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ACPRTS
&
FCSH
Colloque
interdisciplinaire
[Version
anglaise]
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Association
canadienne des professeurs de rédaction technique et scientifique (ACPRTS)
Fédération canadienne des sciences humaines (FCSH)
La
diffusion et la vulgarisation du savoir en sciences humaines et sociales:
perceptions, pratiques et perspectives
University
of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, UC 142
1er juin 2005
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| Accueil
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Conférenciers
invités
John
Willinsky
Director,
Public Knowledge Project,
and Professor, Department of Language and Literacy Education, University
of British Columbia
9:45 - 10:45
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Greg
Myers
Senior
Lecturer, Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster
University, UK
1:30 - 2:30
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Public
Knowledge and Scholarly Publishing in a Democratic Age of Information
One of the most promising developments with the growth of the Internet
into a global phenomenon is the emergence of an "open access" movement
in scholarly publishing, which is dedicated to increasing global,
public access to research and scholarship. Open access describes a
variety of new economic publishing models for making the contents
of scholarly journals available free to read online. While this is
by no means the only means of communicating knowledge from the social
sciences and humanities to the public, it has already begun to make
a difference in such practical areas as the health sciences and education,
as well as contributing to public intellectual interests, in astronomy
and history. In light of these developments, this talk will describe
a range of research projects devoted to exploring the viability and
value of providing the public with direct, but well-supported, open
access to the social sciences and humanities. This work will be presented
within the context of a larger access principle that speaks to a broad
range of issues, from the democratic right to know to the pecuniary
interests of faculty members. |
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Risk
Talk: Conversation and Communication of Expert Views of Uncertain
Dangers
Risks are part of living in our society; a typical newspaper has stories
of possible dangers of mobile phones, ultraviolet rays from the sun,
vaccines, foods, or travel by rail or car. There is a large industry
devoted to assessing these risks, comparing them, communicating expert
views, and measuring public perceptions. Many of these studies and
projects assume that people can simply be told what the risks really
are, and they should act accordingly. But the experts are often disappointed
by public responses, and attribute them to ignorance, or the inability
to understand the statistics involved in assessing risk. In this paper
I start with focus group conversations about various uncertain dangers,
and argue that talk about risk is interactionally problematic. There
is often a face threat to the speaker or hearer or others, and talking
about risk involves projecting a line in relation to the person to
whom one is talking. People talking about risks have a range of devices
for dealing with these potential face threats, such as comparison,
extreme cases, and comparison of sources. Communications from official
bodies may be ineffective if they ignore interpersonal issues. |
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