Corsi di Studio del Dipartimento di Culture, Politica e Società

Goals:

1. Training students to sociological thinking, critique and analysis, making sense out of technoscientific issues;

2. Helping students identify issues, mechanisms, roles and trends in pseudoscience, mostly yet not exclusively on social media;

1. Being able to seek, analyse and make sense out of (pseudo)scientific controversies and conflicts;

2. Demonstrating a valuable ability to critically discuss the most publicly relevant issues on Science, Pseudoscience and Society.

3. Mastering a technical vocabulary.

PART I: Viruses, media and expert knowledge: beyond pseudoscience

1.1 The greatest sociological laboratory in recent history

1.2 The return to the pre-modern uncertainty society

1.3 The media effects of the pandemic: agenda-setting, leaderisation and tribalisation

1.4 Signs of 'decivilisation' in the experts' media portrayal of Covid-19

1.5 The pseudoscience society: foundations for a multisystem analysis

1.6 Beyond the Pseudoscience Society

PART II: In the beginning was Not In My BackYard

2.1 Not In My BackYard
2.2 From 1960s environmentalism to today's accusations of 'localism': the evolution of 'nimbyism' between clichés and breaking points
2.3 Nimby: a label that divides even social scientists

PART III: Nimbo: "Not In My BOdy"

3.1 Science and politics: the media politicisation of science
3.2 'Not in my body': the most recent Nimby mutation
3.3 'Type-a' and 'type-b': the two strains of Nimby
3.4 The 'natural-artefact' tension and a narcissistic idea of Self as ideological devices of the Nimbus

3.5 Some striking cases of Nimbo in recent years

PART IV: How a perfect "conspiracy" is born

4.1 Technoscientific conflicts, populism and conspiracies: the sociology of cultural processes approach

4.2 The epistemic authority of science under attack: context, motives and roles

PART V: Learning to discern good and bad explanations

5.1 Ignorance? Media alarmism? Poor 'civic culture'?

5.2 Hacking to understand: data, without theory, is useless
5.3 Once upon a time, there was a Russian linguist expert in fairy tales
5.4 Morphology of Nimby or Banana conflicts
5.5 Morphology of Nimbo conflicts
5.6 Sequences, roles and logic: the recurring elements of the 'plot

CONCLUSION: why is it important to deal with the sociology of Pseudoscience?

In-presence interactive lectures

In-presence guest seminars

In-presence and at-home group work

**Non-Italian students can have the teacher engage with them and resume key-concepts of each lesson in English.**

* ATTENDING STUDENTS

LEVEL 1>>>Up to 4 bonus points>>Constancy and quality of interaction in presence.

LEVEL 2>>>up to 24 points out of 31>>>practical test in a team of 3 people: create a project of science dissemination that uses the knowledge acquired in the lecture to offer quality content on the themes of the course and current events read through the sociological theories discussed in class. Further details will be provided on lesson 1. 

LEVEL 3>>>Up to 7 points out of 31>>Written test on Moodle on all topics discussed in the lectures and available in bibliography. 

** NON-ATTENDING STUDENTS

All students who do not participate in the face-to-face lectures and, therefore, are not part of any team for the practical work are considered non-attending.

Written test on Moodle on all the texts indicated in the bibliography.