Publications

Sep 30, 2020 Article

Rapid reaction: ethnographic insights into the Science Media Center and its response to the COVID-19 outbreak

This paper offers an ethnographic account of the editorial response to the COVID-19 outbreak by the Science Media Center Germany. Ethnographic research data was gathered during a 4-week fieldstay in January 2020 which coincided with the first weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak. The findings offer insights into how the editorial staff grappled with the scientific non-knowledge and uncertainty that marked the initial phase of the global COVID-19 outbreak, while simultaneously dealing with acute journalistic demands for expertise.

Volume 19Issue 052020Special Issue: COVID-19 and science communication, Part I, 2020 (COVID-19 and Scicomm / 1)

Sep 30, 2020 Article

Pharmaceutical influencers on Instagram and their communication during the Covid-19 pandemic crisis

by Zahaira Fabiola González Romo , Sofia Iriarte Aguirre , Irene Garcia Medina

Today, thanks to the consolidation of Internet, users have access to many sources of information on health issues. On social networks, there are profiles of health professionals who share content that generates credibility when published by specialists who are knowledgeable in the sector. These profiles include pharmaceutical professionals who disseminate and create content based on scientific knowledge. Pharmaceutical influencers on Instagram have an informative role on health, nutrition and cosmetic dermatology issues. This research aims to learn about the communication management of these influencers during the Coronavirus crisis in Spain and how they have modified their habitual discourse, as well as seeking to identify the formats of their publications that generate greater engagement and conversions among their followers.

Volume 19Issue 052020Special Issue: COVID-19 and science communication, Part I, 2020 (COVID-19 and Scicomm / 1)

Sep 30, 2020 Article

Exit only: harms from silencing employee voice

by Karen Adkins

The nationwide shortage of PPE for health care workers has been well documented. Reporting on this issue has been complicated by hospitals' imposition of gag orders on physicians and health care workers. There are harms that result from imposing these gag orders that go beyond the obvious harms to public and employee health and safety. Using Hirschman's ‘Exit, Voice, and Loyalty’ (1970) as a framework demonstrates that these orders represent a dangerous concentration of power in employer hands — health care workers are reduced to functionaries. Hirschman's argument, in part, is that organisations should seek to balance the availability of exit, voice, and loyalty for employees. Restricting employee options in morally untenable situations to exit only leads to direct and indirect harms. These gag orders are a pernicious practice, and bring with them long-term negative implications for employee morale, employee effectiveness, and public service.

Volume 19Issue 052020Special Issue: COVID-19 and science communication, Part I, 2020 (COVID-19 and Scicomm / 1)

Sep 30, 2020 Article

COVID-19 in the South Pacific: science communication, Facebook and ‘coconut wireless’

by Vipul Khosla , Prashanth Pillay

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the criticality of science communication. Utilising a mixed-methods approach, this article takes an audience-focused perspective to analysing COVID-19 related social media posts on 23 popular South Pacific community Facebook pages over a four-month period across eight South Pacific countries. We analyse how audiences co-opt scientific terms, address information gaps and embed it in their lived experience. It is ascertained that online conversations around COVID-19 in the Pacific are intermeshed with both scientific fact and, personal accounts and rumours, referred to locally as ‘coconut wireless’, problematising established modes of empirical enquiry.

Volume 19Issue 052020Special Issue: COVID-19 and science communication, Part I, 2020 (COVID-19 and Scicomm / 1)

Sep 30, 2020 Article

China and the battle to win the scientific narrative about the origin of COVID-19

by Daniel Lemus-Delgado

The emergence of COVID-19 represented a critical problem for the legitimacy and prestige of the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese authorities had to fight not only to contain the spread of the virus but also to create a favorable public opinion about how they managed the crisis. Based on Foucault's approach to the “Regime of Truth”, this article analyzes the narrative surrounding the origin of the virus and how science was employed to lend it legitimacy. The article concludes by reviewing how the idea of science as a truth knowledge is used to construct a particular viewpoint, one focused on legitimizing the outbreak containment measures taken by the Chinese government.

Volume 19Issue 052020Special Issue: COVID-19 and science communication, Part I, 2020 (COVID-19 and Scicomm / 1)

Sep 30, 2020 Editorial

COVID-19 and science communication: a JCOM special issue

by Luisa Massarani , Padraig Murphy , Rod Lamberts

The devastating effects of COVID-19 and the speed of both the scientific and medical response and the public information requirements about frontline healthcare work, medical advances and policy and compliance measures has necessitated an intensity of science communication never seen before. This JCOM special issue — the first of two parts — looks at the challenges of communicating COVID-19 and coronavirus in the early spread of the disease in 2020. Here we present papers from across the world that demonstrate the scale of this challenge.

Volume 19Issue 052020Special Issue: COVID-19 and science communication, Part I, 2020 (COVID-19 and Scicomm / 1)

Sep 30, 2020 Article

COVID-19: a metaphor-based neologism and its translation into Arabic

by Amal Haddad Haddad , Silvia Montero-Martinez

‘Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)’ is the neologism coined in reference to the pandemic disease currently affecting countries worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO) was the international entity that coined this neologism in all its official languages, Arabic amongst them. However, in mass media, the most commonly used term is ‘coronavirus’, which is a meronymic denomination. This corpus-based case study aims at giving new insights into the creation of these neologisms in English and their equivalents in Arabic, and to the adequacy of the meronymic use of the term ‘coronavirus’ in the English and Arabic mass media.

Volume 19Issue 052020Special Issue: COVID-19 and science communication, Part I, 2020 (COVID-19 and Scicomm / 1)

Sep 30, 2020 Practice Insight

Complexity, transparency and time pressure: practical insights into science communication in times of crisis

by Jana Lasser , Verena Ahne , Georg Heiler , Peter Klimek , Hannah Metzler , Tobias Reisch , Martin Sprenger , Stefan Thurner , Johannes Sorger

A global crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic that started in early 2020 poses significant challenges for how research is conducted and communicated. We present four case studies from the perspective of an interdisciplinary research institution that switched to “corona-mode” during the first two months of the crisis, focussing all its capacities on COVID-19-related issues, communicating to the public directly and via media, as well as actively advising the national government. The case studies highlight the challenges posed by the increased time pressure, high demand for transparency, and communication of complexity and uncertainty. The article gives insights into how these challenges were addressed in our research institution and how science communication in general can be managed during a crisis.

Volume 19Issue 052020Special Issue: COVID-19 and science communication, Part I, 2020 (COVID-19 and Scicomm / 1)

Sep 30, 2020 Article

Liberalists and data-solutionists: redefining expertise in Twitter debates on coronavirus in Finland

by Esa Valiverronen , Salla-Maaria Laaksonen , Mikko Jauho , Piia Jallinoja

Based on recent accounts of the sociology of expertise, we analyse the public contestation and expansion of expertise in the context of COVID-19. During the epidemic, the expertise of the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), became increasingly contested. By exploring Twitter discussions concerning the actions of THL during the first months of the epidemic from January to mid-June 2020, we analyse the main motivations and arguments in this public contestation as well as the alternative forms of expertise proposed by the critics. We focus particularly on two forms of criticism arguing for what we call networked expertise: liberal crowdsourcing supporters and data-solutionists presenting alternative epidemiological models.

Volume 19Issue 052020Special Issue: COVID-19 and science communication, Part I, 2020 (COVID-19 and Scicomm / 1)

Sep 30, 2020 Article

COVID-19 infections on international celebrities: self presentation and tweeting down pandemic awareness

by Wishes Mututwa , Trust Matsilele

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) which was first reported in China's Wuhan province in December 2019 became a global pandemic within a few months. The exponential rise in COVID-19 cases globally was accompanied by a spike in misinformation about the pandemic, particularly on social media. Employing Social Network Theory as a lens, this qualitative study explores how selected international celebrities appropriated their Twitter micro-blogging pages to announce their COVID-19 infection to the world. The study finds that these celebrities can take advantage of their huge social media following to counter disinfodemic and promote awareness about health pandemics.

Volume 19Issue 052020Special Issue: COVID-19 and science communication, Part I, 2020 (COVID-19 and Scicomm / 1)

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