WiHo-Editors: Prof. Neresini, how would you describe the mission of your institution?

Federico Neresini: The PaSTIS (Padova Science Technology & Innovation Studies) research unit was set up in 2008 as an attempt to unify and catalyze the research of a number of professors, post-doctoral researchers and PhD students in the social studies fields of science, technology and communication within the Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology (FISPPA) at University of Padua. Although not exclusively Science & Technology Studies focused – but also interested in other approaches to the study of culture and communication – PaSTIS today encompasses around 15 scholars mostly with a sociology background. The chief topics addressed over the years by PaSTIS with its research and initiatives include a number of areas: public communication in science and technology, especially media and public discourses relating to science, technology and innovation; information infrastructures and media technologies; scientific practices and laboratory work, especially in relation to the biomedical domain and the field of nanotechnology; research on media practices, with specific focus on the process of digitalization, the use of social networks, the emergence of new forms of sexuality over the Internet and the processes of consumption of cultural content. A pivotal point bringing together the work of PaSTIS’s members is essentially the idea that social and cultural processes can be understood by looking at the way scientific processes, technological artefacts and infrastructures innervate contemporary social experience and are thus the core of the reconfiguration of the whole current set of practices, routines, values, meanings, emotions and the overall texture of everyday social context.

WiHo-Editors: Which of your institution’s activities have received the most attention during the last years within the scientific community or the general public?

Federico Neresini: TIPS project (Technoscientific Issues in the Public Sphere)! This research project is based on the idea of using mass media and online newspapers, in particular, as a source for analysing the way science and technology are represented in the public sphere in order to study the role of techno-science in society, its relevance and evolution. To fulfil these aims, TIPS is grounded on a purpose-built ICT infrastructure. Its design includes a dedicated platform capable of collecting, sorting and automatically analysing the text of newspaper articles in their digital format. These texts are then indexed and stored in a database for further research analysis. The TIPS platform is currently monitoring the eight most important Italian newspapers and, in a time span ranging from 2010 to yesterday, approximately 1.3 million articles have been collected.  In 2014 the TIPS platform also began collecting two UK, two US, one Indian and seven French newspapers; recently it has been added one newspaper from Spain, one from Portugal and six from Latin America, thus adding a further 1.4 million articles to its database. By means of ‘classifiers’ specifically developed by the TIPS research group, the platform determines whether the content of each article pertains to the science and technology domain. Then each article stored in the database is ‘tagged’ so that it becomes available for further analysis with an even greater focus on specific research questions. The TIPS platform also calculates ad-hoc techno-science presence indicators and metrics.

WiHo-Editors: What are the main topics that research should address in the next years within the area of STS?

Federico Neresini: I would like to mention two important topics. Firstly, emerging technologies, their social relevance and how society and science are co-evolving; secondly, inequalities and power distribution among different social groups coping with issues in which science and technology are playing a relevant role.

WiHo-Editors: Which are the main topics of research on STS that should be addressed using international cooperation or comparison?

Federico Neresini: Public discourses on science and technology, with a special focus on the media arena should be addressed internationally – in order to understand how the interaction between science and society is evolving, which kind of issues are arising, who are the main social actors engaged in the public sphere about technoscientific issues.