The role of language, visualisations and concepts in explaining the coronavirus

FAU Institute investigating how science communication has changed over the course of the pandemic

How were scientific findings about the coronavirus communicated, and how has this changed over the course of time? Researchers at the Center for Applied Philosophy of Science and Key Qualifications (ZiWiS) at FAU hope to find answers in their project ‘Language, Visualizations and Concepts – On the Evolution of the Corona Discourse’ (LaViCo). The Volkswagen Foundation is providing 120,000 euros in funding for the project over a period of one and a half years as part of the ‘Corona Crisis and Beyond’ initiative.

Whilst at the very beginning of the pandemic only a small group of experts had any knowledge of the new virus, today, nearly everyone has something to say. But how was this knowledge transferred, how did communication change over the course of the pandemic, and which information finally became common knowledge and why? Linguist Dr. Katrin Götz-Votteler, art historian Dr. Simone Hespers and philosopher Dr. Sebastian Schuol are working together to analyse changes in language, visualisation and concepts over the course of the pandemic. It is hoped that the results of this interdisciplinary research project will provide a basis for science communication in similar topics in future.

Detailed information on LaViCo and its scientific approach: www.ziwis.fau.de/forschung/forschungsprojekte/lavico/

Further information

Dr. Sebastian Schuol
phone: + 49 9131 85-22503
sebastian.schuol@fau.de