My research looks at specific applications and methods of the participatory model of science communication: the toolkit based on visual media, performance, participation, in large part derived from contemporary art (participatory art, tactical media, performance). Instead of focusing on practical applications, I carry out a more in-depth sociological analysis of such science communication, including how it exerts effects as a sociopolitical phenomenon. I conducted two case studies: on anti-GMO mobilization and pinkified cancer awareness. While constructing the cases, I describe what technologies I research, how they came to be adapted in Hungary, and who the proponents or opponents are in the debates. Focusing on the political messages and impact of visual and participatory science communication media, I research what types of ideological messages are transmitted by such media, through what mechanisms, and how far can these mechanisms be extrapolated. I analyze my data with visual methods, which I triangulate with focus groups, to inquire both about expert and lay interpretation, and whether the respondents comprehend the images’ rhetoric, or whether they relate to the topics on an affective level. I conclude that visual elements (in my cases inseparable from participation) engaged in political work by mobilising a plurality of mechanisms ̶ of weaponising subjectivity, depoliticising their producers, utilising the political work inherent in representations, shifting the discourse towards emotions, mapping ideology (meaning) onto feeling. Visual and participatory media directed discourse to the register of feelings and experience, reserving a privileged role to community-building, whilst positioning the actors outside the political field. I came to understand such science communication as public ritual: the ideological layers and political connotations of visual communications were so important that images were used as tools of ritualisation, rather than of information transmission. Art, even if rebranded as ...
