Sein Publikum ernst nehmen – Der Blick einer Journalistin auf den Umgang mit der breiten Öffentlichkeit

Abstract

Although archaeologists know, that they don’t have just one, homogenous audience, but many different ones, many of them still don’t behave so: They lump the native together with the visitor, or the journalist with the politician. Many scientists still tend to understate a differentiated view on their public or see it as a marginal detail. If archaeologists communicate the same to all people, or expect the same from everybody, they don‘t reach most of their audiences, but actually lose many of them. They miss chances to share their knowledge, to exchange ideas and opinions, and to call attention to a fascinating discipline. Getting to know more about highly differentiated publics is an essential need of public archaeology. – Mass media work with precisely defi ned audiences, when they communicate archaeology in TV, radio, or in the press. Editors have an idea of what their public is interested in, what they already know, and what they expect from a certain topic. This paper examines how far journalism‘s methods and strategies to understand its audiences could be transferable to the scientifi c discipline and might contribute to communicating archaeology.