Centre for Media Studies, SSS
Jawaharlal Nehru University
cordially invites you to a talk by
Dr. Shiju Sam Varughese
On
“Science Mediated
The ‘Coloured Rain’ Controversy in the Regional Press in Kerala”
Venue: SSS-I Room #01
28th September 2018, 11.15 A.M.
Abstract: When the phenomenon of ‘coloured rain’ struck Kerala in 2001, the ambivalences and contradictions in the explanation provided by the researchers from the Centre for Earth Science Studies (CESS), Thiruvananthapuram raised public ire, triggering off a public deliberation of science staged by the regional newspapers. Following this, the ‘scientific public sphere’ generated by the regional press was transformed into a channel for scientific communication between different groups of researchers who attempted to solve the mystery. This has initiated an intense contestation over the scientific cause behind the manifestation of the unnatural phenomenon of coloured rain. The crisis of interpretation was aggravated by the inability of researchers to satisfactorily explain all the aspects of the phenomenon. By examining the controversy, the paper highlights the role of mass media in helping scientists and the public to engage with a wide range of scientific explanations that were proposed, discussed, and falsified or accepted through a complex deliberative process. The paper demonstrates how the internal circuits of knowledge production transgress the established boundaries of science (between disciplines, subcultures, and research fields, and between science and non-science) when public controversies of science erupt out in the media.
Dr. Shiju Sam Varughese is an assistant professor at the Centre for Studies in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (CSSTIP) in the School of Social Sciences of Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar. He is the author of Contested Knowledge: Science, Media, and Democracy in Kerala (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2017). He has also edited (along with Satheese Chandra Bose) the volume, Kerala Modernity: Ideas, Spaces and Practices in Transition (Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2015; paperback edition: 2017).