes in science and politics. The project's first objective is to develop institutional indicators to measure the degree to which science globalization has already taken place. Globalization is here defined as the emergence of a relatively independent supranational organizational layer of research (in terms of funding, publications and knowledge networks) that is disembedded from national contexts. However, as this globalized science provides a global monitoring of the endangered earth, national political agendas increasingly have to react to global environ-mental risks. The focus of this project is on the interplay between science globalization (as a disembedding process) and national readjustments and new local knowledge orders (as re-embbeding processes). A further aspect is the growing role of the mass media in communicat-ing global environmental risks. Global climate change and biodiversity serve as case-studies. Processes of national readjustments will be analyzed in Germany and the U.S. The project is funded by the German Research Council (DFG).

Research Focus 3: Dynamics of Knowledge

Interdisciplinarity

The career of the term 'interdisciplinarity' (or more recently of'transdisciplinarity') reflects a growing discontent with the specialization of scientific knowledge. At the same time it is apparent that specialization is unavoidable, and even the mergers of new disciplines lead to new specialized fields. The discourse on interdisciplinarity is primarily one of legitimating science.

Recent Publications:Weingart, P. & Stehr, N.(Hrsg.), (2000): Practising Interdisciplinarity. Toronto. University of Toronto.

Metaphors

This approach tries to account for knowledge dynamics by way of focusing on deliberately chosen, clear-cut units of knowledge such as individual terms or phrases. The assumption is that a term and its importing discourses interact with each other in just the way a metaphor in a poem does: eventually both acquire new shades of meaning. From this perspective the dynamics of knowledge can be observed as a process of continuities and discontinuities, specializations and integrations , or variances and stabilizations respectively.

Recent Publications:Maasen, S. & Weingart, P. (2000), Metaphors and the Dynamics of Knowledge. London and New York. Routledge.

Research Focus 4: Bibliometrics

See Research Evaluation