| One major goal of Geoscientists is to educate people to natural hazards. This requires a constant action to disseminate scientific topics based on a simplified language able to foster and promote the participation of the Society to the educative activities. The issue has been debated many times since the establishment of the unprecedented interest of citizens and media towards major catastrophes that took place at the beginning of the 90’.
In the last 25 years many efforts have been made by the scientific community to shift the increased demand of the public in search for information about the next big earthquake or volcanic eruption to a wider communication landscape that also includes the scientific aspects of the phenomenon and the risk preparedness. In this attempts scientists developed a language alternative to pure scientific communication, based on short, simple and figurative statements. However the enhanced interest of the society towards scientific topics also attracted non experts, as the number of web blogs dealing with Geosciences matters currently show. Moreover, it spanned to non scientific fields including arts, in particular the visual ones. Their impact on the society was and is way too high compared to the traditional ways of communicating science, but seldom the scientific content of this powerful communication form is rigorous and correct. In movies, for example, due to the need of a more astonishing show and thanks to the numerous facilities offered by the studios, the reaction of the characters to natural dangers is often exaggerated, oversimplified or not safe (like walking inside the Earth’s core or riding a big car on magma) and leads the spectator to inexact information or, even worse, to imitate the actor in an emergency. A well educated society would understand the fictive nature of the show, but in most cases the effects of wrong messages or inaccurate information reflect on the preparedness towards natural hazards.
In this poster I discuss the ethical aspects of the communication made by non-expert and/or non scientific means with a particular attention to the arts. Although there is the potential for an efficient education, many issues are still open and must be examined. |