Abstract

The present article offers a contrastive analysis of articles published online by two media outlets of two different countries dealing with science, technology and interrelated topics. In so doing, the goal is to explore the role played by gender dynamics in the pragmatic strategies which underlie the communication of scientific knowledge to the wider audiences by the mainstream media. The multi-layered interpretative approach centred on corpus-based discourse analysis and visual semiotics adopted in this paper, it is argued, allows for a more holistic understanding of the role played by the media in the perpetuation of power imbalance and gender stereotypes among their readership, better understood here as discursive communities, and their everyday communicative practices. It is further suggested that an analysis of how knowledge is mediatized can offer ways into understanding wider cultural patterns and values.