On 2–3 November 2015, participants of the NUCLEUS project gathered in Budapest to investigate, as one of six field trips, how Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) spreads and interacts as processes of communication and mutual learning between research–intensive insitutions—such as universities—and the rest of the components of society. For Budapest, we investigated one of those components, or “cells” in the overall research “organism”, Media. The barriers examined in Budapest were those in media that may prevent RRI in societal discourse. The goal is to set out a roadmap, providing practical guidelines for Higher Education Institutions and funding agencies across Europe and beyond to facilitate RRI. Day 1 was divided between a briefing session among NUCLEUS partners, and a second session where local experts were invited to contribute to the discussion. Day 2 covered the Annual Conference of the European Unions of Science Journalists’ Associations (EUSJA). EUSJA is a partner within the NUCLEUS project who are developing a network to address RRI. The conference itself contained many themes of relevance to RRI and media. The following is what was learnt in Budapest to contribute to the NUCLEUS RRI Roadmap:
• Realisation of the growing interactions between scientific knowledge and expertise and interactions with popular culture; within this realisation is a warning to address polarised and highly invective language use in new social media
• the changing professions and roles of science journalism—the relationships and tensions between HEIs and journalists in combined and contrasting practices of promotion, dissemination and engagement; yet the need for critical journalism remains
• understanding of the contextualised scientific culture of particular regions