Knowledge Brokers in Crisis: Public Communication of Science During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Knowledge brokers are among the main channels of communication between scientists and public a key element to establishing relation trust two. But translating knowledge from scientific community wider audience presents several difficulties, which can be accentuated in times crisis. In this paper we study some problems that face when communicating During first wave COVID-19 pandemic, collected interviews with Italian experts played major role as local media. We asked them questions about five topics: features science communicators; use language science; importance public; peculiarity context emergency; problem disagreement experts, its perception communication. The goal is understand, through words themselves, what they consider best practices (and obstacles) create public. Our empirical work inform normative accounts brokering should about.