With the current issue (33^rd) of Anagramas Rumbos y Sentidos de la Comunicación, and given the challenges posed by the new standards of science, technology and innovation in Colombia, it is relevant to keep thinking on the concepts of social appropriation of science. This critical reflection has been proposed in different scenarios, and it has caused various reactions in the academic world. Some thoughts that I have made about the public disclosure of science have been motivating ideas that show a path to be built.

One of the major concerns of scientists, and broadly speaking, of knowledge-generating institutions, has been to contribute to public communication and to the social appropriation of science and innovation. Various communication models have tried to favor this initiative since the 1960s.

In addition to the interest in the subject shown by scientists, this issue has become a part of the governments’ public agendas as an essential factor for the consolidation of democracies. Usually, consolidated and stable democracies in the world are measured with various subjects, such as structures and procedures and the relationships within those structures, political parties and party systems, public and private economic structures, mediation structures of civil society and government, limitation and exclusion of the power of the military, autonomy, respect for legality, and management of public resources. From this point of view, it can be said that as a social and democratic institution, the science also requires that scientific knowledge becomes public: In fact, it is a social responsibility and an imperative to democratize knowledge.

In Colombia, according to a study carried out by the Departamento Administrativo de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación - Colciencias and the Colombian Observatory of Science and Technology, the deficit model has prevailed during the last five years, with special emphasis on the dissemination of scientific knowledge for children and young people. However, according to the same research, no clear and effective mechanisms have been defined that achieve articulation with the sectors that have not been present as beneficiaries or as managers of the current policy of public communication of science, such as civil associations, non-governmental organizations, regional public entities, production and service sectors, and indigenous and Afro-Colombian groups, among others.

However, the initiatives carried out from the social point of view show that experiences for popularizing science do require the forms and contents of social movements, regardless of the public communication models and publicizing contexts. This is interesting as a starting point, and it is especially relevant to delimit those models and contexts, with a view to setting up networks of intersectoral work. Public communication has tried to generate a social movement by organizing a communication system in action; In other words, It establishes a free flow of messages through a network structure in which different formal groups become connection points for information input and output, which result in attitudes and are resolved at peak moments of mobilization and community development processes. The latter must intervene definitively in the process of setting up these initiatives.

Given the influence of the media in the daily life of people, habits and tastes of consumers mediate and condition their ability to become citizens. When this device grows, communication requires specific ways of transmitting information and influencing those who receive it.

Today, the consumption mechanisms that have become popular with the increasing forms presented by the Internet are the most offered experiences and the ones that have a low degree of democratic innovation. They involve an ICT usage focused on the management of public policies as enablers of effectiveness and efficiency of new communication models, conceiving citizens as prosumers of public services. But another level of ICT concentration is also highlighted, which is to some extent used to generate shared decision processes, which suppose a more diffuse policy in which the State interrelates with civil society, making new forms of civil autonomy and of political relationship emerge.

The debate on the articulations between State and academia, and the role of researchers in the construction of democracy, is open.