In recent years, science communication scholarship has been experiencing major theoretical overhauls, which include the challenges to the theoretically dominant public engagement with science model; mainstream communication scholars’ attempt to renovate science communication with typical psychological and cognitive science approaches; and the theory of science’s medialization and the impact of social media on science. Based on a systematic review of the three newest theoretical threads, this paper offers objective comments towards their development and suggests possible China resources that can contribute to the theoretical development. Finally, this paper discusses the inspirations these international theoretical developments can bring to China’s science communication study.

With China’s economic and social development into a high-quality development stage, the development of civic scientific literacy in the new era is facing profound changes, this is the evolution from communicating science knowledge to advocating scientific spirit, mastering core skills and methods, and having competences of continuous learning to adapt to the new situation. On the basis of the current scientific literacy evaluation system, we will optimize and upgrade the scientific literacy evaluation system from three aspects: first, develop new indicators of the civic scientific literacy which reflect the new era; second, add the scientific literacy behavior guide and core skills for the new era; third, integrate the scientific literacy behaviors as a part into the comprehensive evaluation system.

In order to understand the practice condition of science education in primary schools after the release of the Curriculum Standard of Science in Primary School of Compulsory Education, investigation has been conducted, and more than 3 000 science teachers and teaching-research staff from 9 provinces in China were surveyed. Results show: science curriculum was implemented according to the Curriculum Standard of Science in Primary School of Compulsory Education; science teachers can get training regularly but the quality of training is not enough; there are still some problems in science education resources. Based on the education practice, some suggestions are given to improve the science education in primary schools.

Since 2006, the social environment for science writing has been improved in China. More and more people came to take up science writing and have created a considerable amount of works of different genres, contributing to the course of science popularization and public literacy. In the next fifteen years, the core and aim of science writing should still be to meet people’s cultural and intellectual needs and serve the course of science popularization and the enhancement of public literacy. Continuous efforts should be made to improve the social environment, build a strong creative team, enhance quality awareness, and promote the reading of science popularization works.

Scientific literacy becomes increasingly important in constructing a modernized social governance system with the rapid economic and social development. Bringing in the concept of scientific literacy, this article analyzes its concrete impact mechanisms on the governance capacity of two main social governance subjects, the government and the public. The article argues that scientific literacy plays a crucial role in improving the governance capacity of civil servants and the public. Specifically, the attainment of scientific literacy improves civil servants’ social risk awareness, decision-making, standardized administration, and governance technology, while enhancing citizens’ sense of engagement, legal consciousness, and the ability to participate.

This article analyzes popularization discourse about GM on three WeChat public accounts in an attempt to identify the knowledge-oriented and reader-oriented discursive strategies for the construction of affinity. It is found that the coding of the popularization discourse is characterized by interactivity on the lexicogrammatical and semantic levels. Such a coding orientation plays an important role in the construction of affinity and the realization of the writer’s stances.

Short video has gradually become an important method for scientific communication, and its expressive force and user foundation have attracted a batch of scientific research institutions to join in the short video creator team. In the study, scientific short videos presented by Chinese Academy of Sciences and its research institutes in the Tik Tok App are sampled to probe into the influence factors of video popularity in a way of empirical research method. It is found that the number of fans of the short video uploader, the viewing number of the topics, content type, narrative approach and expression style of information all affect obviously the popularity of short videos. On the basis of summarizing the features of scientific short videos published by Chinese Academy of Sciences and the analysis results, improvement suggestions of video contents and communication strategy are put forward as references for scientific research institutions in their making of short videos of better efficiency as a kind of scientific communication form.

Citizen science, which has developed steadily in the last twenty years, involves the general public participating in scientific research and working with scientists or scientific organizations to collect data. Citizen science is an important way of improving public’s scientific literacy. It is closely related to STEM learning by providing students with opportunities of practical learning outside the classroom, and has an impact on participants’ scientific knowledge, practical skills and scientific attitude. The evaluation of citizen science projects show that participants become more scientificly knowledgeable, change their scientific attitude, and grow more interested in science.

The hands-on inquiry based science learning for primary and middle school students is a kind of science education activity, which is very practical. It’s part of informal science learning and has three attributes including scientific inquiry activity curriculum, science communication and theme tour. Thus hands-on inquiry based science learning tutors should possess competencies in curriculum literacy, science literacy, and professional skills and quality of tour guides.

Taking the British Russell Group colleges as the survey objects, this paper investigates and analyzes the master’s program of science communication in those universities. Through examination of the major orientation, entrance requirements, core curriculum, teaching methods and assessment methods of the Master of Science Communication in those universities, it is found that the master’s degree program of science communication in British universities has obvious features of natural science background, practice orientation and diversified training methods.

Informatization in science popularization is an inevitable trend where modern information technology is applied to promote the upgrades of science popularization, which is reflected in the technical level, popular science ideas and behavior changes. This paper explores the motive force and form of social capital in the construction of informatization in science popularization, which can help to construct the path choice in promoting the construction of informatization in science popularization, so as to enhance the efficiency of science and information construction, and provide the relevant policy reference to promote the construction of informatization in science popularization.

With the big background of prosperous development for cultural and creative industry, it becomes an important issue to be solved urgently that how to seize the opportunity and put forward a developing strategy for the cultural and creative industry of science and technology museums under the situation that the museum is becoming more welcomed and the public need continues to increase. Based on the SWOT model to analyse and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the cultural and creative industry of science and technology museums as well as the opportunities and challenges it is facing, the article comes up with the countermeasures and suggestions for the development of the cultural and creative industry of science and technology museums to promote its development in a rapid and orderly way.

MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), based on “Internet + Education”, has gained quite a few worthwhile accumulations after several years of development. How to effectively promote the transformation of these technical achievements and innovate the application mode are the primary problems faced by MOOC in its follow-up developments. This paper summarizes the achievements of science popularization transformation and related operation services of MOOC resources based on the analysis of core characteristics of MOOCs. It is pointed out that some inherent attributes of MOOC are quite consistent with science popularization in certain aspects. The transformation from MOOC to science popularization has innovated MOOC’s application mode, which is of great significance in promoting the application of MOOC and improving the scientific literacy of the whole people as well.