On the Deficit Model of Science Communication and the PUS 1985 Bodmer Report

Stephen Hilgartner, in his 1990 seminal paper on science popularization, stated that

First, Hilgartner points at the idealized concept of science as an undisputable source of truth in the hands of a few experts, the scientists. Second, the circulation of that knowledge entails a one-way process of simplification or distortion perpetrated by the required go-betweens, the journalists. Third, that adulterated account is nevertheless misread by the ignorant many, the public. And fourth, considering such a gloomy prospect, the purpose of that circulation must necessarily be educational, since the experts unveiling the truth need to undertake its transmission, as blundering as it may become, for it to have some kind of impact. The resulting distortion and misunderstanding inevitably holds up the benefits that knowledge would afford society as a whole, and thus allegedly provokes unease and discontent in the ranks of scientific knowledge producers and managers (Nieto-Galan [Reference Nieto-Galan2011] Reference Nieto-Galan2016). This process reflects a clear-cut epistemological hierarchy. Yet, Hilgartner contends that such a view of scientific knowledge circulation “greatly oversimplifies the process [and] serves scientists (and others who derive their authority from science) as a political resource in public discourse” (Hiltgartner Reference Hilgartner1990, 520).

Such oversimplification directly points at the spirit of the PUS 1985 Bodmer report (The Royal Society 1985), which upheld a one-way linear, hierarchical model of science communication, even though it shifted from the simplistic focus on science literacy to the slightly more complex focus on attitudes toward the scientific-technological endeavor as an effective tool to support it (Bauer Reference Bauer2009). Despite conceptual and empirical problems, as Hiltgartner pointed out, such a model reflected and further expanded a socio-political order built around expertise boundaries. In it, the role of mass media was to fulfil their normalizing potential as technological devices able to generate and broadcast performative, virtual witnessing experiences (Thompson Reference Thompson1995; Kirby Reference Kirby and Cheng2008; idem Reference Kirby2010; Jiménez-Lucena Reference Jiménez-Lucena2011; Tabernero et al. Reference Tabernero, Jiménez and Molero2012).

Jean-Baptiste Gouyon reminds us that, at the same time that the Bodmer report was produced, other models of scientific knowledge production, circulation, and management where the boundaries between experts and non-experts were not so definite were suggested (Gouyon Reference Gouyon2016; Shinn and Whitley Reference Shinn and Whitley1985; Shapin and Schaffer Reference Shapin and Schaffer1985). Since then, many studies have shifted the discussion concerning science communication to a science-in-society paradigm that further stresses (the need and presence of) participation and deliberation across those boundaries (Bauer Reference Bauer2009). And yet again, boundaries are maintained in the critiques and characterizations of these processes, even if well-meant analytical tools situate scientific knowledge production “on the shoulders of idiots” (Horst and Michael Reference Horst and Michael2011).

Further research is thus needed in order to map the particulars of such an apparently unsurmountable order of things, which is grounded in the perception that science and technology must be well understood and massively spread in the name of everybody's wealth. These activities are embedded in modernization processes, that is, a set of political-economic practices aimed at the improvement of collective welfare conditions. As such, modernization has always been an implicit commitment in the relationship between the production and management of scientific-technological knowledge and the socio-political arena. Its discourses work as political tools that frame power relations around individual and collective needs and expectations, and are established upon a clear-cut hierarchy of providers (experts, policy-makers, educators, media practitioners) and receivers (the many non-experts, technically, politically, professionally). These discourses typically carry a strong identity component linked to the regard of collective aims in comparative terms, that is, within an “us versus them” dynamics (Latham Reference Latham2000; Gilman Reference Gilman2003; Muller Reference Muller2008; Greene [Reference Greene2013] Reference Greene2014). And in the end, these relationships are primarily played out in the media, which are also technological tools with propaganda and educational potential (Guzman and Tabernero Reference Guzman, Tabernero, Hochadel and Nieto-Galan2016).

Media are thus key constituents of the processes of construction and transmission of modernization discourses. Considering science as a form of communication (Secord Reference Secord2004), and media as a set of communication practices, that is, focusing on what people do with these technological devices (Couldry Reference Couldry2004; Bräuchler and Postill Reference Bräuchler and Postill2010; Tabernero et al. Reference Tabernero, Jiménez and Molero2013, Reference Tabernero, Jiménez and Molero2017), we argue that any changes, insignificant or major, in the communication asymmetry built upon hierarchical, expertise boundaries, reflect what happens with people's everyday communication practices. The media ecology in a given context, understood as a lively, multidimensional and essentially diverse set of practices and discourses, play an essential role in shaping knowledge management processes. So, regarding science communication models, the 1980s institutional shift of focus from science literacy to people's attitudes toward the production and management of scientific-technological knowledge merely tried to seize in its own terms the media practices that people developed through their increasing use of television as the new primary mass media since the 1960s.

Building (upon) the Deficit Model of Science Communication

As could be expected in a dictatorship, one of the primary aims of the brand new administration after Franco's troops won the Civil War was to control information and communication services and technologies. Consistent with the early “establishment period” of the regime (Chuliá Reference Chuliá1997, 58), the uncertainty linked to its initial legal arbitrariness right after the war, and the ensuing need of control, the sources and platforms where knowledge of all kinds was to be produced and circulated had to be strictly watched over and regulated. In the early 1940s, with the country sunk in appalling living conditions, cinema was already, at least in urban areas, one of the main sources of entertainment (Medina-Doménech and Menéndez-Navarro Reference Medina-Doménech and Menéndez-Navarro2005). As a prominent mass media, it was a crucial channel for the few individuals and institutions (the dictator himself, together with the military, the fascist party that served as political structure – FE de las JONS Footnote ¹ –, and the Church) that made up the new leadership to propagate their socio-political discourse. Newspapers and radio were also important information platforms; they were used in private settings, but communal use was also widespread due to the fact that their consumption depended on access conditions, such as affordability or literacy skills (Jiménez-Lucena et al. Reference Jiménez-Lucena, Somavilla and Guerrero2002; Guzmán and Tabernero Reference Tabernero2016). People who for the most part were living in dreadful conditions during the immediate postwar period had to be able to afford going to the movies. Yet, as a shared experience, cinema sustained the construction of potentially large informal socio-cultural communities around the arrangement of daily social, communication, learning and working practices, and, importantly for the regime, around a mix of sternly-selected practical, indoctrinating, and entertainment content (Taibo Reference Taibo2002; Gubern Reference Gubern2004; Tabernero et al. Reference Tabernero, Jiménez and Molero2017).

The official newsreel, NO-DO, became a particularly useful tool for regime propaganda (Ellwood Reference Ellwood1987; Rodríguez-Tranche and Sánchez-Biosca Reference Rodríguez-Tranche and Sánchez-Biosca2001; Ramírez-Martínez Reference Ramírez-Martínez and Ordóñez2006; Matud-Juristo Reference Matud-Juristo2008). Its launch in 1942 acknowledged the importance the regime gave to people's increasing movie going, while it ensured, by means of its compulsory character, its unavoidable presence in people's amusement practices. NO-DO was an essential knowledge management tool for the regime. It clearly reinforced the hierarchical distribution of power between the few in control, “the new State,” and the controlled many, for the regime's “propaganda agencies [had] to educate and instruct our people [and] persuade those still possibly mistaken by their error” (Regulations 1942; Matud Juristo 2008, 107–108). These regulations underlined the central importance of media, in this case image-based, and particularly documentaries, in the overall knowledge management effort. Accuracy was deemed a measure and justification of authority and control, as based upon the authority of media professionals over captive audiences: “It has become essential to develop a body of documentaries, in the service of our propaganda agencies, able to reflect in an exact, artistic manner, and through a perfect technique, the different aspects of the life of our Fatherland” (Regulations 1942; Matud Juristo Reference Matud-Juristo2008, 107–108). Thanks to their alleged capacity to produce direct and unmodified images that conveyed unquestionable truths, that is, to create virtual witnessing experiences, documentaries were expected to function as effective indoctrination tools.

NO-DO situated science, coupled with industrial development and the exploitation of natural resources, in the heart of knowledge management. Documentaries had to educate with their accurate expert-generated images, which had to show “the wonders of Spain, the progress of our industry, our natural resources, the discoveries of our science and, in all, the resurgence of our Fatherland in all its aspects as impelled by the new State” (Regulations 1942; Matud Juristo Reference Matud-Juristo2008, 107–108). The shaping of people's everyday life according to the regime's organizational needs and principles, the said “life of the Fatherland,” was upheld by a resolute discourse about the modernization “impelled by the new State.” This involved the regeneration of the country after the Republic by the correction of those “mistaken by their error” and the consequent improvement of living conditions.

This deeply hierarchical view of knowledge management and modernization was spelled out in colonial terms. Together with the government, the military, and the Church, and in close relation to people's everyday practices and behavior, science and technology were essential constituents of the regime's intrinsic supervising and control bodies, according to technically perfect documentaries aimed at showing

So, the regime's defense against detractors inside and outside Spain was its expertise-driven, ideologically, politically, morally, and technically grounded modernization endeavor, which in turn validated an intensely hierarchical and paternalistic socio-political scheme. The colonial documentaries produced for NO-DO in the 1940s by Hermic Films were a sharp example of this (Fígares Reference Fígares2003; Ortín and Pereiró Reference Ortín and Pereiró2006; Tabernero et al. Reference Tabernero, Jiménez and Molero2017). We refer here particularly to five 10-minute films: three of them, Médicos coloniales (Colonial Physicians), Los enfermos de Mikomeseng (The Sick People of Mikomeseng), and Fiebre amarilla (Yellow Fever), were directed by the company's co-founder, Manuel Hernández Sanjuán, in Equatorial Guinea in 1946 and produced on commission of the General Director of Morocco and the Colonies, General José Díaz de Villegas, who requested “documentary films about the Guinean colony, with the aim of showing Spain the job that was being done” (Fígares Reference Fígares2003, 234; Ortín and Pereiró Reference Ortín and Pereiró2006). The other two, Enfermos en Ben-Karrich (Sick People in Ben-Karrich) and Médicos en Marruecos (Physicians in Morocco), set in the Spanish protectorate in Morocco, were directed in 1949 by Sanjuan's close collaborator, the physician Santos Núñez, who had also been a scriptwriter for the Equatorial Guinea series as well as for other documentaries previously shot in Morocco and the Sahara.

A series of 31 films were produced under General Villegas’ governmental commission in Equatorial Guinea between 1944 and 1946, and several more in the protectorate in Morocco in the following years, taking advantage of the officially generated market. The whole colonial series was designed to display the regime's modernization aims and work. Science, medicine, and technology (wildlife, ethnology, medical-health issues, and resources) were among the main subjects featured in these films, together with religion, education, discipline and control (missionaries and the military). As portrayed in the films we analyze here, medical-health practices and discourses had an undeniable importance in building and legitimating strategies of the regime during that early establishment period (Chuliá Reference Chuliá1997). This was particularly explicit in The Sick People of Mikomeseng, where the efficient administration of a newfangled, ideal state (in the form of a compulsorily isolated leper colony) was unabashedly depicted, and in Sick People in Ben Karrich, where the medical-health organizational tasks of the colonial administration were thoroughly shown as utterly successful (Tabernero et al. Reference Tabernero, Jiménez and Molero2017). In those films, the expert authority of the few providers of knowledge and the related services was explicitly juxtaposed to the ignorance and need of the many captive and beneficiary non-experts. And the expected result, always according to the films, was a sweeping improvement of the natives’ living conditions.

The work of the Spanish medical-health professionals along with the rest of colonizer officials, the military and the Church, had a clear positive impact on the overall health condition and care of the colonized, the natives at large, and particularly workers, women, and children. The natives’ forced adherence to the regime's colonizing modernization imperative was portrayed through a carefully crafted excluding-inclusion dynamic around scientific-medical practices and discourses. Some of the natives were thus trained and enlisted to perform technical albeit clearly subaltern tasks, as medical or laboratory assistants and nurses. In this way, they were allowed to be part of the modernizing endeavor (included), although always short of reaching the decision-making ranks (so, in the end, excluded) (Medina-Doménech Reference Medina-Doménech2009; Kusiak Reference Kusiak2010; Tabernero et al. Reference Tabernero, Jiménez and Molero2017).

These films directly addressed the regime's indoctrination and enculturation goals not only through the described depiction, but also through their technical and narrative features as documentaries. As a scientific-technological and therefore supposedly objective form of cinema, they provided information through the virtual witnessing of the feasibility, inevitability, generosity, and normalcy of the situations and processes depicted (Boon Reference Boon2008, Reference Boon2014a, Reference Boon2014b; Kirby Reference Kirby and Cheng2008, Reference Kirby2010; Medina-Doménech and Menéndez-Navarro Reference Medina-Doménech and Menéndez-Navarro2005; Tabernero et al. Reference Tabernero, Jiménez and Molero2017). Authority and the hierarchical management of knowledge were portrayed as unproblematic and in an entertaining way in the context of Spain's activities in a distant, exotic and heroic reality. All this was conveyed through a markedly didactic tone, devised as an educational tool for audiences in the colonies and the motherland, which included deceivingly explanatory cartoons and maps highlighting Spain's theoretically prosperous and advanced status regarding medical-health knowledge production and management.

The “tension between the meanings and purposes of education, information and entertainment” (Florensa et al. Reference Florensa, Hochadel and Tabernero2014a, 11) in science popularization is usually tackled through the focus on accessibility, literacy, accuracy, and authority, and thus uncritically acknowledging the two-stage model of science communication. In such an approach, the hypothetical problems of “simplification, trivialization and, worse, distortion are the accusations regularly levied against the attempts to popularize science, especially science on screen” (Florensa et al. Reference Florensa, Hochadel and Tabernero2014b, 129). Indeed, in Manuel Hernández Sanjuan's and Santos Núñez's colonial-medical films, simplification, trivialization, and distortion could easily be alleged in relation to the treatment of medical knowledge and practices. The insistent and seamless combination of technical and colloquial expressions about diseases, technologies, and health-care activities explicitly dismissed the viewers’ ability to understand, very much according to the deficit model of knowledge communication. But such distortion in scientific-medical content was clearly an effect of the focus, which was not so much on medical-health content than on the colonial endeavor, that is, on the power relations between the expert (healing) colonizers and the non-expert (ailing) colonized and the latter's authority-driven modification of behavior. This was common to colonial depictions in documentary and fiction films, as well as in other media, in Spain and beyond before the 1940s (Cripps Reference Cripps1993; Lynch Reference Lynch2000; Elena Reference Elena2001; Ostherr Reference Ostherr2013; Alcalá-Lorente Reference Alcalá-Lorente2017). The main goal in Sanjuan's and Núñez's films was to depict a hierarchical social stratification (according to race, class, and gender) across the boundary of techno-scientific knowledge production and management, where resistance was carefully shunned (Tabernero et al. Reference Tabernero, Jiménez and Molero2017).

Furthermore, in these films, the deficit model of knowledge communication operated simultaneously at two deeply intertwined levels, content and form. Regarding content, accuracy was presented as a natural and necessary feature of the physicians at work, aided by the additional precision provided by the abundant technology at hand. This content focal point was matched with the expertise-driven exactness of the form, of the documentaries themselves. Unsurprisingly, these films achieved immediate, officially endorsed, critical acclaim. While praising “the importance of cinema when applied to a cultural and patriotic venture for reflecting and broadcasting Spain's fecund civilizing effort in those African lands” (Primer Plano 297, 23 October 1946; Fígares Reference Fígares2003, 244), “the official press . . . was lavish in its praise of the documentaries, speaking highly of the realism and authenticity of the images [and] impressed by the realism of those naked and truthful images, devoid of shady, laboratory-made tricks,” as opposed to the “purely manipulative entertainment” of (incidentally foreign-made) fiction films (Florentino Soria, África 56–57, August-September 1946; Fígares Reference Fígares2003, 244).Footnote ²

Thus, accuracy was the explicit measure of the authority in charge of carrying out the modernization endeavor. But it is also important to point out that the virtual witnessing experience these films sought to provide was also a product of the filmmakers’ actual impressions while experiencing firsthand the regime's colonial and medical-health activities. Undoubtedly, they used documentary film techniques and conventions to deliver a sense of truthfulness, but could not help but transmit their own fascination with their subject. The filmmakers, in this sense, played two complementary roles. First, they were part of the colonizer community on location. Manuel Hernández Sanjuán, underlining the epic nature of the venture and the hardships they had to face, thus recalled

And second, they were also colonized through their fascination with the whole endeavor, precisely in the midst of those adversities. For instance, the medical facilities in Bata and Santa Isabel (Equatorial Guinea) greatly impressed Santos Núñez, the physician-screenwriter, because of the high quality of the medical wings where he saw “a magnificent operating room that ensures the surgical practice to be performed in the most exacting conditions of instruments and asepsis” (ibid., 82, 184). His admiration may very well be understood as a reaction to the conditions of the colonial setting, but also to the low expectations concerning medical facilities in the metropolitan context at the time.

Accordingly, these films were designed to work on metropolitan audiences in two complementary ways. On the one hand, the straightforward identification for these audiences had to be with the colonizers, the ruling, white Spaniards, which entailed an implicit approval of the highly efficient political, military, and scientific-medical administration. On the other hand, those same Spanish audiences, who were living in awful conditions, could very well empathize with the colonized patients, workers, peasants and, in particular, women and children. Techno-scientific practices and discourses were depicted as a set of commodities provided by the ruling, self-denying and rigorous ranks of experts in the community, and ready for non-expert people's everyday consumption. What was apparently being achieved in the colonies could at least be attempted in the motherland with the same level of care as shown in the films. In the end, the endeavor on the part of authorities was beneficent, charitable, protective, and peacemaking. And as a result, the explicit enactment of the deficit model of knowledge communication in films like these effectively turned the movie theater into an entertainment-driven educational space, where people's routine communication practices (i.e. going to the movies, to say the least) were intertwined with the regime's essential social, political, moral, and ideological needs and goals. The combined sense of accuracy in content and form provided an unequivocal measure of the multidimensional, techno-scientific authority that was in charge of knowledge production, circulation, and management. And sustaining it all, modernization was the justifying and legitimating discourse that the regime was conscientiously seeking at the time.

Transcending the Deficit Model of Science Communication

As we have seen, science and technology, through medical-health practices as content, and documentary filmmaking as form, lay at the core of the deficit-model communication device, and were used as legitimating tools for socio-political authority. The explicitness of the dictatorship concerning its aims and methods, above all in those early years, helps us examine these processes, which arguably were (and are) not exclusive of authoritarian regimes, because, contrary to what is often contended regarding Franco's administration, science was an essential constituent of its building and upholding, as it was as well for the democracies around it (Romero de Pablos and Santesmases Reference Romero de Pablos and Santesmases2008; Herrán and Roqué Reference Herrán and Roqué2012; Camprubí Reference Camprubí2014).

By the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, the regime had prevailed, not so much because it had not applied an iron hand inside its borders during its first two decades, but rather owing to its increasing recognition in the international arena. The regime had actively sought that recognition as the isolation it had to endure after the fall of the allied German and Italian fascist regimes in World War II did not allow for any tangible improvement of people's living conditions, which was obviously a significant weakness. International recognition was staged first with the Vatican, with the signing of the Concordat on August 27, 1953, and immediately afterwards with the United States, with the signing of the Pact of Madrid on September 23, 1953. Soon afterwards, on December 14, 1955, Spain entered the United Nations, effectively ending the “Spanish issue,” that is, the UN 1946 condemnation of the regime (Preston Reference Preston1994).

Both agreements were, among many other socio-political upshots, of great consequence with respect to the management of scientific knowledge in Spain at the time. The Concordat secured the control of education in Spain for the Catholic Church, and was appreciably weighty in the internal struggle between socio-political pressure and interest groups. The attainment of a catholic science became a central argument in the battle for areas or power within the regime (Florensa Reference Florensa2017). One key aim was to shape the management and policies regarding science and technology, from primary through secondary and college education, to research priorities at the Spanish National Research Council (which had been founded in 1939 and was a key piece of the regime's structure). Another aim was to devise an economic policy and construct an associated productive industrial framework.

In this context, the establishment of air and naval bases in Spanish territory by the United States, together with economic aid, led to major changes in the economic and productive structure of the regime. The techno-scientifically driven modernization the regime was insistently publicizing and pursuing from the beginning was then eventually articulated through the 1959 Stabilization Plan (and later on with three subsequent Development Plans in the 1960s and 1970s) (Official State Gazette 1959). The ensuing economic liberalization, the entrance of foreign investments, and the massive exodus of workers, effectively changed the productive, industrial structure of Spain (Ortega and Núñez Reference Ortega, Núñez and Chacón2002).

The massive economic migration that swept the Spanish population in the 1960s – mostly due to adjustments aimed at the entrance of foreign investments and the incapability of the industrial structure to incorporate the increasing ranks of available workers – brought about a greater permeability concerning the circulation of information. Emigrants were not only sending money back home, but became first-hand sources of information about how life was in other countries, mostly European democracies. The international projection also attracted, through escalating campaigns, loads of foreign tourists, who inevitably increased the circulation of information. Significantly, all this was happening at the same time that a new technological device, a new mass medium, the latest development in information, communication, and entertainment technology, was mightily changing the media ecology across the planet by gradually and soon massively entering households. Television was bound to be the means through which people changed their ways to access, consume, process, and use information and entertainment.

In the midst of such sweeping transformations, the regime had to redefine its knowledge management framework. The tight grip that had been enforced in the first and long “establishing” decade, exemplified by the Press Act of April 22, 1938 (Official State Gazette 1938), and the exclusive and compulsory nature of the official newsreel, gave way, after a “normalization period” (Chuliá Reference Chuliá1997, 70) where all the aforementioned developments took place, to a slightly broader regulation, consistent with an implicit “liberalization period” (Chuliá Reference Chuliá1997, 86), albeit still within the principles of the regime, and exemplified by the new Press Act 14/1966 of March 19, 1966 (Official State Gazette 1966). This new law was in fact an attempt to establish a legal framework halfway between the preventive control and censorship needs of the regime and more unrestricted conditions for knowledge circulation, closer to those of the democratic States it was gradually opening up to, but still subject to the repressive, disciplinary measures the regime deemed necessary within the “liberalization” trend (Chuliá Reference Chuliá1997).

As television was quickly becoming the main media frame of reference, that is, the leading source of both information and entertainment, the question of education became as prominent as ever. The regime's indoctrination aims and needs had to turn to a wider concept of guidance focused on practical socio-economic outcomes. Manuel de la Rosa Uclés, Secretary General of the Television Writers Guild, addressed these issues directly in a letter written to Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente on June 4, 1968:

The development of science content was soon considered an essential goal as well as a challenge in the design of education strategies through television, as it was happening in neighboring democratic contexts (Boon Reference Boon2008, Reference Boon2014a, Reference Boon2014b; LaFollette Reference LaFollette2012; Gouyon Reference Gouyon2014; Boon and Gouyon Reference Boon, Gouyon, Conboy and Steel2014). Importantly, and drawing from the notion that documentary filmmaking was the main way to generate the necessary virtual witnessing experience of authority, science programming based on documentaries was deemed the main source of expert-managed truths to be levied on the population at large (Alcalá-Lorente and Tabernero Reference Alcalá-Lorente and Tabernero2016; Tabernero Reference Tabernero2016).

At the same time, natural history television was swiftly becoming particularly weighty (Davies Reference Davies1998; Bousé Reference Bousé2000; Scott Reference Scott2003; Chris Reference Chris2006; Gouyon Reference Gouyon2011), for it addressed red-hot issues, carrying key identity and social justice components, as the natural sciences became a significant field of socio-political negotiation worldwide (Davies Reference Davies2000; Brockington Reference Brockington2008; Wheatley Reference Wheatley2013). The regime was not an exception in this respect; on the contrary, it actually had a significant bearing in the international arena with the wide-ranging repercussion of the founding of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and its relation to the development of the Doñana Research Station and National Park in southern Spain (Camprubí Reference Camprubí2016). Simultaneously, an increasingly ecologist activism was developing inside its borders (Hamilton Reference Hamilton2016).

As natural history documentary filmmaking was becoming a standard for rigor, accuracy, and quality in science communication and the related media craftsmanship (Wheatley Reference Wheatley2004), Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente (FRF hereafter) mightily entered the media landscape of Franco's Spain in the 1960s, to literally explode as a key media icon in the 1970s. Born in 1928 in rural Castile, and marked by a childhood in close contact with nature according to his own later account, FRF developed an interest in falconry that actually started to explore and practice during his years in medical school, in the 1950s, as he was becoming a dentist. In this field, he was helped by José Antonio Valverde, a biologist and pioneering environmental activist, and by Jaime de Foxá, then head of the Department of Agriculture's National Service for Fluvial Fishing and Hunting (Servicio Nacional de Pesca Fluvial y Caza). Valverde introduced him to academic and activist circles related to the natural sciences and environmentalism, while Foxá put him in contact with government officials. FRF thus began cultivating and skillfully combining both kinds of contacts, while developing international and official endeavors as an emerging falconer, as well as his early work as a naturalist and conservationist.

It was in the midst of all this, always through falconry, that he became acquainted with media beyond the printed press, where he had been quite confrontational with the County Boards for the Extinction of Damaging Animals and the Protection of Game (Juntas Provinciales de Extinción de Animales Dañinos y Protección de la Caza, 1953–1970; Corbelle-Rico and Rico-Boquete Reference Corbelle-Rico, Boquete, Encarna, Marín and Martínez2008; Varillas Reference Varillas2010; Tabernero Reference Tabernero2016), that he helped to terminate. His first filmmaking experience took place while he served as falconry consultant in the Samuel Bronston production of El Cid (Anthony Mann, 1961). Just three years later, in 1964, he had his first shot at natural history filmmaking with José Luis de la Serna, whom he had met in the set of El Cid, and with whom he founded the production company Natura Films. That same year, he also had his first opportunity in television, where he was invited by an old friend Foxá to participate in his program, Fin de Semana / Weekend. From 1964 on, his media presence started to increase exponentially, and, until his tragic death while shooting a documentary in Alaska in 1980, he rapidly intensified his media output regarding wildlife, conservationism, and education in the natural sciences, ethology (which he developed from falconry), and ecology. Apart from publishing several books (starting with falconry, as expected, also in 1964) and two widely-distributed and well-sold wildlife encyclopedias (between 1970 and 1978), he contributed as a photojournalist and writer with several wildlife series to two mainstream weekly magazines, from 1966 to 1973; directed and/or presented three radio shows (from 1973 to 1978); and participated, presented, produced and/or directed a total of seven TV shows on the Spanish Public Television Corporation (Televisión Española), including the flagship of his whole work, his beloved and extremely successful Man and the Earth, with the Venezuelan, Iberian and Canadian Wildlife Series (1973-1981) (Salcedo Reference Salcedo de Prado2008; Varillas Reference Varillas2010).

In all, by way of a skillful navigation of politics and institutions, FRF became an extremely successful film, radio, and television broadcaster, producer and director, as well as author and editor. Through a carefully crafted and remarkably complex media cross-platform venture, he put across a decidedly influential as well as controversial representation of nature (through conservationist and ethological premises) and the natural sciences (as a discipline and as a profession) (Tabernero Reference Tabernero2016). Ultimately, all these efforts made him a staple of the media landscape and a highly charismatic albeit contentious character in the complex socio-political scene of the late Franco's dictatorship and the changeover to the democratic regime in 1960s and 1970s Spain.

Remarkably, by the mid-1960s, that is, at the onset of his media work, FRF had already in mind the basic features of his future endeavor. In a letter sent in February 1965 to Carmelo Martínez, then director of the influential radio and television magazine TeleRadio, he outlined his project “Let us defend the wellbeing of the Iberian fauna,” and focused mostly on television:

All the elements of the classical deficit model of (science) communication were present in this early statement. The purpose was unequivocally educational and addressed to an unaware population concerning the protection of nature in conservationist terms.Footnote ³ In addition, the source of authority was, also unambiguously, expert-generated scientific (biological) knowledge, which could be conveyed to perfection only via the technical and narrative qualities of expert documentary filmmaking that was to be broadcasted directly to households through television.

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Later on, his flagship television series Man and the Earth (1973-1981) fully developed all he had been testing and exploring concerning content and form in his media work from 1964 to 1973, and comprised the main features that define the quality of this kind of media undertaking. First, it was devised and actually worked as a blue-chip product, in the midst of the Spanish Public Television Corporation's own efforts of improvement and modernization (Ortega and Albertos Reference Ortega Gálvez and Albertos1998; Rueda and Coronado Reference Rueda Laffond and Ruiz2010), thus requiring a huge production effort that clearly aimed at its selling to other television networks abroad. Second, it sported a decidedly scientific-technical character, based upon the expertise and rigorous work of both naturalists and filmmakers, whose crafts and ability to overcome difficulties, questions, and challenges were persistently insisted upon. And third, the authority that made it possible in all senses was explicitly conveyed through the presenter-led approach, where FRF himself embodied the combined roles of naturalist and filmmaker and adventurer, very much in David Attenborough's fashion in Zoo Quest (1954-1963) or Jean-Jacques Cousteau's in The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau (1968-1976) (Cabeza and Gómez Reference Cabeza and Gómez2012; Cabeza Reference Cabeza2014). This, while securing the outstanding status of celebrity that had been constructed through all his previous media products, increasingly served as an advertising device where the combination of expertise and proximity provided meaning (education), pleasure (entertainment) and, importantly, a sense of belonging, which, in turn, was mainly conveyed through the way the presenter-narrator-expert defined himself and persistently addressed both his subject matter (fauna) and his audiences as “friends” (Tabernero Reference Tabernero2016).

Later accounts of FRF's life and work, mostly utterly praising and a few deprecating (Araújo Reference Araújo1990; Pou Reference Pou1995; Rodríguez Jiménez Reference Rodríguez Jiménez2006; FFRF 2006; Salcedo Reference Salcedo de Prado2008; Varillas Reference Varillas2010), are built, beyond the sorrow of his early and tragic death in the field, upon a top-down notion of science communication and the corresponding consideration of his authority and influence as a scientific celebrity. This status was arguably the result of at least three complementary factors: first, the construction of an allegedly everlasting scientific and cultural backwardness of the Spanish society at large by many interested sources (media, academic, political). Such an insistent message nurtured a decided deficit model of knowledge production and management, for it presumed the need of expert figures able not only to recognize the situation but also to put forward solutions, mostly in the shape of educational ventures. Second, FRF's carefully crafted cross-platform effort, a sort of early trans-media endeavor as it allowed story lines to navigate formats and platforms through time, contributed a hammering image of the relentless work of a multi-skilled expert who was fighting precisely against the supposed socio-cultural and techno-scientific backwardness. And third, the fact that FRF's celebrity status was significantly self-built precisely around the previous two factors, and focusing on how, through personal, self-taught and yet community-oriented effort, one (and, by extension, the community at large) could achieve actual and first-rate epistemological agency in an otherwise socio-political unwelcoming environment.

Importantly, while in his previous TV programs, in the role of an expert teacher in a studio set, such as in other well-known early TV science programs (Boon Reference Boon2014a), he talked about nature by thoroughly commenting and elaborating around foreign documentary footage bought by the Spanish Public Television Corporation (Televisión Española), Man and the Earth was devised as an adventure-driven series, where naturalists and filmmakers were the main human protagonists. Thus, “Man” was placed at the center of the narrative, not only as subject, as it happened in several chapters of the three Series, where wildlife and anthropological content were seamlessly combined, but also constituting the specialists behind the television product. In this way, Man and the Earth was as much about wildlife and the relationship between human beings and nature, as it was about the practices of the natural sciences and wildlife documentary filmmaking (Tabernero Reference Tabernero2016). Naturalists and filmmakers were insistently shown (always around him as director-presenter), and their crafts, challenges, difficulties and solutions meticulously narrated and explained, to the point of even devoting a whole chapter to the depiction of the design and carrying out of a filmed experiment about genetic determinism and its ethological implications (The Wise Vulture, 1978), where the specialists were as much the protagonists as the Egyptian vulture that the chapter featured. Footnote ⁴

All this, in turn, significantly played on the sense of belonging we have pointed out above. A careful examination of FRF's abundant correspondence with his viewers, listeners, and readers shows precisely that the relationship of most people with his work became fundamentally one of fandom, that is, not so much or not only based upon the assumption of his higher position in relation to processes of knowledge production and management, but on the perceived possibilities to actively participate on those processes. To start with, the cross-platform nature of his work opened a sort of editing capability for audiences, as people could choose among sources and use them at their convenience to build their own discourses. Moreover, the insertion of Q&A sections in many weekly or monthly editorial products, mostly addressed to children and teenagers, provided a kind of direct contact with “the friend” FRF, and greatly amplified this effect. And finally, his media work was coupled with his well-publicized environmental and conservationist activism, which had noticeable repercussions at the institutional level, such as in the ending of the mentioned County Boards for the Extinction of Damaging Animals, the launch of the Spanish WWF agency, ADENA, or the constitution of National Parks, as Doñana. Importantly, it also directly concerned people's everyday-life troubles and their connection with environmental policies, such as the conflict with killer wolves in 1974 and its relationship with the brand new 1970 Hunting Law.

This worked as a measure of the practical potential of the scientific and media crafts shown on television and other media products. An assumed will of participation on the part of audiences was undoubtedly taken into account. And FRF's central focus on natural heritage insistently drew on its historical and property aspects (i.e., identity), as well as on its purpose and profit (i.e., will and participation) attributes in a scene where environmental activism was quickly becoming a foremost vehicle to articulate dissent (Hamilton Reference Hamilton2016; Gil-Farrero Reference Gil-Farrero2016). From his very first appearance on television in 1964, viewers started writing letters praising his work, which in the end led to his continuation and later success in this and the other media he utilized. Such huge and enthusiastic reception soon surpassed the aspects strictly related to the media craft and started dealing with people's everyday concerns that could be articulated as environmental remarks or complaints (Salcedo Reference Salcedo de Prado2008; Varillas Reference Varillas2010; Tabernero Reference Tabernero2016). On August 31, 1967, a 17-year-old viewer and reader wrote him in a rather dramatic manner about Doñana before it became the flagship of the Spanish National Park system. This letter summarized all the elements we are discussing here linking, somewhat awkwardly, environmentalist concerns with strong identity feelings in relation to Spain's backwardness compared to other countries. And it expressed an unequivocal craving for participation in a scientifically-driven quest for modernization:

FRF was thus aware from the beginning of people's preoccupations and expectations regarding the intersections between media and their everyday lives, the topics he tackled, and its potential socio-political corollaries. Mindful of the importance of maintaining a fluent communication with his rather active audiences, he built his cross-platform work upon these elements.