This introduction to a special issue of BJHS concerned with intermedial approaches to the history of the public culture of science (those that pay attention to the forms of different science media and how they relate to each other) also stands as an argument for such approaches. It amplifies a trend within humanities and social-science approaches to its subject of studying the interactions between science, media and publics as complex historical phenomena – in comparison with evaluative research approaches that seek to make science communication more effective. It argues for the virtues of going beyond most existing scholarship in the field by considering many media together. Drawing on the work of media studies scholars Irina Rajewsky and Klaus Bruhn Jensen, it introduces working definitions of intermediality. It then explores historically the genealogies of intermediality, which emerges as an entanglement of changing disciplines, technological change and media practice. Two brief sections take the example of museum display in this intermedial context with the aim of showing first that museum practice was already intermedial before it was considered to be ‘one of the media’. It then concludes by showing how, and in what circumstances, the mediatization of museums came to seem necessary.

Finding the right balance between education and entertainment in science communication has always been a challenge. This essay argues that this balance has often been framed in terms of the correct proportion and use of animation and live-action footage in popular-science media. Clarifying the assumptions behind a century of concerns about animation and science, this historical case study examines the advisory board’s complaints about animation in the Bell System Science Series, which aired in the United States between 1956 and 1964. AT&T interrupted the series mid-stream by switching the creative team from Frank Capra and his production company to Owen Crump at Warner Bros. Studio. Capra’s use of animation in the series featured prominently in this decision. The historical record – as well as Capra’s and Crump’s different aesthetic choices about animation – tells us much about the board’s objections and how they were resolved in production. This essay examines the differences between the two parts of the series to uncover a course correction steered primarily by the scientific advisory board, which reveals a sometimes-fraught relationship between live-action footage and animation in science education that persists even today.

This article examines the contributions of Bert Bolin, the first chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to the collective understanding of the panel’s nature, operations and results, as well as his efforts to safeguard the credibility of the IPCC process in the face of criticism. Based on the scholarship on expertise and its relationship with the political process, I argue that Bolin’s contribution to that process can be summarized in three points. First, he acted as a mediator between producers of climate change knowledge and its users, in this case governments and corporations. Second, he selected and emphasized some of the information provided by the IPCC and used it to advocate for immediate action to tackle climate change. Third, he played a major role in legitimizing the IPCC as the best possible assessment organization, especially through boundary work. Additionally, it is suggested that Bolin’s role in the advisory process was not static but changed within an evolving political and social context. Through this case study, I aim to contribute to the scholarship that examines how environmental problems are defined and brought into the political arena, and the role of experts in this complex process.