Interpretative resources within interactions: The transformation of scientific research along a pathway of science communication

Misinformation about science is becoming increasingly common both through passive transmission and through active weaponization by bad faith actors around the globe. Science communicators and educators should play a central role in combatting this but to do so they need a deeper understanding of how the meaning of scientific research is transformed as it is disseminated to the public. To help with this understanding, I present a narrative case study that follows a single piece of scientific research from original publication through interactions between the authoring scientist and a news reporter to its presentation in a popular news story read by a member of the public. By analyzing how fine-grained knowledge resources are activated in each step of this journey, this study demonstrates that differences between scientific and lay interpretation of scientific research is not the result of the public’s lack of knowledge but rather an emergent property of small shifts in meaning in each interaction and text. Furthermore, I argue that both scientists and non-scientists rely on fundamentally similar interpretative resources depending on the interactional context of use. This provides new analytical and theoretical directions of developing research to understand and tools to facilitate science communication and education.