05.12.2023
International
Researchers from the ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics and scientists from the BMBF project "MeWiKo" have published an anthology entitled "The Science-Media Interface: On the Relation Between Internal and External Science Communication".
The book is dedicated to the interface between science and the media and sheds light on the complex relationships between the two areas. The publication emphasises the permeability of the traditional boundaries between internal and external science communication, particularly in digital environments, and shows how this affects science and the media landscape.
In a world characterised by complex challenges, the communication of scientific facts is becoming increasingly important. The relationship between science and the media raises many complex questions: How do scientific research findings find their way into public communication, especially through journalism? What impact do public communication and journalistic representations of research findings have on scientific discourse? How does media coverage influence internal processes in science? What interrelationships exist between science and the media?
A recently published edited volume entitled "The Science-Media Interface: On the Relation Between Internal and External Science Communication" addresses these pressing questions and offers well-founded answers to deepen our understanding of this interface. The anthology was edited by researchers from the BMBF project "MeWiKo - Media and Scientific Communication" under the direction of Prof. Dr Isabella Peters, Dr Athanasios Mazarakis and Dr Steffen Lemke from the ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (www.zbw.eu). It contains contributions from experts in the fields of scientometrics, quantitative science research, communication science and journalism research.
A key finding of the anthology is that the traditional boundaries between internal science communication - the practices within the scientific community for the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge - and external science communication - the communication between science and society - are permeable and blurred, especially in digital environments. This has profound implications for both forms of science communication. The main actors at this interface are the researchers themselves, professional science communicators and science journalists, but also platforms and intermediary organisations that curate scientific research for dissemination in the mass media. Each of these actors has their own approach to the selection, presentation and communication of scientific findings.
In the interplay between internal and external science communication, there are initial indications of correlations between the mention of scientific publications in the media and the impact of these publications within the scientific community.
The popularisation of scientific findings when they are transferred to other social contexts is an important process that is traditionally strongly influenced by the media. However, this can lead to simplification and decontextualisation, which challenges the role of journalism in communicating science.
The interface between science and media is influenced by various trends, including the pressure on researchers to increase their scientific output - the so-called "publish or perish" - and the pressure to publish research results as preprints before the academic review process is completed. At the same time, more and more researchers and institutions are engaging in external science communication in order to increase their visibility and attract funding.
Dr Steffen Lemke, one of the editors of the anthology and researcher at the ZBW: "The digitalisation of media communication technologies, the disclosure of scientific work processes through open science and the Covid-19 pandemic are changing the dissemination of scientific knowledge. 'The Science-Media Interface' helps to understand the effects on science journalism, research work and its evaluation."