Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/33.2920

EDITOR: Pascal Hohaus
TITLE: Science Communication in Times of Crisis
SERIES TITLE: Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 96
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2022

REVIEWER: Sarah Clark

SUMMARY

With the sudden and intense onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic, societies across the globe were confronted with the dissolution of well-established knowledge boundaries and communicative strategies gatekeeping those borders in and between the institution of healthcare and the general populace. In the edited volume, Science Communication in Times of Crisis, the editor Pascal Hohaus (2022) and the contributors of the volume attempt to reveal both the covert and overt elements of this dissolution process and more importantly the complex effects of new practices and behaviors of scientific communication on human life and social activity. Drawing together a diverse mix of erudition and expertise, the volume is unprecedented in crossing disciplinary boundaries and allowing ample theoretical and empirical space to attend to a wide array of considerations. However, access to the volume requires an audience with at least some general knowledge of communication theory, as well as linguistic and sociological theoretical constructs.

The first chapter, penned by the editor, is a necessary world-builder and provides an illuminating outline of the chapters to follow. We are living in a “crisis society” that is no longer limited to small pockets of the globe, but is disrupting the lives and livelihoods of many, and in a multitude of ways. He points out, and the other contributors are certainly in agreement, that we have always been living in a crisis society; the COVID pandemic has simply been an abrupt intense spotlight on the perennial issue of scientific information flow across the boundaries of institutions, demographics and cultures. The general populace is more and more requiring, and in some cases demanding, clarity on medical terminology and knowledge, since the COVID-19 pandemic is becoming increasingly interwoven in daily activities. The editor immediately points out that the solution is not a simple one – but instead there are several considerations to recognize before proceeding: (1) should we classify science communication as a separate field of study to allow for rigorous analysis of the models in place for getting high-level medical knowledge into the general populace? (2) how do elements of science communication interact with and overlap other avenues and disciplines of communication, e.g. political communication and media communication? (3) how can we mitigate the problems inherent in the distinction and practice between internal science communication and external science communication?
He argues that the answers to the above questions and the ultimate need to fill a gap in understanding the relationship between science communication and societal crises requires a multi-tiered innovative approach, with which this volume proceeds. These innovations are as follows: (1) embracing a multi-disciplinary and multi-paradigmatic approach - to include: terminology work (Bowker, Chapter 4), philosophy of science (Böhnert and Reszke, Chapter 2), corpus-based cultural and contrastive linguistics (El-Dahks, Chapter 6 and Haddad Haddad, Chapter 5), discourse analysis (Koca-Helvaci, Chapter 8), rhetoric (Syfert, Chapter 3), news value analysis (Molek-Kozakowska and Struchkova, Chapter 7), and political communication (Callahan and Jensen, Chapter 9); (2) employing a cross-cultural focus to better attend to many national contexts; and (3) examining the array of agents/institutions involved in different types of crises and their roles in the perpetuation of pre-existing communicative boundaries or their attempts to productively traverse those same boundaries.
This initial chapter is concluded with an adept outline of the volume.

Chapter 2, “Which facts to trust in the debate on climate change? On knowledge and plausibility in times of crisis” by Martin Böhnert and Paul Reszke, fittingly begins the discussion at the very foundation of communication – at the level of knowledge itself. They challenge our very understanding of which elements and expectations, in our own acquired belief system(s), lead us to qualify/quantify a fact as undeniable reality and then make decisions based thereupon. Knowledge is certainly a commodity, and facts are the “gold standard”. But what is often unexamined in this definition, they argue, is that agentive decisions of value, trust and authority are always dynamically at play in the acceptance of the fact as a truth and then the manifested behaviors that result from these decision points – i.e. how do we know what we think we know and why are we driven to act based upon this constructed epistemological framework? The communication setting then is a critical element in the unpacking of this concept – how are facts transmitted to us for us then to make decisions about their plausibility.
To illustrate, the authors provide three examples across a historical spectrum, showcasing the complex interplay of institutional influences (the Catholic Church in this instance), semantic frameworks and epistemic norms involved in the access to and transmission of knowledge: (1) the universal ordering debate between Galileo and Bellarmine in 1615, (2) the astrophysicist Harald Lesch’s 2019 video about “clarifying misconceptions about climate change,” and (3) politician James Inhofe’s 2015 senate speech labeling global warming as a hoax. In all cases, the authors make the astute observation that the reader is already judging these instances of knowledge crises based upon what they already know/expect to be true. In the global warming examples, the roles and positions of the speakers are spotlighted as a crucial element – in order to interpret the opinions of the scientist and politician as true, the reader places an already established trust value on the societal position of the speaker, thereby elevating or demoting the status of the fact itself to fit like a piece into our uniquely normed epistemological puzzle. This process happens mostly at the subconscious level and is unproblematic except when these norms come into hard conflict through confrontation with opposing comprehension systems – at which point a knowledge crisis occurs. The authors conclude with the summation that all crises with which we are faced are indeed epistemological at the core and thus in order to attend to the broader focus of this volume, we must “develop strategies in science communication which focus on the settings of comprehension of the group of people in question.”

Chapter 3, “Letters to power: Authority appeals in the communication of scientific consensus,” by Collin Syfert introduces a rhetorical studies perspective into the conversation and simultaneously continues the examination of the value of positionality in the complex interplay of uptake potential of scientific communication in the public domain. Syfert rightly considers the influence of political ideologies on the public legitimation process of information – arguing that especially in times of crisis, effective and persuasive communication is impacted by these “divergent political ideologies that encourage the interpretation of scientific findings and subsequent policy recommendations along policy lines.” In other words, the value of scientific information is at the mercy of political allegiances. Therefore, it is critical for science communicators to establish and sustain authority in order to have any hope of getting that information through to demographics that may not have trust in them due to this political influence. At the same time, this same legitimacy must be robust enough to reach news consumers that are able to customize and filter news feeds. To examine a potential avenue of success for the science communicator, in the publicly published open letter, Syfert conducts a comparative analysis of the rhetorical strategies found in two open letters written by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) as they attempt to establish, or perhaps reaffirm, the integrity of science to the public. Syfert finds that each letter, one written during the George W. Bush administration and the other during the Donald Trump administration, is a reflection of the other in both strategy and narrative execution, especially in the claim of consensus (consensus of scientific opinion) to gain authority by providing no other option by which to seek a counter-truth. The author concludes that this claim to consensus, and the open letter itself, stands poised to be the most effective option for the UCS.

Chapter 4, “Pivoting to support science communication in times of crisis: A case study of the Government of Canada’s ‘Glossary on the COVID-19 pandemic’”, by Lynne Bowker is a narrative round-of-applause to the effective yet unconventional terminology work that has been and is still being performed by the Translation Bureau in support of providing the public with clear and impactful medical terminology resources. The chapter provides a straight-forward attestation, and a supporting case study, of the central role of terminology in how the public behaves in a crisis situation. A successful resource in which to locate a corpus of terms requires semantic transparency, speed of publication, attending to the multilingual needs of the public, and above all maintaining agility in shifting the terms in order to fulfill the ultimate goal of providing a real-world resource. For example, when the practice of “social distancing” was highly encouraged as a protection against contracting the COVID-19 virus, some in the Canadian populus interpreted this to mean that ALL contact (including virtual or safe social contact) were prohibited to maintain health. This of course was not the intent of the Canadian Public Health Office, so they communicated via twitter that they were modifying their term – and thus encouraging physical distancing. Bowker concludes by applauding the Bureau on their innovative glossary production and sustainment methods and offers some advice, e.g. providing multiple definitions for one term and monitoring the popular use of the terms to align with the glossary (in both cases this stands to increase uptake of the information) to continue this necessary work.

Chapter 5, “COVID-19 neologisms between metaphor and culture: A multilingual corpus-based study,” by Amal Haddad Haddad continues the examination of science communication at the lexical and phrasal level. Haddad Haddad inquires as to whether the transfer of COVID-19 related phrases and instructions is successful from one language to another and one culture to another in both form and function. A further consideration in this inquiry is the often complex sociolinguistic activity at the local level and how that affects both the uptake and lifespan of neologisms in circulation and how it affects the coining of new ones. Acknowledging the pivotal role of this type of linguistic activity in the shaping of perceptions about the pandemic and the work that language does in framing behaviors, Haddad Haddad embarks on a multilingual corpus-based analysis of mass media articles published during the pandemic, as well as additional scientific articles in Arabic, English and Spanish. The study’s findings indicate that there were indeed failures in successful transfer of neologisms from English to Spanish or Arabic, as a result of the erroneous assumption of similar semantic and sociolinguistic frameworks by the English-speaking scientific community. Haddad Haddad advises that before a neologism is coined, consultation with specialists and linguists is an important step in producing sociolinguistically appropriate terminology; and concludes with a plea to remember that these neologisms might be literally life-saving and thus should remain under analysis to keep open the flow of communication.

Chapter 6, “Persuasion in health communication: The case of Saudi and Australian tweets on COVID-19 vaccination,” by Dina Abdel Salam El-Dakhs explores a unique set of discursive strategies employed by the governments of two distinct cultures to provide comprehension and influence vaccination compliance in the general public. Identifying Twitter to be the most fruitful location of data for the study, El-Dahks comparatively analyzed 200 tweets sourced from the Twitter accounts of the Saudi Ministry of Health and the Australian Department of Health. The analysis was guided by the Aristotelian understanding of persuasion that included three main elements: (1) ethos, the nature of the communicator, (2) pathos, the emotional state of the audience, and (3) logos, the message arguments. The study revealed that the selection of the persuasion strategies employed by the different governments – Australians used significantly more logos-based strategies and appeals to the individual, while the Saudis favored ethos strategies and appeals to the collective – are indicative of the distinct nature of the cultures themselves. El-Dahks concludes that cultural variation is certainly a critical factor in the selection of persuasion strategies in healthcare and scientific communication, and calls for further research to build an analytical model that better fits the current trends of persuasive discourse than the traditional Aristotelian model.

Chapter 7, “Communicating risks of an Anti-COVID-19 vaccine in Poland: A comparative case study of content, style and advocacy of three media outlets,” by Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska and Sofiia Struchkova, shines the spotlight on one of the most contested battle grounds of information in recent years – the news media. Empirically locating the case study in the Polish media as they communicated the risks and potential ban of the AstraZeneca vaccine and analytically situating it in the realm of discourse analysis and framing theory, the authors undertake a deep exploration into how much actual science is included in the sample data, and how newsworthiness is created. They specifically focus on the narrative construction of sensationalism, risk, and panic in news headlines; and this construction, they argue, is how this powerful discursive tool influences public framing of the vaccine and the validity of the science behind it. The authors find that much of the media coverage was much less about informing the public about the science behind the vaccine and more about capitalizing on the uncertainty of various governments and institutional bodies, thus inciting a panic via a binary dilemma of whether or not to vaccinate, instead of actually communicating acceptable risk thresholds – which serves to foreground political agendas and background the safety of the populus. Molek-Kozakowska and Struchkova conclude with a call to media outlets to better shoulder the responsibility of assisting the public with improving their science literacy, warning against exacerbating panic and fear in future health crises.

Chapter 8, “Coronavirus as a political weapon: The COVID pandemic through the lens of the US Alt-Right Media” by Zeynep Cihan Koca-Helvaci, continues the examination of the interplay of media influence and political agenda steering public opinion of the virus, but leads the conversation down the specific path of intentional misinformation – established and sustained by the Alt-right media. Fueled by the Trump Administration’s incendiary and polarizing rhetoric, the naming preferences, characteristics, topics, and argumentation strategies employed by the Alt-right media in its coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, dangerously delegitimized and even vilified science and scientists. Seeing the pandemic as an opportunity for maligning the Left and thereby creating a toxic us vs them dichotomy, many lives were lost in the proliferation of the Alt-Right’s catalog of racism, sexism, and general hate. The authors successfully uncover this agenda in the study, employing the Discourse Historical Analytical method bolstered by a Corpus Linguistic Approach to show how, in news texts and commentaries published in Alt-Right websites between March and May of 2020, that collocation strategies and concordance choices combined with a construction of the enemy (the them) are a machine of misinformation. They conclude with the warning that although the Alt-Right stepped to the side of the mainstream spotlight after the Trump presidential campaign loss, the discursive and biological damage of this COVID-19 misinformation continues to negatively impact the public knowledge and response to the pandemic.

Finally, Chapter 9, “Science Versus? The U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” by John M Callahan and Robert Jensen, concludes the volume by both honing in on the initial missteps of the US government in its response to the outbreak of the virus, which he asserts is the source of the concentration of avoidable deaths across the nation in comparison with other affected nations, and simultaneously tying together the themes found in the preceding topics of the volume. The authors focus their attention on four points of the discussion: (1) the inefficient use of an established federal government crisis communication strategy and support structure; (2) deliberate spread of misinformation by the Trump administration that curtailed public support for prevention methods and support of scientific advancements to lessen the spread of the virus; (3) the weakened authority of mainstream media to elicit public trust in non-politicized science communication; and (4) the unchecked confluence of disparate groups bent on the spread of mistrust in science via misinformation on social media, ultimately leading to the weaponization of the news. Callahan and Jensen elaborate on each point in turn, aligning in stance with many views presented in previous chapters, ultimately concluding that how science communication is framed, regarded, and used is the key outcome decider in a crisis, and certainly in the COVID-19 pandemic.

EVALUATION

This volume is absolutely relevant, thought-provoking, and successful in reaching its aims. The novel, and refreshing approach allowed for an array of linguistic theories in many of the chapters to take center stage in the conversation. Many other purportedly multidisciplinary volumes do not allow for the rigorous and appropriate analysis of the very building blocks of communication, i.e.,language and discourse. By contrast, this volume was a paradigm of inclusivity. Another merit of this volume was the logical organization and productive succession of topics and research. This allowed for the chapters to discursively intertwine, ultimately strengthening each argument. There is one shortcoming in the volume, however: the paucity of attention given to the interaction of race (via raciolinguistics) and socioeconomic status with the communication events of a crisis; while only really mentioned only once, this could be a thread to pick up for future research as this volume offers a strong foundation for research in that vein. Overall, this volume is a valuable resource to address the perennial topic of science communication in times of crisis; it will certainly be a seminal starting point for future studies in this domain.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

N/A