Approaching Scientific Dissemination in a Cross-Disciplinary Way: Focus on Health and Well-Being

This paper delves into the popularization of scientific topics related to health and well-being from an interdisciplinary perspective, between science, journalism, language, and communication studies. To this aim, we will address a subset of the SciencePop Corpus—a corpus of spoken science-popularization speech events—including 10 broadcast interviews and 10 audiovisual interviews published on YouTube. Through a mixed-method approach and a comparative perspective, the study analyzes the questions posed by interviewers, bearing in mind the rules of conduct on news interviews and checking how far such rules are applied in science popularization in the two different interview contexts, namely mainstream broadcast interviews led by trained journalists and online digital media interviews. The data testify to both similarities and differences between broadcast and online digital media interviews, with reference to (a) the degree of compliance with the rules of conduct and (b) the techniques of audience involvement employed by the interviewers, i.e., references to their private life, expression of opinion, and confirmation to build and maintain engagement. The study allows for a better understanding of interview styles and approaches in science popularization, particularly with reference to the “posture” of interviewers.