Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-06-18

Weaving stories, explaining science – scientists and journalists on the air

Objective

The communication of scientific results in the mainstream media takes place in a highly contested terrain, reflecting conflicting professional norms, cultural values and levels of scientific understanding between scientists and journalists. Yet rather than focusing on this highly documented “science-media” gap we explore the interaction between scientists and journalists and its role in shaping science news. Specifically, this study will focus on the narrative strategies they exploit making abstract and technical issues concrete. Reflecting prevalent explanatory and argumentative norms, the skilful use of narrative elements is widely promoted in explaining science to general audiences. Integrating objective explanations with a plot, a leading character, and dramatic mystery is seen as supporting the communication of scientific discoveries and in exposing the contexts in which these were made. Exploiting recently developed content, discourse and conversation analysis interviews with scientists will be examined for the types of stories narrated, scientists and hosts’ roles in shaping the stories produced and their explanatory and argumentative roles regarding the scientific topic reported. The study will be based on a well-defined corpus of interviews with scientists drawn from key agenda-setting the current affair talk shows broadcasted in Israel and Britain. While news broadcasts serve as a primary source concerning development in science and technology science reporting in these format won little scholarly attention. Seeking to capture the interactional communicative events by which scientists and journalists co-author narratives and explanations should offer novel insights concerning their respective roles in shaping science news more broadly. This study’s focus on scientific explanations in the news media could strongly inform science communication policies and practices currently discussed and implemented.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IEF
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

MC-IEF - Intra-European Fellowships (IEF)

Coordinator

KING'S COLLEGE LONDON
EU contribution
€ 231 283,20
Address
STRAND
WC2R 2LS London
United Kingdom

See on map

Region
London Inner London — West Westminster
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data
My booklet 0 0