Beyond the Choir? The Need to Understand Multiple Publics for Science

Understanding different publics for science communication is more important than ever before. The articles in this special issue lay important groundwork for our field to develop a better understanding of how audience segments differ or overlap across issues, cultural contexts, stages of the issue cycle, and different analytic and methodological approaches. The long-term goal of this work should be to enable more effective communication with publics whose demographic, socio-structural, or value-based characteristics position them squarely outside of the proverbial choir that science communication is often preaching to.