Decolonizing science communication: Epistemic pluralism and the challenge of multicultural contexts

Science communication has developed and been consolidated as both a theoretical field and a professional practice shaped mainly by institutions and scholarship from the Global North. This global expansion has often entailed the uncritical adoption of frameworks that insufficiently account for the cultural, epistemic and social specificities of regions in the Global South. When science communication is understood as a mechanism through which the human right to science is exercised, it becomes imperative to align communicative practices with the epistemic pluralism inherent in the societies they aim to serve. Drawing on León Olivé’s (1999) multicultural pluralism and decolonial thinkers such as Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2016) , Catherine Walsh (2005 , 2007 , 2008 ), Miranda Fricker (2007) and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui (2010) , this article proposes a decolonial turn in science communication—one that actively recognizes epistemic plurality, centres the human right to science, and offers a set of situated principles for designing communicative interventions grounded in epistemic justice and multicultural participation.