Tom Aechtner, Author at International Research Network for the Study of Science and Belief in Society

Episode 9: Science and Religion in Mass Media with Dr Tom Aechtner

In the final episode of Season 1 of the Science & Belief in Society Podcast, we’re re-joined by Dr Tom Aechtner, Senior Lecturer in Religion and Science in the School Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland. Tom talks us through the persuasive and rhetorical tactics used by both pro- and anti-evolutionist media and explains what science communicators can learn from their anti-evolutionary counterparts. Alongside his work on science and religion in mass media, Tom’s currently working on a project investigating vaccine hesitancy and vaccine scepticism in Australia titled “Improving Vaccination Rates in Australia: Analysing Media, Religion and Policy.”. You can listen to a special podcast we recorded with Tom on this topic here. You can read Tom’s Researcher Profile here. (This episode was recorded in October 2020) This episode is 54 minutes and 9 seconds long. The keywords associated with this podcast are: Mass Media Creationism Science

Podcast Special: COVID, Conspiracies & Vaccines – Dr Tom Aechtner

Recently, we caught up with Dr Tom Aechtner, Senior Lecturer in Religion and Science at the University of Queensland, to record an episode for the Science & Belief in Society podcast series. That episode, on Tom’s work around persuasion tactics in science and religion mass media communication, will be launched in Summer 2021. Tom has also been researching vaccination scepticism and anti-vaccination movements and media. Given that this is such timely work in the winter of 2020, James, Rachael and Will also discussed this with Tom, and we are sharing this discussion with the network now as a separate Science & Belief in Society Podcast: COVID, Conspiracies & Vaccines Special. You can listen to this podcast here: Tom’s research is concerned mainly with contemporary science-and-religion discourse, with a focus on religiously-motivated vaccine hesitancies, anti-evolutionism, scientism, mass persuasion, and public perceptions of science. He is also author of a newly published