Socio-cognitive divide in knowledge-based society: a model for the European scientific communication

Socio-cognitive divide concerns various barriers to scientific and technical knowledge, responsible of people loosing so many opportunities and living often so dramatically their own daily life, especially if elder people. The paper draws a three-dimensional, socio-cognitive model for such barriers, using the empirical results of a research in biotechnology perception, and shows how scientific communication should try to overcome them in the European public sphere. The first dimension of barrier is that of risk phenomenology, i.e. the risk perceived in daily life onto individual and his/her stake-holders (consociates, contemporaries, posterity, animals, ambient). The second dimension deals with increasing difficulties in personal choice and trust delegation to expert agencies or institutions. Lastly, the third dimension is that of knowledge resources inside personal background that obstacles new ways of thinking; such critical dimension is more deeply analyzed in two different kind of knowledge: beliefs and ideas. Beliefs are tacit knowledge, practical routines and pretty unconscious assumptions that are taken-for-granted; while ideas are explicit, critical knowledge, that is accepted or refuted on the basis of critical argumentations, often organized in ideologies. European specificity is emphasized as a pretty new opportunity.