Insights into Science Communication
03.12.2024
Janine Dengler, member of the linguistic subproject, presented the results of her master's thesis at the WMK colloquium in Karlsruhe. The thesis is a pilot study on discourse strategy methods in science communication and provides exciting initial insights into the field of research.
The master's thesis, entitled "Discourse-strategic methods for asserting claims to validity in science communication," addressed the question of how discourse-strategic methods—such as moralization—occur in science communication and how they differ in frequency and linguistic structure patterns depending on the degree of technicality. The subject of the study was the discourse on artificial intelligence, a topic of high social and scientific relevance that is particularly suitable due to its topicality.
As part of the work, (sub)corpora were created from the websites Informatik Aktuell, Spektrum.de, and ZEIT ONLINE, in which moralizations were specifically identified and analyzed. The results provided exciting initial insights into the structure and at the same time enabled an evaluation of existing methods for recognizing moralizations in texts.
We are continuing our research based on these findings. We are further developing our methods in order to examine the initial trends more precisely and to explore new aspects of the phenomenon.
Janine Dengler