Riding the Wave to Reach the Masses: Natural Events in Early Twentieth Century Portuguese Daily Press

This paper brings together science communicated in newspapers in Portugal by looking at how news on natural events were communicated in two different newspapers--the capital newspaper "Diario de Noticias" ("Daily News") and the "Diario dos Acores" ("Azores Daily"). In particular, we look at how the 1900 solar eclipse, a hot topic throughout Europe, was reported by the capital newspaper, and how news on seismology were conveyed in the period 1907-1910 in the newspaper published in Azores, an archipelago with a significant seismic and volcanic activity. We argue that the importance conceded to these scientific news was related to their overwhelming features, that their dissimilar presentation stemmed from their local relevance allied to their different nature, predictable in the case of eclipses, and unpredictable in the case of earthquakes, and that behind these two instances of science journalism laid an attempt by the scientific and political communities to gain the support of the general public to such an extent that these two specific instances of science journalism transcended their usual features to become successful forms of expository science.