Taking the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) as an example, this paper analyzes the characteristics, status, functions and problems of emergency science popularization in dealing with unexpected public events; and brings forth strategies to promote a comprehensive mechanism of emergency science popularization as well as its active role in coping with public issues of emergency both at present and in the near future.

Based mainly on the analysis of the public information released by relevant government departments, media and relevant forums in China from early January to the end of February 2020, this paper expounds the general situation and existing problems of China’s engagement in science popularization in the course of combating novel coronavirus pneumonia, and puts forward five suggestions: strengthening overall leadership of science popularization over the prevention and control of COVID-19; encouraging professional institutions and societies to improve their ability in science popularization; enhancing the training, education, and standardization for practitioners in the field; amending relevant laws and regulations on emergency science popularization, and attaching importance to international science popularization to help combating COVID-19 in the world.

When a public event of emergency occurs, the government and the public’s demands for both “quality” and “quantity” of science popularization would increase significantly. As an important category of science and technology news, paper news (news articles with academic papers as leading clues and main contents) has been attracting more and more attention in recent years, and has become a “sharp weapon” of science popularization in public emergencies. The significant role of paper news is highlighted in reporting the 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) at the beginning of 2020. Taking paper news covering COVID-19 in China Science Daily as an example, this study analyzed the data presentation and demand basis of paper news, compared paper news during COVID-19 and SARS in 2003, studied the unique advantages of paper news, summarized its main problems, and put forward specific strategies and suggestions regarding the problems.

The outbreak of COVID-19 makes new media the main channel for science communication, i.e., the main battlefield of emergency science popularization develops from offline to online communication. A series of new characteristics of emergency science popularization emerge in cyberspace, with several problems revealed on the supply side of science communication. This article summarizes the characteristics and problems of media communication in emergency science popularization, and puts forward suggestions on improving emergency science communication system for future response to unexpected public events.

Based on the database of rumors maintained by WeChat Counter-Rumor Platform and Dingxiangyuan (DXY, a connector and digital service provider in the healthcare industry of China), this article analyzes 230 rumors collected from late December 2019 to February 13, 2020. The spreading characteristics and the social basis of epidemic rumors have been researched and findings are reached as follouing out: people’s cognitive limitations and iterations on emerging issues make the epidemic situation full of ambiguity; lack of information transparency puts the public into a cognitive predicament; and the social media communication environment may further exacerbate the complexity of rumor spreading. This article proposes a strategy to cope with rumors, that is, to establish a socialized collaborative rumor refuting mechanism.

In the course of combating novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19), high-quality short videos on wearing masks could help promote public understanding and minding their way of wearing masks correctly and reasonably. Based on the content analysis on such short videos released on typical science communication platforms, the social effects and characteristics of communication context of three types of videos are studied, and the circumstances or the reasons for which cognitive mistakes that occur in communication are discussed. Finally the enlightenment for both science popularization creations and media communications are elaborated from four aspects: the contents of creation and communication must be highly consistent with the context; the scientific review and correction mechanism should be gradually established in social media platform; the science communication database should be built and developed from fragmental knowledge to systematic knowledge collection; and the cultivation of rational scientific thinking should be taken as an important goal of science popularization.

Based on the theory of self-presentation, this article took as a case the phenomenon of Internet users wearing a mask on their WeChat avatar during the COVID-19 epidemic, and employed in-depth interview research methods to explore the motivation of self-presenting behind the use of social media avatars. It has been found that users’ motivation for self-presentation in social media is mainly related to dissemination of information, self-satisfaction, and identity. In the case of information dissemination of public health emergencies, social media users’ self-presentation motivation can be fully applied to achieve the goal of scientific communication and popularization.

Science and technology museums should serve as pilots in emergency science popularization while facing unexpected public events. However, after the outbreak of COVID-19, the offline science popularization was hindered by the epidemic of novel coronavirus pneumonia, so it is of great significance that science and technology museums turn to online emergency science popularization. Current research proposed an online emergency science popularization solution based on contextual model of science communication to respond to the epidemic. Taking the characteristics of public knowledge absence under emergency context into consideration, the emergency science popularization routine for science and technology museums has been designed in three steps, namely the demand triggering step, the emergent communicating step and the feed-back-evaluating step. What’s more, the experiences of online emergency science popularization practiced by China Science and Technology Museum in the course of combating COVID-19 are summarized, and suggestions are put forward.

From the perspective of KAP model of health communication, combined with field study to Runan, Henan province and Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, the strategies to improve the effectiveness of propaganda and mobilization against COVID-19 are proposed as follows: Using a variety of media approaches to spread the COVID-19 prevention information, arousing the public’s inadvertent attention in order to input the information to the public compulsively; employing the synchronous interpersonal information communication; in terms of the information itself, applying the principle of proximity in content selection and using the “alarming” way properly.

Based on 593 science journalism articles, included in CNKI from 1999 to 2018, this paper conducted a quantitative analysis to describe the hot topics and evolution atlas in the field of domestic science journalism research. From the perspective of distribution structure, more research articles are from the media industry. The past research focused on textual review and case study to discuss the traditional media such as newspapers. And most of the papers were published in non-key journals. This implies that the research about science journalism has long been at the edge of journalism and communication. In the past 20 years, the research of science journalism has gradually expanded the research topics such as humanistic concepts and communication effects from practical skills and audience analysis. Under the influence of social context and policy, scientific literacy, agricultural science journalism and scientific innovation had once become research hotspots.