From science journalism to educating a pandemic-wise public: Inquiries into the “NDR coronavirus-update” podcast

Abstract

This paper examines how a public radio podcast initially reported on SARS-CoV-2 in a science journalistic way and then, as the pandemic and the podcast progressed, gradually moved into an educational format. The focus is on how the science journalists in public radio NDR’s “Coronavirus Update” ask questions, how these are modulated by virologists and how the latter give listeners insights not only into scientific results but also methods. The educational format becomes evident in the journalists’ recontextualisations, the addressings of the listeners and especially in the construction and rearticulations of a fictitious interaction memory.

Introduction

“How would it be if we could do a podcast with this proven expert in which he can give us the current state of affairs regarding Corona on a daily basis? Not an advice podcast, but scientific information on the basis of which every listener can make good decisions for themselves.” ¹ Referring to a virology professor, with these words Norbert Grundei, an editor at the public “Northern German Broadcasting” NDR (“Norddeutscher Rundfunk”), formulated the mission of the “Coronavirus Update” podcast he had newly launched in February 2020. Just like the science journalists and virologists involved, he would not have known at the time that this podcast would not only last for more than 2 years, but would mutate into an unintentionally educational format. In this article I examine how the journalistic task of conveying information emphasised by Grundei became an educational format in which science journalists, together with the two virology professors Christian Drosten (Charité, Berlin) and Sandra Ciesek (Goethe University, Frankfurt), enabled their listeners to build up pandemic-related knowledge.

The NDR “Coronavirus Update” podcast offers a unique opportunity to analyse the trajectory from journalistic to educational format: Focusing on one single topic it managed to attract listeners over 113 episodes. This exceptionally long seriality made the continuous accumulation of knowledge among the listeners possible and – as I will argue – even necessary. Unlike other SARS-CoV-2 podcasts (Bonixe 2021; Nee and Santana 2022), this podcast was based on a conversation between a permanent team of science journalists with only two alternating professors. The actors of this podcast could, therefore, make an effort to facilitate listeners’ continuous knowledge accumulation. Vis-à-vis the “unexpected pandemic situation”, the journalists took on the role of “spokespeople” (Bonixe 2021: 105) for their bewildered audience with its manifold questions and tried to clarify the daily changing situation with the help of the virologists.

The empirical inquiry into the podcast focuses on the 69 episodes of the year 2020, within which a large proportion of the downloads (approx. 100 million in number) took place. Before I reconstruct selected episodes, I review the state of research and outline the methodological approach. I then examine the interactions in the podcast, looking at the journalists’ questions and the virologists’ modulations as well as the way in which scientific information is then conveyed. I pay special attention to the educational efforts of the podcast actors who facilitated listeners’ acquisition of knowledge.

The “coronavirus-update” podcast vis-à-vis science journalism in a crisis situation

Starting on 26 February, 2020, journalists spoke with Professor Drosten about the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic for up to 60 min almost every weekday. After the summer break in 2020, the podcast was published weekly and Professor Drosten began to alternate with Professor Ciesek. By the time of their 113^th and final podcast on 29 March 2022, they had accumulated a total of 135 million downloads. ² This marked a great success (reflected in numerous awards) for both podcasting and science journalism in Germany.

Science journalism is usually guided by the same news factors as other forms of current information journalism. However, journalists must not only deal with sciences’ own priorities (cf. Møller Hartley 2017), but also take their addressees into account. In addition to simply conveying information, many of the 525 science journalists interviewed in a world-wide study also adopted tasks with stronger educational connotations: “Informing (41%), translating complex material (26%) and educating (17%) are considered the three roles that best define the ethos of science journalists” (Massarani et al., 2021: 22).

In contrast to Fahy and Nisbet (2011: 788), who see the science journalist in the role of a “civic educator” as soon as he or she “informs non-specialist audiences about the methods, aims, limits and risks of scientific work”, a precise distinction must be made between journalism and education: The former is oriented at conveying information such that it is currently comprehensible to the recipients who, if they wish, use journalistic information as a resource for their self-contained knowledge accumulation. The latter aims to continuously build learners’ knowledge, conveys information for this purpose, and checks knowledge accumulation. In this respect, long-term journalistic formats such as podcasts have a particular affinity for going beyond the momentary transmission of information. Inhabiting a “liminal space between broadcast media and online media practices” (Berry 2018: 16), podcasts have, since 2004, been used by science journalism – especially by public radio stations (cf. Bonini 2015). While they only saw a “linear” increase until 2010, they then grew “exponentially” (MacKenzie 2019: 16). Although many podcasts present their individual episodes as a “self-contained unit” (Barrios-O’ Neill 2018: 149), “seriality” has emerged as a “prominent feature” (Rime et al., 2022: 1265). With one overarching theme across 113 episodes, the NDR “Coronavirus-Update” podcast exhibited a particularly long-lasting seriality. What all forms of (successful) podcast have in common, however, is that a community of listeners has formed around them (Barrios-O’ Neill 2018: 153) who do not just listen in randomly (as in radio), but subscribe to the “RSS feeds” (Birch and Weitkamp 2010: 891). In addition to this technical “interactivity” (Rime et al., 2022: 1272), the NDR “Coronavirus-Update” podcast benefited from the immense feedback from listeners, who sent 14,000 emails in the first 8 weeks, some of whose questions were also answered in the podcast. ³

In contrast to “repackaged radio content,” the podcast examined here is a “native podcast” (Nee and Santana 2022: 1564), which was later repackaged for radio. Like many other science podcasts, it was designed as a “conversational podcast” (Barrios-O’ Neill 2018: 147). While in many podcasts journalists interview other journalists, this podcast involved people “who have reputations as researchers and combine these with communicative skills” (Pasternack and Beer 2022: 61). Professors Drosten and Ciesek, however, were not reporting only from their own research, but were also, and above all, reflecting on the research of others and presenting it to their audience. Nonetheless, they gained their legitimacy primarily from the fact that they themselves were actively researching SARS-CoV-2. Remarkably, these conversation partners faced a problem common to all Coronavirus podcasts. In contrast to other science podcasts that convey information from well-researched subject areas, this was a “science crisis communication” (Pasternack and Beer 2022: 12) in two respects: It was not only a societal crisis that science helped to solve but also a crisis of science, because the solutions proposed were not primarily based on accomplished research, so that there was a “high degree of unknowable uncertainty” (Lasser et al., 2020: 3).

In view of this state of research, the initial question of this article can be made more precise: How is a science podcast designed that not only took into account a topic- or science-related interest of the listeners, but also, in view of the pandemic crisis, their immediate need for orientation? How did journalists and scientists communicate under the conditions of an initially rudimentary, but then gradually unfolding, yet fluctuating basis of scientific knowledge? And how did the podcast actors deal with the fact that their podcast not only built up a growing circle of listeners, but also – despite its monothematic nature – was able to maintain this circle over 113 episodes?

Methodology

As part of public communication, I analyse the NDR “Coronavirus-Update” podcast using the Documentary Interpretation of Discourse (Nohl 2016). This analysis refers not only to the conversation between two main actors – in each episode one science journalist and one virologist – but also to the (invisible) listeners whose interests were sometimes articulated or directly addressed. Following a summary of the content (formulating interpretation), the discourse interpretation primarily looks at how, that is, using which modus operandi, the two main actors convey information to these listeners (reflecting interpretation). Specific modi operandi that can be identified across more than one case are then typified. ⁴

Since this research focused on how the transmission of information in the podcast unfolded over time, I considered its successive episodes as cases and compared them. ⁵ Due to the volume of data (69 episodes of up to 60 min were published in 2020), the interpretation started with those episodes (cases) that were of particular significance either for the internal unfolding of the podcast or due to their external reference to pandemic events: the first episode (26 February), which is where the way in which the science journalist conducted the conversation with Professor Drosten first emerged; Episode 19 (23 March), which appeared at the beginning of the first lock-down in Germany; and Episode 33 (20 April), in which it became clear how Professor Drosten and the science journalist reacted to the first relaxations of the lock-down. To also include podcast episodes made with the second virologist, Professor Ciesek, from September 2020 onwards, Episode 55 (8 September) was used. In Episode 57 (22 September) Professor Ciesek had time to deal with listeners' questions and basic topics about the coronavirus. To find out how the conversation took shape over a complete episode, that is, how the case is sequentially situated, these five episodes were interpreted from beginning to end. Based on these comparative case interpretations, the first cross-case modi operandi of conveying information to the listeners were typified. The remaining episodes of the year 2020 were then selectively examined for empirical data that served to strengthen existing types and develop further types. In this way, passages from a further 23 episodes were identified, interpreted, and finally used for type formation. In the following sections, I present these types, that is, typical modi operandi of conveying information to listeners, for discussion. Each type is represented by only one excerpt from the podcast, although most of the typical modi operandi were found in several cases.

Journalistic questions and their modulation by scientists

Podcasts can be structured in very different ways; for example, as a conversation or a lecture (cf. Barrios-O’ Neill, 2018: 147). The “Coronavirus Update” worked as an in-depth interview in which the roles were clearly distributed: the science journalist asks the questions, the virologist responded to them which, however, did not imply giving a simple, immediate answer. Four different types of questions are discussed below:

(1) Questions on the assessment of the situation: Such questions not only requested the latest information on SARS-CoV-2, but also an evaluation on the part of virology, as can be seen, for example, at the beginning of Episode 63 (3 November 2020), when journalist Korinna Hennig asked Professor Ciesek: “How do you see the situation in the hospitals and in the intensive care units”? By emphasising the subjective moment here, it becomes clear that it was not a matter of communicating research results (which could not yet exist), but rather an uncertainty relation was already built into the question, since the virologist was supposed to relate the current situation to her previous scientific expertise and then develop a thoroughly falsifiable and, above all, provisional hypothesis on the current situation from this.

(2) Questions about research results: In questions about research results, the journalists only signalled an interest in information that seemed to be directly usable for journalistic purposes, due to its novelty value. For example, in Episode 60 (13 October, 2020), journalist Anja Martini asked, in connection with a study published in Science, “What happened there? What did they find out? Has the virus changed? Do we still have one and the same virus from the spring today?” Each of these questions was aimed at the news and information value of the research results, while the research context remained unconsidered. However, we will see that this research context was important for the virologists.

(3) Questions about interviewees’ own scientific activities: Even though Professors Ciesek and Drosten were interviewed primarily as experts on SARS-CoV-2, the focus was sometimes on their own research. Here, too, the journalistic interest in research results was in the foreground. For example, journalist Anja Martini asked Professor Drosten the following question (Episode 10, 10 March 2020): “Yesterday you published a study … It was about the detectability of the virus, both in the throat and in the stool, respectively in the urine. What did you find out?”

(4) Questions about the scientific approach: The journalists did not completely lose sight of the question of how research results were produced. Especially where up-to-date information was still missing, they had the virologists describe how this could be obtained. In Episode 55, for example, journalist Hennig described the role of asymptomatic people in transmission as a “white spot in the pandemic” and then asked, “How can we estimate how often this occurs, how often people are infected pre-symptomatically?” (8 September 2020).

Not all of these questions were necessarily answered directly by the scientists. Rather, Professors Drosten and Ciesek did not bow to this journalistic form of interpreting the world, but in the performativity of their speaking always insisted on their – scientific – form of interpreting the world by modulating the journalistic questions according to the priorities of the scientific system. Three of these modulations are discussed below.

(1) Modulation by emphasising the difficulties and provisionality of scientific research: In Episode 8 of the podcast (6 March 2020), the following dialogue took place between journalist Hennig and Professor Drosten:

Hennig: There are reports circulating about a Chinese study according to which two variants of the SARS coronavirus two already dominate – one more aggressive and one less aggressive. What does that mean for us?

Drosten: Yes, of course you have to look at this study first if you want to form an opinion about it. And you can see: The virus populations, which initially looked like a wild bunch in Wuhan, have now structured themselves. Over time – because we now have more sequences – the entire conglomerate of these viruses can be sorted into two large subunits. The Chinese scientists […] have now … come up with a name for it and called one subunit “S-variant” and the other “L-variant” or “L-types”. And they ultimately say that the S-type is an older and the L-type is the newer and more aggressive type of virus.

Hennig: What does more aggressive mean in this context – more infectious? Or more pathogenic, so to speak?

Drosten: Yes, that is one of the many things that are thrown around in this study …

The journalist’s question is shaped by three components of world interpretation. She was concerned with the latest “reports” (even those that were only “circulating”; that is, not yet established). This information was not addressed out of an interest in China or in scientific research into SARS-CoV-2, but in terms of its relevance to action for listeners in Germany (“for us?”). Finally, she directly linked to the “study” and its results, without problematising them in any way or referring to them with reservations. Professor Drosten, however, signalled his preferred form of interpreting the world from the outset: the results of this study can only be commented on if one first looks at the study itself; scientific information can only be classified if one looks at its genesis. Professor Drosten elaborated this proposition performatively by first explaining the object of the study – the gradual genetic-diagnostic structuring of the “conglomerate of these viruses” – and then the (narrow) achievement of the authors of the study (the naming of the two variants). Hennig’s follow-up question is also framed by the interest in information that is directly relevant to action, even if it also has a differentiating quality. She asked Professor Drosten to distinguish between the two properties (“infectious” or “pathogenic”). While Hennig’s question still implied that one could give an immediate answer, preferring one or the other, Professor Drosten modulated it again; a clarification was not so easy for him to provide since, as he then explained, the two properties were “thrown around” in the study.

(2) Postponing journalistic questions and clarifying terms: Postponing journalistic questions primarily served to create the conditions for their successful answering, for example by explaining the necessary terms, as in the following conversation (Episode 55, 8 September 2020):

Hennig: So today we are talking about asymptomatic patients or infected people, or rather, they are not patients in that sense. […] Pre-symptomatic patients who perhaps develop symptoms later. But there is also a field in between […] Does that play a big role, these unclear symptoms?

Ciesek: I think the first thing to do is to sort out the terms. There are asymptomatic, that is, …

After a lengthy introduction in which she used several technical terms, the journalist focused on the “unclear symptoms”. But before Professor Ciesek responded to this, she made her own priorities clear and asked to first “sort out the terms”. The following clarification of terms may have the purpose of giving the listeners a better overview. On the other hand, it also gave the virologist the opportunity to deviate from the journalistic use of terms and to set her own accents. Only after this clarification of terms did Professor Ciesek devote herself to the actual question.

(3) Modulation of everyday observations into scientific questions: In a field like medicine – in which the population collects its own, albeit everyday experiences, at the same time as a scientific discipline exists – it is necessary for the virologists to refer to the everyday knowledge of their listeners, even if they cannot work directly with it. This difference between everyday experience and science becomes evident in the following interaction (Episode 1, 26 February 2020):

Hennig: Does that also mean, for example, that a general susceptibility to infections – that was also the question of one of our listeners, who says I have many infections and my small children also get many infections – can that be a risk if you are in danger of infection?

Drosten: The fact is that we hardly have any scientific correlation to someone saying that they have a general susceptibility to infections. Of course, there are severe immunodeficiency syndromes, but they are absolutely rare. And that is not what is usually meant here when someone says, I always catch a cold quickly. There is this perception by some people who think I get sick more than others. This listener has perhaps already provided a partial explanation: she has a small child and small children are, as we say, the amplification of cold viruses in the population.

Although there is no “scientific correlation” for the listener’s everyday perception, Professor Drosten succeeds in establishing a reference to scientific research and in this way modulating the everyday worldly question into a scientific one. First of all, he rejects the scientific hypothesis implied in the question or reduces its scope to the “immunodeficiency syndromes”. As an alternative, he then finds in the listener’s description (the fact that she has a “small child”) a point of reference for a scientific question or thesis. Thus, he pushes aside the journalist’s own interpretation of her “general susceptibility to infections” in order to find a point of reference for the scientific thesis that small children are the “amplification of cold viruses” based on her practical experience.

Overall, the two virologists ensure with their modulations that they do not become simple answerers in this podcast who speak entirely along the journalistic frame. Rather, with their modulations they insist on the scientific form of interpreting the world, which, through the modulations, enters into a connection with the journalistic interpretation of the world contained in the questions. In the first episodes of the podcast, the journalistic and the scientific system of relevance clashed over their respective interpretations of the world, which each sought to make the dominant one. Even without one form of world interpretation becoming the dominant one and without a compromise between the journalistic and the scientific form of world interpretation, the science journalists and the virologists gradually adjusted to each other over the episodes.

Modes of communicating scientific information

This section deals with the question of how, after questions and their modulation have prepared the way for transmitting scientific information, the latter takes place in practice. Four central modes of transmission can be typified here.

(1) Situation-based hypothesis generation on the basis of established theories and methods: At the beginning of the pandemic, virologists, due to a lack of studies on SARS-CoV-2, drew on established knowledge on similar phenomena and used this to form hypotheses on the situation at hand. I have already interpreted such an example in the previous section regarding a listener’s question about her own increased susceptibility to infections. Regarding the problem of this mother of a small child, immediately after the sentences already quoted, the virologist said (Episode 1, 26 February 2020):

Drosten: That means that the runny nose that is brought home from the day care centre is full of viruses. If we test children and adults for cold viruses in the laboratory, and we find the same virus in a child and in an adult, then we are not surprised that children have 10,000 times more virus in their nose than adults with the same virus. … and that of course constitutes infectiousness.

The information transfer here follows several steps: (1) The journalist articulated – in the part printed in the previous section – an empirical datum with the listener’s everyday perception. (2) The virologist related the everyday perception of the listener articulated by the journalist – the empirical datum – to scientific theories. (3) He made it clear that such a simple relation (the reference to a “scientific correlation”) does not work. (4) In doing so, he also excluded a possible but unlikely theoretical concept, which he marked as irrelevant (“immunodeficiency syndromes”). (5) By rejecting simple relations between everyday perception and scientific research, the basis was now prepared to present a more detailed argument to the journalist and the listeners. (6) Using an example (“cold viruses”), the virologist now explained the theory of differential virus concentration in (small) children and adults. (7) Interwoven with this, he also briefly discussed the scientific method upon which this theory is based (analysis of nasal secretions). (8) Based on this, the virologist formulated a hypothesis, although this initially only partially answered the listener’s question (“infectiousness”). These and some other steps of information transfer in the course of situation-related hypothesis formation can also be found – albeit in a different order – in other episodes.

(2) Sequential presentation of studies and critique of methods: With the pandemic, a whole wave of scientific studies on SARS-CoV-2 began, which were then successively discussed in the NDR “Coronavirus-Update” podcast. In the previously discussed type, the virologists’ uncertainty markers mainly referred to the formation of hypotheses, but the theories and methods from which they were drawn were not questioned. However, the present mode of conveying scientific information is characterised by the fact that the virologists, in addition to their results, also elaborated on the limited validity character of the studies.

In Episode 55 (8 September 2020), journalist Hennig and Professor Ciesek primarily discussed the distinction among symptomatic, asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic cases. In this context, the virologist mentioned that “asymptomatic courses” are “more frequent” in children than in adults. When Hennig asked whether this was “still true”, the professor began to report on a new study. First she presented some key figures of its research design (“900 children”, on average “10 years” old). Then Professor Ciesek reported on the research question (“How many of the children have antibodies?”), before describing the results of the study: “And they saw that 68 of them had antibodies. And of these 68 children with specific antibodies, 50% were without symptoms.” This was put into the context of the state of research, with the virologist pointing out that there were more asymptomatic people in antibody studies than in PCR-based studies. However, she then turned her attention to the symptoms reported by the other 50% of the children, which she described as “interesting” (albeit without making it clear why they were interesting). She then went on to talk about the “weaknesses” of the study, which lay in the research practice, such as with regard to the sample (these were “children of parents” who “work in the health system”) and the “seasonality”.

In this and other accounts of scientific research that come close to “real-time insights into research processes” (Pasternack and Beer 2022: 47), the following steps of the sequential presentation (which are not necessarily consecutive) can be identified: (1) The object is introduced, as well as the (2) question. (3) The sample is named and (4) the experimental or research set-up is described. (5) Limitations arising from the sample or the methods are discussed and, on this basis, (6) the results of the study are outlined and – if necessary – (7) conclusions for the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic are drawn. With these variable steps, Professors Drosten and Ciesek introduced the basic principles of scientific work, not only communicating the results of scientific studies, but also important components of their production. This also enabled them to criticise studies.

Furthermore, with this way of conveying scientific information, which characterised this podcast, the virologists made it clear to their listeners that scientific results with the conclusions derived from them for the pandemic could never be had without the context of their production in research. To the extent that the virologists here no longer simply conveyed information but were concerned with how scientific information was appropriated by the audience (namely, taking into account its production context), they crossed the threshold from journalistic to educational format. In the following types, this educational format will become even clearer.

(3) Explanation of scientific terms: Among other things, the virologists used differentiating–exemplifying real definitions to explain technical terms. This usually served to establish the starting point for an argumentation (such as a situational hypothesis). In the following case, however, Professor Ciesek showed how difficult it can be to denote conditions or cases with the correct terms. Shortly before – in the passage already referred to in the previous section – she had drawn the journalist’s attention to the fact that it was first necessary to “sort out the terms” (Episode 55, 8 September 2020):

And now you had mentioned the term “pre-symptomatic” earlier. This is a very important term that is often not well separated. If it is Tuesday and you are tested today with your throat scratching, for example. Then you have either been asymptomatic or symptomatic – that is, had symptoms or not – depending on how you assess it. But when you talk about “pre-symptomatic”, you always have a temporal component to it, you can only say that in retrospect. So “pre-symptomatic” means that there is a phase where you were already contagious but had no symptoms yet and then developed symptoms in the course of the disease. You only know this in retrospect. If we had a positive test from you, you would not know that today. For example, if you say: “I don’t have any symptoms today, but I’ve tested positive,” it could look different tomorrow or the day after. That’s why it would actually be better not to talk about whether asymptomatic people can transmit the virus, but rather patients with an asymptomatic course, so that we always take this temporal component into account in any case.

Professor Ciesek developed the term “pre-symptomatic” by first using an “example” to explain the difference between this term and the previously discussed terms “asymptomatic” and “symptomatic” (“temporal component”). This differentiating-exemplifying real definition went so far that the virologist advised that the term “asymptomatic” should no longer be used for a condition at all, but only for a “course”, in order to emphasise the provisional nature of this diagnosis.

The extent to which these technical terms were explained in the podcast in an appropriation-related manner (that is, how much the virologists were concerned with building up listeners’ knowledge) is also evident in the following differentiating real definition, which Professor Ciesek brought closer to the listeners by means of a mnemonic (Episode 55, 8 September 20):

There is quarantine and isolation. I always remember this as a mnemonic: “Isolation” is the infected, so “I” and “I”, those who really have the infection. And “quarantine” is the contacts, “q” and “c”, although it’s not spelled with a “c”.

Professor Ciesek offered the listeners a memo technique and underlined how important this distinction is to her, not only in science, but also in the public. With proposing this memo technique, the virologist showed a genuine educational concern.

(4) Criticism of the distorting communication of information through social and mass media: The fact that the virologists decidedly separate this educational from a journalistic concern becomes clear, among other things, in the recurring references to the distorting media reporting and similar discourses in the social media on SARS-CoV-2. For example, referring to a study on the survival of viruses on surfaces, Professor Drosten said (Episode 14, 16 March 2020):

And it is very problematic, because something like that will probably be published visibly, so that it also triggers press reports. If the press then says, “Alert, the virus can be kept on surfaces for two days”, then perhaps a false impression is created. People who want to protect themselves also set the wrong priorities. They then say, “Help, from now on I won’t touch any door handles”. But whether I get close to someone, I lose sight of that.

The press was not necessarily accused of conveying false information but rather of giving people a “false impression” through its focus and the urge to create headlines (“alert”) in such a way that instead of maintaining a physical distance from their fellow human beings, they protected themselves from surfaces. This shows that the virologists, with their – ultimately educational – communication of scientific information, were also concerned with influencing the pandemic-related behaviour of the population.

The emergence of an educational space

As much as the virologists actively contributed to the dissemination efforts in the NDR “Coronavirus-Update” podcast, the journalists also became its educational catalysts, that is, they reinforced listeners’ knowledge accumulation. They recontextualised the virologists’ spoken contributions and thus promoted the listeners’ appropriation of the information conveyed. They brought the listeners into the conversation and thus made them addressees. At the same time, the journalists referred to and rearticulated a fictitious memory of interaction that connected them and the virologists with the listeners and served the latter’s understanding.

Recontextualisations

When conveying information, one can neither determine how it will be acquired nor whether it will reach the addressees at all. When strangers interact, a “pretense of agreement” (Garfinkel 1959: 57) initially signals (at least partial) understanding – beyond any evidence – so that the interaction can continue. If, in the further course of the interaction, the meaning of what is said gradually becomes clear, an understanding of the information and a translation into one’s own knowledge may actually occur. One form that serves to clarify the meaning is “recontextualisation” (Martens and Asbrand 2017), in which the journalists (on behalf of the listeners) put the virologists’ contributions into their own words (i.e. translate them). There are three typical forms here.

(1) Recontextualisation in everyday language: The virologists often used technical terms in their contributions, which the journalists obviously assumed were not familiar and understandable to the listeners. At this point, the journalists took over and reformulated the meaning of these scientific terms in everyday language. For example, at one point in the podcast Professor Ciesek spoke of a “nocebo effect” and contrasted this with the “placebo” effect, which she assumed “most people” knew. Journalist Hennig apparently disagreed (Episode 55, 8 September 2020):

Ciesek: A nocebo effect was found in drug studies; well, most people know placebo.

Hennig: Positive effects, although there is no active substance in it, and in this case a negative effect because it is expected.

Ciesek: Exactly. There are studies that show that if you inform patients particularly well ….

The journalist here briefly summarised the terms “placebo” and “nocebo”. Although Professor Ciesek validated this everyday language recontextualisation of the journalist, she then explained the nocebo effect in a little more detail before returning to her actual subject, a study. As can be seen here – and also in other examples – the everyday language recontextualisation has the effect that the virologist also paid more attention to the problem of understanding and dealt with it by adding further explanations.

(2) Recontextualisation in scientific terms: The journalist herself put the facts described by the researcher into scientific terms and recontextualised them in this way. For example, Professor Ciesek described a study on travel returnees, of whom “seven were positive”, and of those “four were also symptomatic”. She went on to say (Episode 55, 8 September 2020):

Ciesek: Three of them had no symptoms at the time we examined them, but afterwards, about 2 days later, some of them developed symptoms.

Hennig: So we call that pre-symptomatic.

Ciesek: Exactly.

Here, journalist Hennig not only presented herself as an eager listener who could reproduce the information already conveyed in the podcast. At the same time, the scientific recontextualisation of the description of the facts also enabled the listeners to learn new scientific terms or to check the quality of the appropriation of already acquired scientific terms. This contribution was confirmed in its propositional content by Professor Ciesek (“Exactly.”). She then also announced that she would expand the meaning of this technical term later, that she would give the listeners another opportunity to learn.

(3) Sense-explicative recontextualisation: In contrast to translation into everyday or scientific language, sense-explicative recontextualisation is about putting the facts at the centre of the conversation into one’s own words in such a way that the conclusions arising from them become clear. In the following, journalist Hennig recontextualised a speech by Professor Ciesek by explaining the consequences resulting from it (Episode 57, 22 September 2020):

Ciesek: We tried to grow this virus, but we didn’t succeed. It is probably small gene segments that are still present in the wastewater, but fortunately they were not infectious.

Hennig: So it’s suitable for epidemiological monitoring, but beyond that it’s no cause for concern, to sum it up.

Ciesek: Exactly.

While the virologist concentrated on explicating the individual research steps (“to grow”) and giving explanations for the findings (“small gene sections”), the journalist was concerned with drawing the conclusions from this research that remained implicit in this word contribution. It becomes clear here that the sense-explicative recontextualisation not only implies a transfer into one’s own words, but also – and this distinguishes it from the previous recontextualisations – draws the meaning of what was said in a certain direction and intensifies it. The intensification was done here with regard to the relevance of the information for the listeners, who should have no “cause for concern”. This recontextualisation was also explicitly validated by Professor Ciesek.

In all types of recontextualisation, the journalists took on the role of listeners who tried to find out whether their own understanding was appropriate by translating it into their own language. By playing this role of appropriating information, they became the educational catalysts of transmission.

Addressing the listeners

While the recontextualisations by the journalists were largely tacit (that is, it was not specifically pointed out that they served to facilitate the listeners’ understanding), there were also explicit addresses of these listeners in the podcast. However, this does not necessarily mean that the listeners were addressed directly. Even at the beginning of the respective episodes, the journalists only addressed their audience in exceptional cases (for example, by briefly saying, “Welcome to our update”, as in Episode 16 on 18 March 2020). Far more important seem to be those moments in which the listeners’ interests and questions, but also their learning progress, were addressed. Two typical addresses can be noted here.

(1) Knowledge building of the listeners and their follow-up questions: The listeners became explicit addressees above all where the journalists articulated their questions and interests (see above). These questions sometimes built on the listeners’ initial learning successes, as in the following example (Episode 48, 11 June 2020):

Mr Drosten, we have very attentive listeners. In the last episode, we talked about the complex topic of mutations and about the fact that there are apparently already different variants of the virus circulating that can be transmitted simultaneously. There was a follow-up question as to whether we should expect the evolution of the virus to have an impact on vaccine development. Do we have to constantly adapt the vaccine as we do with influenza?

Journalist Hennig marked the listeners as “very attentive” in order to then introduce the “follow up question”. Characteristically, this was not only based on specific information that had been given in the previous programme on the “topic of mutations”, but on the fact that the listeners had transferred this information into knowledge and linked it to their knowledge of “vaccine development”, for example using the example of the flu vaccination. This is the only way to explain that the listeners asked whether one has to “constantly adapt” the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in the case of mutations.

(2) Heterodox information from the listeners and its correction: The questions from the listeners were not only those that solved everyday SARS-CoV-2 problems or articulated questions that followed on from newly acquired knowledge. Sometimes the journalists also voiced questions that were shaped by information (and, in part, also knowledge based on it) that can be described as heterodox, insofar as they did not come from mainstream natural science, but from other (non-scientific) sources. To give an example, such heterodox information referred to the mRNA vaccines’ potential to modify the “genome”. Journalist Hennig articulated the question in this regard as follows (Episode 66, 24 November 2020):

Hennig: We keep getting emails from listeners: they keep reading that these mRNA vaccines change the genetic material of the vaccinated person because the virus protein is produced in the cells. Is that a justified concern?

Drosten: No, that is not the case. The mRNA is not integrated into the cell’s own DNA, into the chromosome. It is only used to produce the protein.

The way in which the heterodox information was formulated was very different from the questions examined in the previous type. Here, the listeners were not assumed to think (that is, to have made it part of their knowledge) that the mRNA vaccine attacks the genetic material. Rather, Hennig only referred to a recurring reading experience of these listeners, so a certain distance to this heterodox information was already assumed. In this way, the listeners were given the opportunity to distance themselves from this information, if necessary. The journalist’s actual question, which was less about how the mRNA vaccine works than about the listeners’ “concern”, served this purpose. Professor Drosten made it clear in his answer that this concern was unfounded.

Rearticulations of the fictitious interaction memory

Beyond an advice format and a programme that always tries to convey only the most current information, the listeners gradually played a role in this podcast as those who not only appropriated the information conveyed, but transformed it into their own knowledge. The podcast actors had to reckon with this knowledge of the listeners – as could already be seen in the addresses I discussed in the previous section. The last type discussed also shows that the podcast actors had ambitions to guide the listeners’ knowledge construction; that is, to make sure that they only transformed correct (orthodox) information into knowledge.

One way in which the successive construction of the knowledge necessary for coping with the pandemic was promoted by the journalists and virologists is the rearticulation of a fictitious interaction memory. Before I explain in more detail what is meant by this, I want to give an example. As journalist Hennig put it, in Episode 32 (16 April 2020):

We touched on it briefly once in an earlier episode, but not all listeners listen to all episodes. Can you briefly explain again what the difference is when you say here in the podcast, for example, “yes, we have a pandemic in an early phase”? And the WHO is still hesitating for a very long time. What is the crucial difference when the WHO assesses something like that?

On one hand, the journalist implicitly expressed her expectation that those who regularly listened to the podcast had understood and transformed into knowledge all the information that had already been conveyed. On the other hand, she took into account that some of the listeners were only there irregularly, so they could not necessarily participate in this fund of information. At the same time, this also gave a new opportunity to those who had not understood the context, even though they had listened to all the episodes, and thus lowered the threshold of participation.

If the journalist expected the appropriation of information by listeners and at the same time virtually repaired the lack of appropriation possibilities, then she assumed a fictitious interaction memory that connected the podcast actors with the audience. Interaction memory is understood to be those knowledge stocks “which are layered up in the course of” the “joint interaction” (Schütze 1980: 74). Such an interaction memory actually unfolded between the journalists and the virologists, as was documented in the gradual attunement of these actors to each other (see above). If the journalists and virologists expected the listeners to have already acquired certain information and converted it into knowledge, then they were relying on a fictitious interaction memory; that is, solely on the assumption that this information had been acquired. The fact that this is a fictitious (that is, only assumed) interactional memory of the podcast becomes particularly clear in the ‘repairs’ with which the journalists brought listeners who did not regularly follow the programmes up to date (see above).

Such a rearticulation of the fictitious interaction memory can be quite brief and quasi interspersed. For example, journalist Hennig recalled the following in Episode 19 (23 March 2020): “When we started the podcast, we talked about the fact that the duration of exposure to the virus also plays a role in the risk of infection”. In a kind of review, she conveyed this information again, and then asked a follow-up question. Therefore, the rearticulation of the fictitious interaction memory was not an end in itself, but served to prepare and rhetorically introduce a question that could only make sense within the podcast if the listeners also had the corresponding prior knowledge.

Conclusion

In the NDR podcast “Coronavirus-Update”, an interaction between journalists and virologists, whose journalistic and scientific frameworks originally competed with each other, has given rise to an educational format. There were certainly important external reasons for this, above all the long-lasting pandemic and the existential uncertainty it caused among the audience, who were thirsty for information. While other journalistic formats and also other podcasts countered this situation with completely different means (see Bonixe 2021; Nee and Santana 2022), in the case of the NDR “Coronavirus Update” podcast, the combination of its longevity with its monothematic nature and a permanent team of conversation partners led to the main actors increasingly acting as “civic educators” (Fahy and Nisbet, 2011: 788).

This podcast not only had an “explanatory and informative tone” – which Bonixe (2021: 104) discovered in Portuguese SARS-CoV-2 podcasts – but also crossed the threshold from journalistic information transfer to education: The podcast actors did not only convey information that listeners could, if they so wished, use for self-contained knowledge accumulation. They helped listeners to continuously build up knowledge and, by proceeding from a fictitious interaction memory, checked knowledge accumulation. This appropriation-related conveyance of information was served not only by the different forms of conveying scientific information by virologists – from situational hypothesis formation to explanation of scientific terms to the sequential presentation of studies and methodological critique – but also by the addressing of listeners by journalists and the recontextualisations they provided. Journalists acted as educational catalysts and their interviewees, that is, the virologists, made sure that listeners did not only receive information but also could integrate it into their growing knowledge of scientific research. By repeatedly rearticulating and expanding the fictitious interaction memory of an “imagined community” (Anderson 1991) of loyal listeners (cf. Barrios-O’ Neill 2018: 153), the main actors of the podcast were able to successively convey new and more complex scientific information about the pandemic without always having to start again from scratch in conveying the information.

The possibilities and special features of podcasts – what Berry (2018: 26) calls “podcastness” – have allowed this trajectory from a purely journalistic format to an educational one as well: Without being dependent on it, podcasts allow for a distinct seriality, which – if the podcast is successful – goes hand in hand with building a regular and committed audience who opts in (Birch and Weitkamp 2010; Rime et al., 2022). The NDR “Coronavirus Update” podcast has taken these features to the extreme by retaining its large audience over two years and 113 episodes.

One can even argue that the length of this podcast combined with its monothematic nature made it necessary to turn from a purely journalistic format to an educational one. Such a long series of thematically related episodes could only work if the listeners’ knowledge was continuously built up in such a way that each episode could convey new information that tied in with old, known information. The journalistic search for the most up-to-date information was linked here with the educational communication of scientific information, as the ever-new information provided during the course of the pandemic would no longer have been comprehensible without the listeners’ continuous building knowledge background. For these reasons, the actors of the NDR podcast “Coronavirus Update” were almost compelled not only to do science journalism but to educate a pandemic-conscious public.