Thread by @felicitycallard

I need help from those in PR.

In my ongoing efforts to track the very recent history of UUK/EPF I'm wondering if 'myths & misunderstandings' is a standard PR trope used to reframe a debate, or a particular discursive tic of Alistair Jarvis #USSstrike universitiesuk.ac.uk/blog/Pages/Hav… 1/

In Jarvis's recent blog ('Have we "miseducated a generation" about student finance?') he argues that 'myths & misunderstandings' have allegedly led to students having – wait for it – *MISGUIDED* concerns about 'high costs & debt' 💰💰💰 universitiesuk.ac.uk/blog/Pages/Hav… #YesUniCan 2/

'Myths, Misunderstandings & Misconceptions" (EPF, Oct 14, doc author=Alistair Jarvis) argues: 'Many of the comments & claims that have been made against the case for necessary [USS] reform are based on misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the facts' warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/statis… 3/

As many statisticians and mathematicians pointed out, the EPF 'Myths, Misunderstandings & Misconceptions' document warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/statis… contained misinformation (for a summary see #USSbriefs8 medium.com/ussbriefs/misl…) 4/

The terms myths, misunderstandings & misconceptions are also frequently used in titles of academic publications – most commonly, it appears, in certain kinds of scientific, clinical & social scientific publications 5/

#YesUniCan #USSstrike

So I suppose in all of this I'm interested in a few overlapping things

1. The particular model of the public that is tied up with the 'myths & misunderstandings' phrase (are there any good #STS analyses of the 'myths, misunderstandings & misconceptions' literature?) #YesUniCan

2. The extent to which 'myths and misunderstandings' framing is consciously used in PR (cf. the possibility that it is part of Jarvis's idiolect) – and, if there is this conscious use, how and when this phrase emerged in both PR discourse and in clinical & (social) scientific lit

3. The specific work that that phrase does – whether used in PR or in clinical/(social)scientific literatures – to establish a model of the true, and of the expert <wheels in massive pile of papers from Public Understanding of Science / Public Engagement with Sci>

Huh. While my research plans at the start of the academic year didn't include close analysis of the blog posts / grey literatures published by various UK HE sector organizations in the very very recent past, the more I read, the more interested I become

#YesUniCan #USSstrike