Recontextualizing Expert Knowledge: The Process, Practices and Aims of Digital Dissemination

This collection explores how expert knowledge is transformed and communicated in digital contexts.

This volume examines how digital media impacts the process of recontextualization, understood as the way by which expert knowledge is made more accessible to multiple audiences through varied discursive, pragmatic, and multimodal strategies. Adopting varied theoretical and methodological approaches, the chapters examine the multifaceted processes of recontextualization, where academic information is adapted for broader public audiences, often navigating the tension between scholarly rigor and public understanding. Part 1 examines the way academics adapt expert knowledge for diverse audiences through platforms like The Conversation, TED Talks, and Science Media Centre. Part 2 explores knowledge transformation by mediators across social media, science writing, press releases, and destination marketing. Part 3 addresses professional communication practices in climate research and sensitive topics (i.e., extremism). The epilogue discusses balancing simplification with academic integrity in expert knowledge dissemination.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars in discourse analysis, pragmatics, English for Specific Purposes, corpus linguistics, and science communication.