Defamiliarise to engage the public: a multimodal study of a science video about COVID-19 on Chinese social media

Science communication plays an important role in providing accurate and up-to-date information about the COVID-19 pandemic. It is thus necessary to investigate the various ways in which science communication can work impactfully to achieve such a purpose. Using the video “Everything about the novel coronavirus pneumonia”, which was the most viewed video on Chinese social media platforms about COVID-19 during the early stage of the outbreak, a multimodal discourse analysis is carried out here to show how the strategy of defamiliarisation is operationalised semiotically to construct meanings in the video. Defamiliarisation is defined as a rhetorical strategy of making ordinary and familiar objects look different. Drawing on analytical perspectives from multimodal discourse analysis and social semiotics, we examine how the strategy of defamiliarisation operates semiotically to represent the outbreak in a way that juxtaposes contrastive representations on three levels of meaning – textual, interpersonal and ideational. We then discuss how aspects of contrast and juxtaposition, intertextual meanings and unexpectedness can potentially facilitate audience attention and affective engagement, enabling the communication of scientifically accurate and timely information amidst the “infodemic” of communicating the science about COVID-19.