Rosa Lorés

Universidad de Zaragoza

Rosa Lorés is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Universidad de Zaragoza (Spain). She has conducted research on specialized discourse and written academic genres from the standpoint of pragmatics, contrastive rhetoric, genre analysis, and corpus studies. Her current research interests focus on digital scientific communication and dissemination practices. She has co-edited several books and special issues, and her articles have been published in international journals including English for Specific Purposes, Journal of Pragmatics, Discourse, Context & Media, and Text&Talk). She co-coordinates the research group InterGEDI (Interpersonality in Digital Genres). She is also a member of the research group CIRES (Intercultural Communication and Societal Challenges), and the Research Institute of Employment, Digital Society, and Sustainability (IEDIS). 

Abstract

Bridging the Gap: From Experts to Audiences in Digital Science Communication

Institutions and scientific organizations have actively promoted the popularization of science since the mid-20th century. As a result, the notion of a strict divide between the scientific community and the lay public has been challenged (Jones et al., 2015; Pilkington, 2018; Freddi, 2020), leading to the understanding that popular science is crafted for diverse audiences, including experts, with varying degrees of background knowledge, needs, and expectations (Myers, 2003; Hyland, 2010). Thus, the reader “is no longer a passive observer but an active participant in the social discourse related to science and its consequences” (Pilkington, 2018: 14).

In this talk I will examine the digital communication of scientific knowledge, focusing on how digital technology has transformed the dissemination of information to provide alternative research methods, collaboration, and discursive practices. Central phenomena associated with digital knowledge such as multimodality, interactivity, and recontextualization, as well as their implications for bridging knowledge asymmetries will also be discussed.

A theoretical and methodological framework for digital discourse analysis is proposed, integrating genre studies, corpus studies, and pragmatics. The combination of these methodologies with the SciDis Database (Pascual and Sancho-Ortiz, 2025) allows researchers to conduct in-depth analyses of scientific dissemination practices across different disciplines, modes and media. The SciDis database is presented as a tool to explore digital scientific practices related to areas of current interest such as health, economy, and natural sciences. The database identifies and classifies various digital discursive practices, considering variables such as typology (web-hosted vs. social media practices) and content generator (author-generated vs. writer-mediated practices). A study derived from this database will be presented by way of illustration. This combination of theoretical and methodological perspectives provides a solid foundation for future studies on the evolving landscape of digital scientific communication and its impact on knowledge transfer in the digital age.

References

Freddi, Maria. (2020). Blurring the lines between genres and audiences: Interaction in science blogs. Discourse and Interaction, 13(2), 9-35. https://doi.org/10.5817/DI2020-2-9

Hyland, Ken. (2010). Constructing proximity: Relating to readers in popular and professional science. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 9(2), 116–127. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2010.02.00

Jones, Rodney H., Chik, Alice and Christoph A- Hafner. (2015). Introduction. Discourse analysis and digital practices. In: Rodney H. Jones, Alice Chik &Christoph A. Hafner (Eds.), Discourse and Digital Practices. Doing Discourse Analysis in the Digital Age. (pp. 1-17). Routledge.

Myers, Greg. (2003). Discourse studies of scientific popularization: questioning the boundaries. Discourse Studies, 5(2), 265-279. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445603005002006

Pascual, Daniel & Sancho-Ortiz, Ana Eugenia. (2025). Investigating recontextualisation processes in scientific digital practices: The SciDis Database. Revista Electrónica de Lingüística Aplicada 23, 101-118. https://doi.org/10.58859/rael.v23i1.649

Pilkington, Olga. (2018). Presented Discourse in Popular Science: Professional Voices in Books for Lay Audiences. BRILL.