La divulgación en la televisión: ¿socialización del conocimiento o educación científica?

Abstract

Dissemination on TV: Socialization of knowledge or scientific education? In Education, considerable importance has been given to the value of dissemination within the scientific education of people, with attention primarily being attached to science documentaries broadcast on television. Currently, these programmes share space with—or are being displaced by—a new genre of the televised mediatisation of knowledge, which might be characterised as info-entertainment. This current work is based on research that analyses a broad corpus of science-dissemination programmes adopting these new formats. Specifically, we analyse three episodes of Quèquicom, a programme broadcast by Catalan Television and one which highlights the main characteristics of this new television genre. The aim of the study is two-fold: 1) it hopes to contribute to the discursive characterisation of the genre on the basis of the analysis of the subjects, the format and the discourse produced by the speakers; 2) it aims to provide arguments to understand the extent to which these programmes contribute to the scientific education of the young. The theoretical framework is the discourse analysis. Our results show that the programme is in keeping with the objectives of informing and entertaining characteristic of the televisual mediatisation of knowledge. At all events, although it has the didactic nature of educational programmes, it does not necessarily contribute to reinforcing people’ scientific knowledge.