Science Communication through Popular Culture: Transmediality in the Case of Two Popular Physics Books

• In Event: Science Communication - II: Making Science in Public

Abstract

In order to reach the general public, professional science communicators initiate nowadays a process of colonization of products and media which are specific to popular culture, bringing science in areas that were traditionally uncommon. The insertion of science into popular culture is thus obtained, and the mechanism through which this insertion is possible is transmediality. This paper aims to show how transmediality is put to work in the case of the construction of popular accounts of fundamental physics. Two starting points are considered for this analysis: the popular physics books A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking, and The Elegant Universe, by Brian Greene. These books do not stand as isolate products. They become catalysts for other similar popular products (as the book series that they immediately engendered), but also for products in other formats on other media, as science documentaries, science festivals, or even science theatre, science music, science cartoons etc. These occurrences support each other in such a way that the popular physics inspired by the initial books forms a transmedial web which spreads throughout mass-media and even beyond. This transmedial web is woven through media in a thorough construction of science communication on the grounds of popular culture. This contagious circulation of multilateral references of the two books and their authors is a solid proof that the transmedial web of popular science has a fundamental role in reaching the lay audiences and in promoting science among the public.

Author

• Mircea Sava, University of Bucharest