The award recognises the knowledge transfer potential of the project Public Health Communication Plan for Radon Gas in Galicia, developed from his doctoral research on radon risk communication.
Noel Pascual Presa, a researcher with the Novos Medios research group at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (USC), has been awarded the 2026 Ícarus award for knowledge transfer and innovation in the field of social sciences and law for his project.
Organised by USC’s Valuation, Transfer and Entrepreneurship Area (AVTE) and funded by the Regional Government of Galicia (Xunta de Galicia), the Ícarus awards recognise research projects with outstanding potential for social and economic impact, technical feasibility, and effective knowledge transfer.
The award-winning project stems from Pascual Presa’s doctoral thesis, “The Social Construction of Risk in the Digital Information Ecosystem: From the Media to Artificial Intelligence in the Case of Radon Gas”. The research examines how radon risk is socially constructed within today’s information ecosystem, analysing the role of key information actors and channels (including the media, the scientific community, social media, web search engines, and AI-based conversational systems) in shaping public perceptions of radon.
Drawing on more than three years of research and an interdisciplinary methodology combining qualitative and quantitative approaches, the study concludes that the main challenge lies not only in the existence of the risk itself but also in its limited visibility across the information ecosystem. This lack of visibility prevents radon from becoming part of the public agenda, reducing public awareness and limiting the adoption of preventive measures.
As a practical outcome of the research, Pascual Presa developed the “Public Health Communication Plan for Radon Gas in Galicia”, a proposal designed to improve public awareness through evidence-based communication strategies tailored to the dynamics, complexity and diverse target audiences of today’s information environment.
The initiative is aligned with the Galician Radon Reduction Strategy 2025–2030, promoted by the Regional Government of Galicia and the Galician Health Department, within the framework of Spain’s National Radon Action Plan, which implements the requirements established under European Council Directive 2013/59/Euratom.
The award also highlights the relevance of the research carried out by the Novos Medios research group, whose work focuses on communication studies, the digital information ecosystem, media transformation, and the societal impact of emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence. Pascual Presa’s doctoral research was conducted as part of the project “Radon in Spain: Public Opinion, Media Agenda and Risk Communication (RAPAC)”, funded by the Spanish Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) (SUBV-13/2021). The thesis makes a significant contribution to the fields of risk communication and public health by providing a comprehensive analysis of the social construction of risk and proposing practical solutions to strengthen institutional communication and public protection.
