Manuscripts and Public Communication
ManuscriptsFootnote 1 are—or pretend to be—“old media” and could easily be dismissed as “old news.” However, narratives about manuscript finds and forgeries appear in the news on a regular basis and have done so for a long time.Footnote 2 Recently, in March 2021, a report about newly discovered Dead Sea Scrolls fragments attracted media attention worldwide.Footnote 3 During the last twenty-five years, international media have reported on, for example, the Jehoash inscription (2001–2013), the Gospel of Judas/the Tchachos codex (2006), the Hazon Gabriel tablet (2008), the so-called Gospel of Jesus’s Wife (2012–2022), the Sappho papyri (2014), the occurrence of the post-2002 Dead Sea Scrolls-like fragments (2016–2021), as well as the controversies associated with the manuscript purchases of the Green Collection/the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. (2015–2021).Footnote 4
During each of these manuscript-related events, scholars of ancient religions who are knowledgeable about manuscripts have shared their expertise with media audiences worldwide. The current article reports from an interview study with a selection of these academic experts. The study explores the scholars’ motivations for and involvement in public communication about manuscript finds and forgeries, as well as the experienced effects of and reactions to their media exposure.
The article is the outcome of a larger study of the relationships, tensions, and overlaps between the media and the academyFootnote 5 in the creation and circulation of narratives about manuscript finds and forgeries.Footnote 6 Questions regarding experiences with public-facing scholarship were an important part of our interview protocol from the very beginning. However, in the preliminary planning and test phase of the study, weFootnote 7 did not intend to publish a separate article about the challenges of media engagement, but we soon realized that the topic was so central to the scholars we interviewed that, in order to do justice to the interviewees, we had to dedicate a specific article to the topic.
Theoretically, the study is inspired by the mediatization-of-science perspective. This means that we are interested in the interplay between the academy and the media in the current communicational environment of research publicity. The study explores the potential impact of media concerns on academic practices, the effects of promotional discourses within the academy, and the influence of strategies and priorities at the institutional level on the lives and careers of individual academics.
The main research questions of the article are: How have the scholars of ancient religions in the sample experienced public-facing scholarship pertaining to manuscript finds and forgeries? How has media publicity affected their lives and careers? How have institutional expectations from the media and from the academy influenced their research and communication practices? What is it that makes manuscripts newsworthy, and are the experiences of scholars who serve as experts concerning manuscript finds and forgeries particular or generic to the experiences of academics that engage in public communication?
Theoretical Perspective and Conceptual Framework
Since the 2000s, mediatization theory has served as a fruitful and debated framework for studying societal change, particularly in European media studies.Footnote 8 Knut Lundby has defined “mediatization” as “the process in modern society through which the extensive role of the various media transforms the patterns of social interactions and workings of social institutions.”Footnote 9 A mediatization perspective aims to understand the role of the media in social and cultural change in societies that have experienced intensified technical mediation and increasing media saturation. The underlying assumption in mediatization theory is that the media are part and parcel of contemporary dynamics of societal change and that the media have become more important for—even integral to—other societal domains.
Mediatization theory has been applied when seeking to understand the relationship between the media and the academy. This application of the perspective has been conceptualized as the “mediatization of science.”Footnote 10 According to Esa Väliverronen, the mediatization-of-science perspective highlights that the mediated public sphere has become increasingly influential as “an arena for the public legitimation of science.”Footnote 11 Universities pay more and more attention to visibility management; promotional practices have become institutionalized and public communication a strategic activity. In addition, the academy’s public-facing practices impact “not only science communication but also the practices of the scientific profession itself.”Footnote 12
In his application of the mediatization-of-science perspective, Väliverronen combines mediatization theory with perspectives on the commercialization and marketization of the academy. He proposes that “media logic” and “media effects” should be studied in tandem with a “promotional logic” as a “rise of promotional cultures.”Footnote 13 Promotional discourses and corporate communication have become part of everyday practices at universities. Academic reputation has become a brand, and the individual scholar’s public engagement and self-promotion is now increasingly an expectation and an institutional practice.Footnote 14 Väliverronen stresses that “promotional practices are not simply external and instrumental but also introduce ideological and cultural shifts to science communication practices and the public role of science.”Footnote 15
In the current article, we will use the insights of mediatization theory in general and the mediatization-of-science perspectives in particular to help us grasp the experiences of scholars who have engaged with the media about manuscript finds and manuscript forgeries. In other words, we will explore how dynamics on the institutional level impact individual scholars. We are particularly interested in studying institutional dynamics in the interplay between the media and the academy, the communicational ecology of research publicity, and the ways in which perceived expectations of public-facing academic practices shape the motivation, frame the experiences, and, at least in part, influence the outcome of these scholars’ engagement with the media.
A note on how the term “the media” is applied in this article is necessary before we move on. The scholars we interviewed tended to use the term as a catch-all reference to a perceived media industry, “The Media” with a capital M. When we (the authors of the current article) use it, we apply it in reference to an institution. Mia Lövheim and Stig Hjarvard have defined an “institution” as “a framework for action that regulates the structuring of resources (material and symbolic) and rules (formal and informal) within a larger social and cultural context.” Thus, an “institution” is not the same as an “organization,” but “institutions must be enacted by some aggregate of actors in society, such as organizations.”Footnote 16 When we explore the media as an institution, we are interested in their shared practices, patterns, and logics.Footnote 17
The “media outlets” we have focused on are public-facing media outlets. Most of them are professional, editorial news outlets and broadcast media, such as television, radio, print, and online print media. Those who produce these materials are mostly professional actors, such as journalists. However, our material bears witness to the entangled nature of professional media outlets and self-publishing social/networked media. In the everyday lives of academics, these media often overlap. Communication of science takes place in a large and multifaceted ecology of media outlets. For example, social media serve as sources for journalists, content from editorial media is circulated in social media, and some academics self-publish in blogs or in other networked media.Footnote 18
Materials and Method
We base the findings and analysis of the present article on nine interviews with academic professionals within the study of ancient religions who, during the last twenty years, have engaged with professional media outlets about manuscript finds and forgeries. We used purposive sampling, selecting interviewees who had served as academic expert voices in a variety of media outlets and formats. Their portfolios include, for example, interviews, documentaries, live television, and writing assignments.
Nine interviews is a small sample. However, since the number of scholars of ancient religions that may serve as experts at events of manuscript finds and forgeries is limited, the sample of nine interviews make up a relatively high percentage of the total number of experts in the field.
The study has an international scope in that we interviewed scholars of several nationalities. In order to ensure the diversity of the sample, we selected five interviewees that identify as men and four identifying as women. Two of them are early career scholars. Seven are mid-career or senior scholars. Seven are tenured faculty members or faculty in permanent positions. Two are untenured or independent scholars.
The interviews were conducted from October 2020 to January 2021. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that the interviewees live on different continents, we conducted digital interviews. The interviews were semi-structured, individual interviews lasting approximately one hour. We used a predesigned but flexible interview protocol, allowing for detours to follow up on particularly interesting topics arising during the interviews. We also adapted our questions to the different experiences and types of media engagement of the interviewees. The recorded sound files from all the interviews were transcribed verbatim and de-identified. The analysis is based on the transcribed interview data.
The analysis of the interview materials was a continuous process, starting when we performed the interviews, continuing through the close reading of the interview transcripts, and occurring also in the structuring, writing, and revision phases.
To verify our interpretations, we employed communicative validation. In the autumn of 2022, we shared a draft of this article with the interviewees, offering them the opportunity to check citations, respond, and withdraw if they so wished. Many of them provided valuable clarifications that helped us improve the article.
Ethical Considerations
The study has been reviewed and approved by the Norwegian Centre for Research DataFootnote 19 and follows the ethical guidelines of the Norwegian National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and the Humanities.Footnote 20 We obtained permission and consent from the participants before the interviews took place. All the interviewees were informed both orally and in writing about the purpose of the interview and their rights to withdraw from the study at any time.
We have taken several measures to ensure the confidentiality of the interviewees. First, as suggested above, the interviewees make up an international selection, and we have consciously included a wide set of media events spanning the last decades covered by media outlets in several countries.
Second, in the process of transcription, coding, and analysis, we de-identified the interviewees, referring to them as “Interviewee 1–9.”
Third, in the writing process, we have introduced several measures to avoid recognizability. We provide only a bare minimum of information about the interviewees. No citations that can give away the identity of the interviewees or that indirectly involve third parties are included. We anonymize the gender of the interviewee when gender is not relevant to the point that we or the interviewee are making, using the gender-inclusive plural “they/them.” When gender is indeed a relevant aspect to the analysis, we provide this information but avoid using the interviewee identification tag (i.e., Interviewee 1–9), applying “Interviewee anonymized” instead. We use the same strategy to avoid recognizability due to other features that make an interviewee stand out. On the occasions that, for example, word choice or syntax may give away a non-native speaker of English, we have normalized the language to standard American English. These measures may, on some occasions, lead to loss of information. However, to protect the confidentiality of our respondents, we consider this the better choice.
Fourth, in the feedback and revision process, we explicitly encouraged the interviewees to look for aspects that may put their confidentiality at risk.
Previous Research
No one has yet explored the experiences academic experts on manuscript finds and forgeries have with media engagement. Indeed, the relationship between manuscript scholarship and public media is generally understudied. Some publications do mention media representations of manuscripts as part of a larger discussionFootnote 21 but very few studies have been fully dedicated to this topic. The 2005 special issue of Dead Sea Discoveries (vol. 12.1) concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls in the popular imagination, edited by Maxine L. Grossman and Catherine M. Murphy, is the exception. This collection of eight articles explored aspects of the representation of the Dead Sea Scrolls in popular media but did not touch upon scholars’ experiences with public-facing scholarship.
Research on academics’ media engagement in other fields has been steadily growing. It includes studies of media engagement in, for example, history,Footnote 22 archaeology,Footnote 23 life sciences,Footnote 24 political sciences,Footnote 25 and criminology.Footnote 26 Some of these studies have focused on the motivations and experiences of researchers,Footnote 27 whereas others have focused on academics’ access to media professionals.Footnote 28 Some are case studies or general reflections on the situation in a given field.Footnote 29 Other publications are based on large-scale, survey-based research.Footnote 30 Several of the studies have focused on particular national contexts—the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand in particularFootnote 31 —while yet others have an international reach.Footnote 32 The 2012 anthology, The Sciences’ Media Connection – Public Communication and its Repercussion, edited by Simone Rödder, Martina Franzen and Peter Weingart, warrants particular mention. Their volume builds on a theoretical apparatus related to the mediatization perspective,Footnote 33 and many of our findings agree with the findings of the volume’s contributions. However, none of the essays in this 2012 volume study experts on ancient religions, on manuscripts, or any other academic expertise in the field of religious studies.
During the last decade, the literature on the harassment of academics in online fora and social media has grown substantially.Footnote 34 Although the current article focuses primarily on academics’ experiences with professional media outlets, the entangled nature of professional and social media makes this broader research literature interesting to us. The situation of women scholars, academics of Muslim faith, and scholars of color has attracted special attention in previous research and is of particular relevance.Footnote 35 Research contributions that focus on harassment and the risks of public-facing scholarship sometimes also explore individual academics’ freedom of expression and practices of self-censoring.Footnote 36 Alternatively, they may discuss these risks in relation to the marketization of the academy, the accountability of the university, and the growing institutional control pertaining to public reputation.Footnote 37
Findings
A. Motivations: Sense of Duty
What motivates public-facing scholarship? When asked about their motivation for engaging with the media, all the scholars we interviewed expressed that they experience a sense of duty to share their knowledge about manuscripts and ancient religions with the larger public.
Interviewee 5 stresses that “I am an intellectual, a very engaged one” and sees public outreach as an important part of their job. Interviewee 8 feels that they are on a mission and have a message to convey to the world. Interviewee 6 ascertains that the motivation is primarily a moral one and notes that somebody has to educate the public about religion “because somebody is going to do that. If it is not scholars, someone else will do that.”
The scholars’ sense of duty also extends to the academic institutions where they work and the subject areas of their research. Interviewee 3 says, “You’re sort of pre-programmed to say yes to the media, to media inquiries, just because the institution in general favors it.” Some of the interviewees hold that public scholarship is instrumental in order to save the humanities at a time of perceived crisis. They see it as particularly important to studies of ancient religious texts. Interviewee 1 holds that this is crucial in countries with publicly funded universities. At a time of increased scrutiny, attention to the use of public funds and discussions about the universities’ purpose, this interviewee engages with the media to make sure that people see the value of studying manuscripts and the texts they contain.
Several of the interviewees also include benefits to their own careers as part of their motivation for engaging with the media. The early career scholars hope that media visibility will improve their chances of getting a university job (Interviewees anonymized). Among the more senior scholars, some see media engagement as an opportunity to build a public profile or to become “the go-to person” in their country (Interviewee 1).
Finally, many of the interviewees in the study also point to the joy and excitement of public scholarship (e.g., Interviewee 5). They are fascinated by the topic they research, they want to draw attention to it, and they hope to get their message across to a broader group (Interviewee 4 and 8). They experience a sense of accomplishment (Interviewee 1), and they also enjoy the media attention (Interviewees 4 and 7).
B. Contact with Media Professionals: Negotiations and Risk Management
How does this selection of scholars of ancient religion experience their contact and relationships with media professionals? The interviewees portray their experiences of working with media professionals as a continuous negotiation between control, trust, and risk. Their choice of words when describing the experience include terms such as “collaboration,” “a game,” and “a dance,” but also “caution,” “risk,” and “strict control” (Interviewees 2, 3, 5, and 7).
Interviewee 5 has had an overall positive experience with media professionals. This interviewee feels in control with the content production and is comfortable with the role the media ascribe to them. Another interviewee expresses the opposite view: “You’re not in control of the way that the media brand you. You’re just not. And it involves giving a lot of control up” (Interviewee 6). Indeed, all the interviewees in the sample express a worry about the ways in which journalists frame their contributions. This also includes Interviewee 5: “Sometimes, it is very tiring, because you must be constantly [in control], you know, what you want to say, how to say it, how to shape the narrative.”
Interviewee 3 describes the lack of control, noting that, “I nearly always feel like the power is with the journalists, because they are asking the questions and they’re controlling the message.” The scholars in the sample are concerned about the contexts the journalists will provide for citations. The journalists may accurately report their words but frame, edit, or cut them in ways that change the contents or the interpretation of their original statement. Another worry is headlines (Interviewee 3 and 5). Regardless of the trust that may have developed between a journalist and an academic expert, once the piece is out of the hands of the journalist the frame may still shift when the headline is decided by editorial staff.
Three of the interviewees describe their experiences with documentaries as particularly demanding (Interviewees 3, 7 and 9). They report that some documentary filmmakers insist on an unparalleled degree of control and that they experience pressure to give them what they want. In an attempt to create an exclusive report, to make the media message as coherent as possible, and to adapt it to global audiences, these filmmakers aim to regulate the vocabulary as well as to control the interpretation of historical texts and materials.
Many of the interviewees experience that journalists are crafting a narrative and that they are ascribed a certain character in that narrative. Some senior interviewees in the sample make sure to find out which character the journalists or producers are constructing for them before they accept an assignment. Interviewee 7 says, “You know, I think every story has a big bad wolf, I mean who’s the big bad wolf in the story, and so what role am I playing relative to that big bad wolf.”
The interviewees also show awareness of media frames. Interviewee 3 points out that journalists actively connect the manuscripts and the texts they carry to contemporary contested issues: “They use ancient manuscripts and the early church to stage modern debates about priestly celibacy, gay marriages, anything—all these contingent social issues.” Interviewees 1, 2, and 8 experience that some journalists are looking for “a story” or a scandal in order to write a news piece that “sells.” They also find that media narratives of manuscript finds and forgeries are fraught with ideology and sometimes a desire to either disprove or prove the veracity of the Bible. Several of the academics we interviewed report that they have experienced that media engagement about contentious issues related to manuscripts may get them into trouble.
Due to these experiences, the experts we interviewed have all developed strategies and sets of protective actions to control the expected and experienced risks of media engagement. Some regulate it, for example, by carefully choosing the topics they agree to talk about (Interviewee 6). Others express that they carefully select media outlets and formats. Interviewees 5, 6, and 8 pick reputable outlets and journalists they trust. Some interviewees opt for certain formats while avoiding others. They mention the advantages of live television, since at these events you cannot be edited (Interviewees 1 and 9). Some stress the advantages of written communication, such as email, over oral communication (e.g., telephone). Written communication gives them the opportunity to formulate exact phrases and, in the process of a citation check, they can prove what they have actually said. Others have given up after many years in the game. Interviewee 1 says: “I am always misquoted.” This interviewee no longer checks citations and trusts that readers will know that media representations are often incorrect or skewed.
C. Experienced Effects of Media Engagement
How do the scholars of ancient religions experience the effects of public-facing scholarship on their professional lives? Several of them state that public communication has had positive effects on their academic life. For one, media engagement has inspired new directions of research (e.g., Interviewee 3 and 8). In addition, communicating their research to a broader audience has influenced their language and style. Interviewee 6 asserts that this has made their academic writing style better and more readable. Interviewee 4 holds that it has made them a more comfortable presenter. Another interviewee says that working with the media, particularly television, has granted them access to artifacts, archives, and collections they would have otherwise struggled to access (Interviewee 7).
However, the majority of the scholars interviewed hold that media engagement is “a mixed bag” (Interviewee 6). One major concern is the time and effort spent on public communication. Interviewee 5 generally finds that time spent on the media is time well spent but still admits that “I was supposed to finish a book and I wasn’t able to. I mean, I spent a lot of time on the media.” Others describe it as “exhausting” (Interviewee 9) and “time consuming” (Interviewee 7). Interviewee 3 holds that media engagement can sometimes sidetrack early career scholars because public communication does not count in the same way as academic articles when a scholar is being evaluated for promotion or tenure.
Many of the interviewees express concerns that their public-facing scholarship has had negative effects on their careers. The early career scholars fear that their media engagement concerning manuscript finds and forgeries has impacted future employment opportunities. One of them explains, “I received two or three emails back in 20[.] that told me that my career was over and I’d never get a job in [name of country], which is in some sense true, so, I’m unemployed now” (Interviewee anonymized). Another expresses a similar reflection, saying, “I wonder about what effect any of this has had on my own employment prospects. Ah, there’s been, I would say there’s been a couple of inherent risks, most definitely” (Interviewee anonymized).
One of the scholars in the sample works at a university and in an academic culture where their university’s leadership does not favor media appearances by faculty members. This interviewee expresses that media engagement has had a negative effect on their professional life. They assume that it has affected both the chances of promotion and the chances of attracting funding (Interviewee 1). Another interviewee focuses on the general impact of public-facing scholarship on their career: “I do think that by being a public intellectual, by doing this kind of work, there will always be this kind of asterisk next to my academic work that says, that sort of connotes something like ‘not serious’ ” (Interviewee 9).
Interviewees in our sample also fear the legal ramifications of their work. One of the interviewees has experienced being subpoenaed while others worry that they may experience litigation corresponding to—or because of—their statements. This creates a fear of getting facts wrong or expressing unbalanced views in an interview situation (Interviewees anonymized).
Most of the interviewees also share concerns regarding their academic and public persona. As noted above, journalists may ascribe certain characters to academics; they become figures in a pre-determined narrative. Some of the interviewees experience a gap between the public image that the media have ascribed to them and the image that they have of themselves. Furthermore, some interviewees express fears of having their reputation damaged or destroyed by their media engagement. They cautiously select their engagements, avoiding those that may lead to an erosion of academic integrity and that may potentially become “career-breakers” (Interviewees 3 and 6).
Some of the interviewees report on the emotional work associated with their media engagement. They are proud of some parts of the work they have done but disappointed with and even shameful about other parts. Many report about “lessons learned” in the early phase of their engagement with the media which have shifted the way they perform public scholarship (Interviewees 2, 5, and 8).
D. Reactions to Media Engagement: Media Audiences, Colleagues, and Home Institutions
How do the scholars experience reactions from media audiences, colleagues, and peers, and how do the universities and research institutions with which they are affiliated respond to their media appearances? While all of those interviewed report on reactions from media audiences, two of the interviewees stand out. Notably, both are women and they each report a substantial amount of feedback.
One of the women tells us that she receives a large share of feedback, particularly via email. She receives very little hate mail but also estimates that only ten percent of the emails engage with what she has actually said in an interview or other media performance (Interviewee anonymized). The other emails concern, for example, her appearance or personality.
The other woman describes a different experience: “I got some hate mail, you might say” (Interviewee anonymized). Her inbox tends to fill up in response to media appearances. After years of experience, she can now predict what will come, depending on the topic of the media engagement. The interviewee also says that she warns early career scholars about the possibility of receiving hateful comments and teaches them how to protect themselves.
Both interviewees understand the feedback as explicitly gendered responses. The woman who received hate mails says, “So, I think, I would say anyone who is not a straight white male should think carefully about the ways in which their bodies will be read …, and it will be read, like I get a lot of grave threats” (Interviewee anonymized). She notes that as a woman, she is constantly politicized: “It is a very different, much easier experience when your body and persona conform to a perceived norm, that is, unmarked.” The experiences reported by the men in the sample confirm her hypothesis. None of them have found that their gender has had a negative effect in their engagement with the media. Two of the men are aware of the privilege, though, noting that white men in particular have structural advantages (Interviewees anonymized).
Many of the interviewees reflect on the ways in which the intersections between gender, age, appearance, race, and nationality affect the public perception of scholars and the responses that they receive. Two of them note that both senior and early career men, as well as young women, are likely to have advantages over senior women in their engagement with the media (Interviewees 3 and 7). Two of the scholars hold that markers of ethnicity and national identity have played a role in the ways media audiences respond to them. Both men and women in our sample have experienced that their appearance is an issue in the response they receive. Finally, several of the interviewees find that their religious or academic affiliation matters, holding that these affiliations can work for or against them. An affiliation with a conservative or evangelical research institution will generally influence you negatively, whereas association with a high prestige university may help and protect you (Interviewees anonymized).
The interviewees in the sample have received different kinds of feedback from colleagues and peers in the field of ancient religions.Footnote 38 One interviewee has not received any negative input as the response has been supportive or colleagues have asked them to help connect with journalists (Interviewee 7). Additionally, two other interviewees say that they have mostly received positive reactions from colleagues (Interviewee 4 and 8).
The interviewee who works in the academic culture that does not favor media engagement, mentioned above, has a substantially different experience with responses from peers and colleagues. The interviewee holds that their colleagues see the media and the academy as two different worlds, and that scholars have no place in the media world:
There will be people saying, “[You] again! On TV, why [are you] always on TV?” And so I know that, in my career in [name of country], people have thought that, I am not such a good scholar, that I just do TV … people in [name of country] feel like maybe I’m not even a real scholar. I don’t know (Interviewee 1).
Some of the interviewees express that criticism from fellow academics is emotionally difficult to deal with. The criticism can be expressed in person or on social media when responding to a colleague’s media engagement. One interviewee says:
I found responses from my peers really upsetting. The way people would talk about me, even my colleagues, the way they would talk about my appearance and my professional success, and the way that doing media kind of washed over all of my academic work and gave, and kind of contaminated it with a such a, this kind of “[they are] not serious”-edge (Interviewee 9).
The interviewees ascribe some of the reactions to jealousy, hurt feelings, an idea that scholars who appear in the media just want to sell books and make money, or a notion that the dignity that is necessary in a senior position is not compatible with the role and persona of the public scholar (Interviewees 1, 7, and 9).
Some of the interviewees report that the leadership and communication departments at their home institutions are actively supportive and acknowledge the work that they do. Interviewee 5’s home institution has praised their work as their media engagement pertaining to manuscript finds and forgeries has been recognized as valuable both at the department and at the university level. Other scholars report that their public communication has been assessed as an important part of the institution’s impact on society (Interviewees 3, 8, and 9).
Some of the interviewees hold that there has been a shift during the last decade. Institutions are much more supportive of scholars’ media appearances now than when pioneering scholars in the field of ancient religions started to engage with the media (Interviewees 5, 6, and 7). Two of them refer to the fierce criticism that those scholars met only some decades ago (Interviewees 6 and 7). While one of these interviewees thinks that scholars who do high levels of media engagement are more respected in universities now, the other finds that the status of public-facing scholarship is still ambiguous.
Many of the interviewees have mixed emotions about the communication departments at their universities. On the one hand, they have experienced support from the staff at these departments. On the other hand, they find that their interest is of an instrumental nature. They sometimes function as “internal media machines,” which leads to the same types of worries or concerns regarding character branding and sensationalism that the scholars experience when they interact with external media professionals (Interviewee 3 and 8). One of the scholars we interviewed referred to a contested issue that got the research institution where they were employed at the time a lot of bad press. The interviewee experienced that the communication department reacted in a dysfunctional manner, instructing employees in what to say about the issue, including things that were not true. When the audience reactions manifested, the scholar was left to deal with them alone (Interviewee anonymized).
The interviewee who works in an academic culture where media engagement is not encouraged says, “They have a media department at the university and they are very happy because they want our university to be well-known … but it is a tiny department, and they are in contradiction with what others would say.” While praised by the communication department, the interviewee experienced that “the rest of the university is usually very uncomfortable … and I can see that the Dean is very unhappy” (Interviewee 1).
The Toll that It Takes: The Mediatization of Science
The mediatization-of-science lens may contribute to a better understanding of some of the main experiences reported by the academics in our sample of experts on ancient religions. First, with one pronounced exception, our interviewees report that their home institutions encourage them to engage with the media. Some are explicitly requested to interact with public-facing media, whereas others experience an implied expectation to go public. These findings are generally in agreement with previous research. Since the 1990s, academic institutions in many countries have put increasing stress on publicity and media visibility. Consequently, academic institutions have become dependent on the media to demonstrate their relevance to popular society. David Rowe points to the so-called “impact agenda” of many universities, in which presence in the media is interpreted as a measure of intellectual efficacy. In many countries, such as the U.K. and Australia, universities must prove their impact beyond the academic community, and media exposure often functions as documentation of said impact.Footnote 39 The result is that public engagement via the media has become a more pronounced part of the job of individual academics.
Second, all of the scholars in our sample experienced a sense of duty to share their knowledge with the larger public. Some of them saw this as a central aspect of their academic persona. One way of interpreting this would be that they have internalized the demands of their home institutions and academic cultures, and as such this could be framed in terms of mediatization. However, it is likely that a mediatization perspective alone is not sufficient to explain this deep-felt commitment. The interviewees report that their sense of duty is linked to what they see as important democratic obligations. They are, to a large degree, motivated by idealism. The role of the public intellectual extends much further back in time than the relatively recent impact agenda of corporate universities, and it is likely that many of the interviewees identify with this longstanding ideal.Footnote 40 Still, the mediatization perspective sheds light on more of the reflections that the interviewees shared with us. As previously noted, some scholars report that they appear in the media out of duty towards their scholarly field. They find that public scholarship may contribute to saving the humanities and the study of ancient religions at a time of crisis. This assumption rests on a belief that the media is instrumental in such a rescue operation and that media exposure has the power to influence societal priorities.
Third, the interviewees clearly demonstrate that they are aware of how the media works, having all engaged with media professionals on several occasions. They know how to phrase themselves, they are aware of media frames, they know what the risks are, and they have established routines to limit risk factors. The scholars have learned from their previous mistakes, and they educate younger colleagues on how to protect themselves. Again, a mediatization-of-science perspective may tease out some important insights. For one, the academics’ awareness about what the media want influences the way they formulate their knowledge. In other words, even before the academic communicates with a media professional, the very expectations of how the media operate influence the way the interviewees formulate their message and the topics that they will talk about with journalists. Furthermore, the control mechanisms that some of the interviewees have put in place imply degrees of self-censoring. This, in turn, affects the range of topics that they will agree to talk about in media outlets. Importantly, and as previous research has pointed out, anticipations of pushback, harassment, and threats sometimes make academics avoid contested issues.Footnote 41 This self-protection through tactical risk management is necessary for the individual academic and, concurrently, a symptom of a polarized and hostile debate climate. At the same time, on the systemic level, these reactions may lead to a loss of expert voices in the public sphere.Footnote 42
Fourth, a mediatization lens also provides a fruitful perspective on the role of communication departments in academic institutions. Some interviewees opine that these departments work according to the same logic as professional media outlets and that they bring media frames into the heart of the academic institution. In this sense, they lead to a mediatization from within the academy.Footnote 43
The Tolls of Public-Facing Scholarship
A mediatization-of-science perspective also highlights some of the main tolls of public scholarship. First, the majority of the scholars we interviewed agree that interacting with the media involves giving up control. They expressly relate this to the way in which the media work in that media professionals shape the narrative and the academic’s role in it, linking the narrative about manuscript finds and forgeries to existing public discourses in ways that are beyond the control of the individual scholar. On most occasions, the interviewees have found ways of maneuvering within this dynamic, but as the interviewees that have worked on documentaries expressed, the control the production teams demand over the product may sometimes be extensive. On such occasions, media practices may lead to pressure on the scholar’s professionality.
Second, the interviewees experience different degrees of ambivalence from their home institutions in reaction to their media engagement.Footnote 44 At one end of the continuum we find the scholar who works in an academic culture where media engagement is generally seen as being opposed to academic work. While cheered on by the communication department, this interviewee has experienced pushback both from colleagues and from leadership at their institution. At the other end of the continuum is the scholar who has mostly experienced support and praise for improving the university’s impact on society. However, all of the interviewees (the latter included) report on different shapes and degrees of ambivalence in the reactions they have received about their media engagement. Some of them hold that the criticism they receive from peers are the responses that are hardest to deal with.Footnote 45
Many of the interviewees are aware that media exposure is a potential minefield and that it can become destructive to their careers. The ambivalence demonstrated by colleagues and peers in the field of ancient religion may be understood as a result of a certain ambiguity in current university cultures. Whereas media publicity is increasingly a structural expectation on the individual academic, the ideology of academic purity that has dominated the sector since World War II and which opposes academic professionalism to public engagement also continues to inform academics’ attitudes towards media engagement.Footnote 46 As some of the interviewees suggest, these attitudes may presently be changing, but at the time we conducted the interviews in 2020–2021, both ideologies were present in their work environments.
Third, even though the interviewees figure in public media outlets as academic experts on manuscripts and ancient religions, the feedback they receive from media audiences often concerns their appearance, personality, and gender instead of the contents of their statements. The interviewees report that when they receive responses, feedback most commonly reaches them via email, personal messenger services, through social media, or in the commentary section of a digitally published news spread.Footnote 47
Bonnie Stewart has applied the term “collapsed publics” to describe the collapse of audiences, communication forms, and audience expectations in interaction on social media and other digital communication platforms. When academics share their research on digital platforms, or when their media appearances are shared and circulated in social media by others, they simultaneously reach both networked and institutional audiences, in effect creating a new public. The former barriers between personal and professional identities, as well as between academic and everyday speech, disintegrate.Footnote 48
Stewart’s conceptualizations of “collapsed publics” and of complex “context collapses” offer a grasp on the audience responses which the interviewees in our sample have received. One of the phenomena that can fruitfully be addressed as such is the merge of attention to bodily appearance and professional persona in audience feedback. The main burden is carried by the women in the sample. They reported receiving more responses from media audiences than the men; the responses they receive often concern their bodies and looks, and one of the women receives abusive digital responses. We also observe an intersection between gender, age, and nationality, and the type of feedback that the interviewees receive. Our sample is far too small to generalize, but similar findings are well documented in previous research.Footnote 49
Another collapse in audience feedback that the interviewees attest to is a merge of religious or academic affiliation and epistemological identity.Footnote 50 Interviewees report that what they say about manuscripts will be interpreted in accordance with media users’ preconceptions of their religious or academic affiliations, and audiences therefore respond to media performances accordingly. Both forms of collapse may result in harassment, shaming, and a general questioning of the competence of the academic.
Fourth and finally, the interviews display a mismatch between institutional expectations of media engagement and the individual consequences of that engagement. In other words, whereas academic institutions increasingly encourage or demand publicity, the eventual consequences of the publicity remain, to a large degree, privatized.Footnote 51 Many universities depend on positive publicity and benefit from the media engagement of high-profiled scholars.Footnote 52 However, the consequences remain with the individual academic to deal with. Responses from peers and public audiences end up in the inbox of the scholar, harassment concerns the targeted person, and career setbacks affect the individual. Each scholar has to carry the extra workload and the emotional burden.Footnote 53 As the early career scholars in our sample told us, they were encouraged to do public outreach and hoped that it would help their career. Yet, after their engagements with the media, they experienced that the effect was decreased employability. As the interviewees reported, few support mechanisms have been put in place by their home institutions to meet the consequences they face due to the systemic anticipation of public visibility. The individual scholar, thus, pays a high price for institutional policy and strategy.
Old Media, Breaking News
The mediatization-of-science perspective may also help us understand why manuscripts are deemed “newsworthy,”Footnote 54 as well as grasp some of the particular challenges that follow public communication concerning manuscript finds and forgeries.
Most of the experiences that our sample of experts on ancient religions talked about in the interviews are shared with other academics who engage in public communication. Our findings are to a large degree consonant with previous studies of academics from other disciplinary backgrounds.Footnote 55 In this sense, some of the consequences which befall academic experts on manuscript finds and forgeries may be generic, shared effects of media exposure.
However, our materials also suggest that some of the experiences that our interviewees report may be related to the subject matter that they communicate. On the one hand, several of the scholars are aware of the different degrees of risk connected to different areas of expertise. For example, one interviewee stated that, due to concern for their own safety, they do not talk about Islam. The precautions this interviewee has put in place mirror some of the findings of previous research. Scholars of Islam, gender diversity, and feminism, in particular, are likely to experience a much larger degree of abuse and explicit threats than scholars that express their opinions about manuscript finds and forgeries.Footnote 56 From this comparative perspective, communicating about manuscripts is likely to involve less risk for the academic than other highly contested areas of expertise.
On the other hand, and as the above presentation shows, communicating about manuscripts in public-facing media may still lead the scholars into rough terrain. One reason for the media interest in the manuscript finds and forgeries that serve as the case of the current article is the continued religious importance and cultural currency of the Bible. Manuscripts that contain or shed light on biblical texts continue to attract public attention worldwide. Media professionals may consider manuscript finds newsworthy because they have the potential to challenge established truths or to ignite debate about the origins of the Bible. Hence, manuscripts that have the capacity to question the culturally shared, mainstream biblical narrative allow journalists to explore matters of concern for Jewish or Christian-leaning audiences. Manuscript materials may also get weaponized by polarized audiences who are invested in the Bible, making the manuscripts even more newsworthy.Footnote 57 The manuscripts’ ability to connect audiences to tangible pasts, to their heritage, identity or political geography may also be matters that journalists tap into. Manuscript finds can, for example, link the history of a religious community to a certain territory and resonate with current political agendas.
Another reason why manuscript finds may be newsworthy is that they are objects of scientific discovery. Some of them qualify as sensations, having the potential to change history. Other, newly-surfacing manuscripts—real or forged—are big business and thus provide journalists with the opportunity to narrate stories from economically privileged layers of society, to investigate the conditions of legal and illegal markets, as well as to follow the traces of academic scandals.Footnote 58 Yet other manuscripts hit a nerve because narratives about manuscript finds tend to be fanciful and entertaining, shrouding the manuscripts in mystery and intrigue.Footnote 59 Forged manuscripts, particularly forged biblical manuscripts, are emotionally charged, feeding on the general affective distrust in things inauthentic, evoking anger, but also curiosity and an urge to reveal the identity of the forger.
Finally, as one of the interviewees in our sample pointed out, journalists frame news reports about manuscripts and the texts they carry by explicitly connecting them to contemporary issues of conflict, such as gay marriages or priestly celibacy. Hence, when academics share their expertise about manuscripts, their statements become entangled with current societal discourses on a series of high-stake matters.Footnote 60 Journalists will typically link news about manuscripts to issues that are debated and well-known to audiences in the country where the outlet is published. When the issue in question concerns gender, for instance in debates about female clergy and the role of women in the congregation, experts on manuscripts may experience some of the same types of responses on which experts on gender studies report.
Hence, the manuscripts themselves may indeed be old media, but in their current remediation these manuscripts are breaking news. Due to the norms and standards of professional news-making, scholars of ancient religions who share their knowledge about manuscript finds and forgeries may thus find themselves in the middle of controversies regarding issues that are far beyond the field of expertise that they aimed to represent in public communication.
Conclusion
The current article is based on a small sample of interviewees, and the outcome of our study cannot be generalized. Still, the study offers an interesting first peek into the experiences of a selection of scholars of ancient religions who have served as academic experts in media outlets concerning manuscript finds and forgeries.
The study suggests that media publicity impacts the academic life of the scholars in the sample. Media publicity influences both the formation and the articulation of their research. Media exposure has impacted their careers both positively and negatively. On the positive side, the media have given them a platform, a voice, and a sense of accomplishment. Among the negative professional consequences are reduced employability and weakened access to external funding. The scholars in the sample also experience a lack of control with their public persona and a risk of erosion of academic integrity. The responses they receive from media audiences collapse academic and personal spheres. Some of the scholars report on harassment and threats.
The study is inspired by the mediatization-of-science perspective. The study suggests that academic practices have, to some degree, become mediatized. All of the scholars in the sample see public communication as a duty, and some of them see the media as instrumental for the survival of the humanities and the legitimation of the study of ancient texts and manuscripts in particular. Our study also suggests that the scholars adjust their communication, calculate risk, and develop protective strategies based on the anticipation of, and former experience with, the media and their professional actors. Hence, media affordances influence their professional behavior. The way that the scholars in the sample experience the workings of communication departments also indicates a certain mediatization of academic practices from within the academy. These departments may serve as internal media machines, operating in accordance with the logic of the media.
The interview materials suggest that all of the scholars experience some expectation from their institutions to engage in public-facing scholarship, but the levels of these expectations vary between national and institutional contexts. In some contexts, media publicity is regarded as a must and indicates that promotional discourses have found a permanent place in the academy. In other contexts, some actors within the institution favor it, whereas others discourage it. Indeed, the large majority of the scholars report on a certain ambiguity present in their institutional contexts. This ambiguity materializes in mixed messages from colleagues and leaders, or divergent messages from different segments of the staff. Most of the interviewees report that they must negotiate institutional expectations of media publicity and peer ambiguity concerning their media exposure. Indeed, we observe a discrepancy between institutional strategies and expectations of media publicity on the one hand, and the privatized consequences of that publicity for the individual scholar on the other.
Some of the effects of public-facing scholarship that we describe in the current article are shared by large segments of academics who engage with the media. Other effects are dependent on the area of expertise and the topic of any given media piece. Manuscript finds and forgeries do not count amongst the most contested topics of engagement. Still, due to the discursive framing of contemporary news production, which privileges conflict and contested issues, scholars who share their expertise about manuscript finds and forgeries in the media may easily find themselves in the middle of controversies which take a larger toll than anticipated.
