Abstract Scientists increasingly experience that political contexts influence their science communication, affecting core aspects of their communication, such as the communication of uncertainty. Few studies suggest that uncertainty is increasingly being downplayed or omitted in science communication to the media and public, partially because scientists fear becoming political targets. However, to what extent that perception holds, and how scientists themselves understand uncertainty to play a role in their communication, we do not yet understand. To address this gap, we conducted 28 semi-structured interviews with scientists across a number of disciplines in Austria to understand: how they practice communicating uncertainty to other scientists, the media and public; how scientists’ conceptual understandings of uncertainty inform their communication; and what patterns or variations emerge across disciplines in scientists’ practices and understandings of uncertainty. Our findings show that scientists are motivated to communicate uncertainty but often perceive them as too complex for the public to understand, unwanted in the mediatised environment, and potentially dangerous in politicised discourses. Participants’ views of uncertainty as complex stem in part from their conceptualisations, which largely followed dimensions elucidated in extant literature. These and other findings add to discussions of science communication as a dimension of political communication, scientists’ shifting roles as communicators in the politicised environment, and provide perspectives of disciplinarily diverse scientists on how communicating uncertainties are impacted by challenges in this environment.
Roney et al. (Wed,) studied this question.