Nina Wicke & Monika Taddicken receive SComS Best Paper Award 2021

The SComS Best Paper Award for the best paper published in the General Section or a Thematic Section in 2021 is granted to Dr. Nina Wicke and Prof. Dr. Monika Taddicken (both Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany) for their paper “I think it’s up to the media to raise awareness.” Quality expectations of media coverage on climate change from the audience’s perspective published in Vol. 21, Issue 1. Congratulations!

The text “provide[s] insights into the relations between public views on climate change and the expectations and assessments of its media coverage.” The authors state: “Despite diverging opinions on how the media should adopt its societal function, a more solution-oriented, detailed and diversified coverage was desired to provide guidance and to overcome topic fatigue” (abstract).

Jurors found that “this study not only offers refreshing qualitative insights into audience expectations on media coverage of climate change, but also paves the way for a broader discussion on quality criteria for science communication in general.” Its findings “are also of relevance and topicality against the background of the communication of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

The SComS editors preselected six published SComS papers and organized a peer-review with jurors from outside the editorial team who ranked the quality of the papers independently from each other.

Special thanks to this year’s jurors: Dr. Davide Cino (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano), Prof. Dr. Hannah Früh (HAW Hamburg University of Applied Sciences), Dr. Werner A. Meier (University of Zurich), Dr. Franziska Oehmer-Pedrazzi (University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons FHGR), Dr. Alexander Ort (University of Lucerne), and Lilian Suter, MSc (ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences).