About this Research Topic
Science communication, as a central element of public education, is essential for rational, collective decision-making in democratic communities, especially as science and technology increasingly influence our everyday lives. Digital media innovations and social change are shifting the possibilities, limits, and trends of public communication. A key measure of successful science communication is the audience’s trust. While empirical studies continue to show high public reliance on, and trust in, science in general, populist science denial has gained visibility in recent years, often targeting science-driven public policy decisions like climate policy, global healthcare, and the use of artificial intelligence.
The challenge of developing and maintaining trust in public science communication cannot be understood without a broad transdisciplinary perspective. This Research Topic combines aspects from linguistics, media studies, philosophy, and psychology to provide a complex understanding of trust in science communication and some of its key contributing factors. We propose a new approach to this network of issues that foregrounds a distinction between paradigmatic, dyadic face-to-face communicative settings, on the one hand, and the various translations, remediations, and adaptations in distal mass media formats used in public science communication, on the other. We focus on the prospect of direct feedback to negotiate trust in face-to-face conversations, taking as our point of departure the contrast between such direct communication and the challenges involved in providing adequate feedback in distal mass communication. We examine the adaptability of feedback processes for distal and public settings: how do feedback mechanisms vary across different public groups, formats of media production, and heterogeneous audiences? To what extent are they applicable across different kinds of mediated discourses, from direct conversation to traditional mass media like newspapers, radio, and television, as well as recent innovations like online streaming and social media platforms?
The work presented in this Research Topic stems from a cluster of pilot studies across various disciplines conducted in 2023 as part of the Language Challenges research initiative at the University of Cologne’s "Skills and Structures in Language and Cognition" (SSLC) Key Profile Area. These include conceptual reflections on descriptive and normative aspects of public appraisal for science communication efforts from the philosophy of public and collective epistemology; a linguistic examination of evidentiality and modality graduated markers in asserting or proposing scientific facts; a qualitative media study into the staging and remediation of expert interviews in science journalism; an empirical study on audience reactions to perceived expertise of, and rapport with, science experts and communicators; and a proposal for adapting insights from empirical work on perceived and experienced rapport in face-to-face communication to challenges for public science communication.
All pilot studies were developed and discussed through interdisciplinary dialogues. A combined focus of these contributions is their work with a small exemplary corpus of audio-video interview formats in journalistically mediated science communication. In short videos and interview extracts, experts are presented in conversation with professional science communicators within a public, journalistic framework. The formats’ communicative goals and the shift from proximal face-to-face to distal public communication allow for differential observations on the possibilities and conditions of both communicative settings, and to understand distal science communication more clearly as an adaptation and variation of direct conversation.
The Topic Editors, Nikolaus Himmelmann and Stephan Packard, declare that they are affiliated with the University of Cologne's Key Profile Area on "Skills and Structures in Language and Cognition".
The challenge of developing and maintaining trust in public science communication cannot be understood without a broad transdisciplinary perspective. This Research Topic combines aspects from linguistics, media studies, philosophy, and psychology to provide a complex understanding of trust in science communication and some of its key contributing factors. We propose a new approach to this network of issues that foregrounds a distinction between paradigmatic, dyadic face-to-face communicative settings, on the one hand, and the various translations, remediations, and adaptations in distal mass media formats used in public science communication, on the other. We focus on the prospect of direct feedback to negotiate trust in face-to-face conversations, taking as our point of departure the contrast between such direct communication and the challenges involved in providing adequate feedback in distal mass communication. We examine the adaptability of feedback processes for distal and public settings: how do feedback mechanisms vary across different public groups, formats of media production, and heterogeneous audiences? To what extent are they applicable across different kinds of mediated discourses, from direct conversation to traditional mass media like newspapers, radio, and television, as well as recent innovations like online streaming and social media platforms?
The work presented in this Research Topic stems from a cluster of pilot studies across various disciplines conducted in 2023 as part of the Language Challenges research initiative at the University of Cologne’s "Skills and Structures in Language and Cognition" (SSLC) Key Profile Area. These include conceptual reflections on descriptive and normative aspects of public appraisal for science communication efforts from the philosophy of public and collective epistemology; a linguistic examination of evidentiality and modality graduated markers in asserting or proposing scientific facts; a qualitative media study into the staging and remediation of expert interviews in science journalism; an empirical study on audience reactions to perceived expertise of, and rapport with, science experts and communicators; and a proposal for adapting insights from empirical work on perceived and experienced rapport in face-to-face communication to challenges for public science communication.
All pilot studies were developed and discussed through interdisciplinary dialogues. A combined focus of these contributions is their work with a small exemplary corpus of audio-video interview formats in journalistically mediated science communication. In short videos and interview extracts, experts are presented in conversation with professional science communicators within a public, journalistic framework. The formats’ communicative goals and the shift from proximal face-to-face to distal public communication allow for differential observations on the possibilities and conditions of both communicative settings, and to understand distal science communication more clearly as an adaptation and variation of direct conversation.
The Topic Editors, Nikolaus Himmelmann and Stephan Packard, declare that they are affiliated with the University of Cologne's Key Profile Area on "Skills and Structures in Language and Cognition".
Keywords: trust, science communication, interviews, mass media, rapport
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