NANOCHANNELS was an FP7 project. It was a unique public experiment of democratic dialogue in action about the new industrial revolution that could change the face of medicine, energy production and water purification, electronics, materials and security. Nanotechnology, handling the building blocks of life and matter, was debated and scrutinized across a range of mainstream – both online and printed – European daily newspapers, national radio and social media. It was a real first, with students and stakeholders, such as the industry, NGOs, consumers and the general public, at the forefront. People obviously require new cutting-edge knowledge to make up their mind, and Nanochannels addressed this need through its own unique variety of social interactions, whichwere designed to cast its net as wide as possible.
Such variety included public round tables, live school debates, a range of expert opinion blogs, online social networking and talkback via online press microsites. Excitingly, the whole debate was taken up by students and professional journalists across the media, the ultimate aim being the build-up of responsible views about nanotechnology across Europe which were to be fed into governance recommendations to the Commission.
Age: 12 and up
The OSOS project has received funding from the European Union´s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation under the grant agreement No.741572. This page reflects the views of the author, and the European Union cannot held responsibility for any use which might be made of the information contained therein