Comunicação pública da ciência na Amazônia: uma análise dos processos comunicacionais do projeto Ciência na Ilha, em Cotijuba, Belém-PA

Abstract

The axis of this research aims to understand how the communication processes of the project "Science on the Island: education and scientific divulgation in the Amazon" contribute to the dialogue and interaction between scientific knowledge and the knowledge of the riverside population of Cotijuba Island, in Belém, Pará. Highlighting the context of face-to-face communication in which the extension project UFPA‘s Science Club takes place, the communicational processes of the event are investigated through the theories of Public Communication of Science and the relational paradigm, in which the communication ceases to be a restricted process and is taken as a place of constitution of social phenomena. In the logic of the ecology of knowledges, defended by Boaventura Santos, and also by the process of learning to unlearn, the science fair is also analyzed through the lens of decolonial theories, which seek to break with the Cartesian methods of abyssal modern thinking, which creates imaginary lines of visibility and invisibility, bypassing the world's sociocultural diversity. Considering that one of the objectives of Science on the Island is to make science and the riverside communities Interact and vice-versa, the premises of the ecology of knowledge are essential in this investigation. In the methodological procedures it is made a content analysis, under Bardin‘s inspiration, of the documental program of 11 editions of the fair, between 2006 and 2019, with special focus on five of them, held on Cotijuba island, at the Marta da Conceição State School; and also semi-structured interviews with students and teachers of the riverside school and of the UFPA‘s Science Club, that has held the fair in schools on the most populated islands of Belém for 15 years. The methodology also includes the observation of the communicational processes in two editions of the Science on the Island, in Cotijuba. Thus, the fair reveals itself in this study with multiple characteristics of Public Communication of Science, with strong traces of the unidirectional and functionalist system, but also within relational dialogical conceptions. By involving experimental research on the daily life and experiences of basic education students, the project contributes to the demystification process of scientific production. And as an interactional device it creates bridges between diversities and asymmetries, crossing the river and seeking to overcome the abyssal lines of knowledge.