Knowledge-Brokering in the Social Sciences: Mediating Research for General Readers

Abstract Summary

Abstract :

There are widely held perceptions that academic publications are mostly incomprehensible to the general public. As academic research often centers on topics that pertain to the public, this lack of accessibility can undermine the potential value of research. However, there has been a heightened interest in the public understanding of and engagement in scientific research in the last three decades. Currently, a wide range of issues involving public understanding of and engagement in science are actively being discussed by global scholars in the pages of several academic journals. The increased efforts to make newly found scientific knowledge available and applicable to various stake holders have also created a new group of professionals acting as intermediaries, called knowledge brokers (Kissling-Naf, 2009; Meyer, 2010). According to Bauer and Howard (2012), the majority of studies in this field have focused on disciplines associated with hard science, and relatively few research studies have examined features and issues observed in popularized social science. To help address this gap, the current study examines three popularized social science texts written in English, focusing on what discursive features the three texts employ as they try to reach those that are outside academic discourse communities:Peak: Secrets from New Science of Expertise(2016, Ericsson and Pool)Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance(2016, Duckworth)Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones(2018, Clear)By focusing on different texts that center on a similar topic as narrated by various types of authors with different epistemic authorities, we identify both common and unique de-academicization strategies observed across texts. These insights will illuminate how effective knowledge communication is actualized in popularized texts in social science and how writers of scholarly articles can make writing more widely accessible.

Pre-recorded video :