Research Program
Nowadays, knowledge transfer takes place mostly via media, which attempt to make specialized knowledge more accessible and appealing to a broad audience. Meanwhile, the continued expansion of digitalization has yielded many new and interactive media formats.
At the same time, in recent years, multimodality research, which analyzes the use of various semiotic resources to convey meaning, has gained more and more interest in media products popularizing knowledge. However, except for some exemplary analyses, we still lack a systematic record of the multimodal composition of science communication formats.
To close this gap, this network combines the perspectives of 15 experts on science communication. The group consists of junior researcher from across the academic spectrum. In cooperation with experienced professors, they are going to identify media-specific and media-overarching strategies of multimodal science communication from a media studies and media linguistics perspective.
The analyses will apply the various approaches multimodality research has to offer, describing the composition and interaction of the respective modes.
Questions concerning this subject will be discussed during six meetings in dialogue with relevant representatives of the following fields: multimodality research, research on science and knowledge communication, and science journalism. The results will be published in at least one anthology.
Multimodality in Science Communication (Multimodalität in Wissensformaten – MWissFO) is a research network funded by the German Research Foundation DFG (2020-2023).
The fifteen members of this network are working in the field of science communication. They are based in universities in Germany, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.
MWissFo is coordinated by Sylvia Jaki (University of Hildesheim).