Visual forms of address in social media discourse: the case of a science communication website

Abstract

This paper shows how a multimodal discourse analysis of the changing visual designs of a science news website between 2009 and 2013 can reveal fundamental changes in visual forms of address, which must be acknowledged alongside shifts being observed at the level of linguistic address. Designers deploy design features in a shift from presenting science as official, formal, and authoritative, where communicative style is a monolog, to one which must suggest a sense of a conversation, of accessibility, of engagement, with a reader presumed to have opinions and needs. This is shift from a culture of transmission of information to a culture which rather formulates, channels, and retrieves information and which is dominated by scan-and-go media use. The analysis describes the changes of design details. It places these observations within the scholarly debate about the consequences of the Internet and social media for science communication.