Online knowledge dissemination: how to make the dismal science less dismal

The study addresses the issue of the divulgation of academic knowledge, more specifically economic and financial information, to a non-specialist audience. It analyses the varied educational resources provided on the websites of two central banks, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank, which are aimed at building understanding of the role and functions of central banking. Using multimodal analytical frameworks, it isolates the discursive strategies at work in the contextualizations created to convey abstract, theoretical and technical information to younger recipients. In particular, it shows how visual texts are used to facilitate information transfer and aid knowledge conceptualization.